Super Eco

Photo credit: Flickr, Matt From London

Oscar the Grouch is plenty green and scary. I remember. Trash cans still creep me out. I'm more of a recycling container girl these days. So why are other angry, dark green things that spring from waste--like, say, greenhouse gas-hastened global warming--“too scary” for Sesame Street?

The PBS institution (it's more than just a show) recently celebrated its 40^th anniversary by turning over a new green leaf--very, very gently, so as not to frighten the children.

The official greening of your preschooler's favorite street, an eco-education curriculum titled “My World Is Green and Growing,” will sprout like a weed over the next two years. Kids can expect warm, fuzzy environmental concepts about, well, warm and fuzzy (and wild!) animals, also where they eat, sleep and, er, other things.Think happy habitat restoration.

Helicopter parents, feel free to heave a sigh of content-screening relief. The greener Sesame Street just says no to environmental doom-and-gloom. The show's producers apparently think this is the stuff of nightmares. I'm afraid they're right. Just ask my 8-year-old son. He was privy to An Inconvenient Truth way too young. My bad. Hey, kiddos, have you heard the one about 2012?

So, there will be no dark clouds of deforestation and no big, mean global warming, both of which threaten the survival of Kermit the Frog and more than a few of his mutating croaking cousins.

"The place we're coming from is, 'Let's love and care for the Earth, because it's so beautiful,” a Sesame Street developer said. “We appreciate its awe and wonder, and we're going to respect it." I can get behind that. If only my kids weren't too big to dig Big Bird.