Banning plastic straws is among the latest environmental fads of the Left, and it’s impossible to resist pointing out just how much this one sucks.
While one jurisdiction has imposed penalties as high as six months in jail and a $1000 fine for serving a straw with a drink in a restaurant, another jurisdiction – San Francisco – is planning to ban straws, carry-out containers and wrappers. The utter futility of the gestures is dwarfed by their hypocrisy.
San Francisco has today become a city with conditions worse than that in many impoverished third-world nations. Human feces lies on every block of the city, drug addicts openly shoot up on the streets in public, and the city dispenses hundreds of thousands of free needles also littering the streets. Poverty and homelessness abounds. In the midst of all this, its new mayor apparently believes that ‘education’ will solve the problem.
As it undeservedly adopts a moral high ground in condemning ‘plastic refuse,’ the Left simultaneously celebrates and perpetuates the human refuse in its wake. Such is the plastic politics of pollution.
Indeed, as Danielle and Robert illustrate, plastic and pollution are two separate things. Pollution is the result of irresponsible human activity; plastic is inert and has played a huge role in the improvement of human life on this planet.
The global evidence is clear. The more Left is the nation, the worse its regard for the environment. 95% of the ocean’s plastic pollution originates from the world’s most collectivist nations, not from the relatively individualistic societies of North America, Australia or Western Europe.
In appearing to fight plastic pollution, the Left is only doing what it always does – fighting against the very condition known to have actually reduced pollution – capitalism.
Only when this environmental hypocrisy is clearly understood, will it be possible to reduce pollution in a way that is Just Right.
One Response to “The Danielle Metz Show – 025 – The last straw”
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It’s par for the course for the Left: take the least significant factor in any issue and blow it up into something monstrous to justify more regulation (less freedom) and extort money from the rest of us in fines, taxes and user fees to fight a problem that does not exist in reality.
People are incredibly gullible. No doubt you know about the petition to ban DHMO – Dihydrogen Monoxide. Over 80% of people will sign the petition when they read about the hazards this chemical presents because so few people possess, or at least use, the faculty of critical thought:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/501907/14-year-old-who-convinced-people-ban%C2%A0dihydrogen-monoxide
The Left preys upon that sort of mentality; or, should I say lack of mentality?
I watched a video of Jeremy Rifkin a couple of years ago, a presentation he was doing in Holland, I believe. Can’t find it online now, so perhaps he eventually realized how idiotic he sounded and took it down. Being an expert in finances and forward thinking, or whatever, also makes him a climate change expert because these days an expert in any subject is, by default, also an expert in climate change. In the video he said (among numerous other absurd things) that climate change was a result of the world’s water cycle being out of balance because of human activity and he presented a solution: teach kids in school to shame their dads into using less water shaving. That’s it. Problem solved. Anything about flow restricting fixtures, showering instead of bathing, not watering lawns and gardens or washing vehicles in drought conditions, greywater recycling, rainwater harvesting, or filling in the backyard swimming pool? Nope. Nary a word about any of those things that might actually make a meaningful difference. Just get dads to use less water shaving and all will again be right with the world’s water cycle.
Climate change alarmists focus almost exclusively on greenhouse gas, principally CO2, which occurs naturally in the atmosphere (meaning, it belongs there) and is essential for life, naming it the “culprit” in driving climate change that needs to be eliminated. It exists at a concentration of one part in 2,500. Meanwhile, they essentially ignore all the things that don’t belong there. Hundreds of thousands of new chemicals have been created in the last several decades. The vast majority have not been tested for their effects on humans. If it’s not intended to be applied, inhaled or ingested, it doesn’t get tested. Unlike CO2, none of those chemicals belongs in the biosphere; yet, there they are, and nary a whimper from the climate change alarmists about what effect they may be having on climate and human health. Let’s just rid the planet of plant food (CO2).
And let’s also ignore Milankovitch Cycles as drivers of climate change; they’re orders of magnitude more influential than CO2 but since we can’t do anything about them we’ll just pretend they don’t exist. Focus on minutiae over which we might have some control and make that the big central issue. Just like plastic straws.
The Chinese recently announced that they won’t be accepting any more of our plastic for recycling. Seems they’re facing an overstock situation to the tune of 111 million tons! I guess plastic straws must be a huge part of that, in somebody’s feeble mind.
The bottom line is that science, truth and reality do not matter to the Left. All that matters is feelings and whatever fear-inducing BS they can get the gullible public to swallow that will give government more control of our lives, further restrict our freedoms, and increase government revenue. It’s not about people; it’s all about money and power. And yet, they have the audacity to trumpet the evils of Capitalism. Does anybody else see the irony?