As somebody who lives in one of the hottest countries on the planet, where the weather service has had to introduce new colours for UV exposure levels, and new colours for predicted heat levels (keep in mind this is the BoM, not a TV station), I can tell you that there's most definitely change afoot.

I'm not even sure it's related to herding people into stupidity, so much as the ultimate complicity of not being willing to offend anybody. I certainly learned during primary school that the climate was changing, and that we as individuals had a responsibility to help reverse that as a group.

Then, during secondary school, the messages stopped-- Everything was suddenly about money, and efficiency, presumably because everyone agrees on money, and nobody wants to offend anybody of "differing opinion".

I think the main emphasis is we need to stop allowing people to present opinion as fact without discourse, mass "stupefaction" as many people call it results largely from the unwillingness of people to speak up when somebody says something that's wrong. "It's their opinion, let them have it". Wrong. If it's conclusively inaccurate fact, don't! Somebody will listen, and they will repeat the misinformation-- and that's how it spreads.