-By Warner Todd Huston
In another case of leftist hubris and stupidity, San Francisco is patting itself on the back for being sooooo environmentally conscious. In their latest paean to Greenists everywhere they have banned plastic grocery bags, forcing paper to become the norm in the left coast’s most leftist city.
Have they done the environmentally right thing? Should they be congratulated as the most green of the Greens? Have they saved the planet?
Um, no.
It seems that, as bad as plastic bags are, the paper ones are even worse.
The staff at USA Today gives us some of the facts inPlastic-bag ban full of holes
First the bad about the plastic bags…
The bags’ petroleum-based plastic eventually breaks into tiny particles that contaminate soil and waterways and enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them. Thousands of marine animals already die each year from eating bags mistaken for food. Municipalities spend millions of dollars cleaning bags from streets, recycling systems and trees. In South Africa, wind-blown bags are jokingly called the national flower because they sprout everywhere. In the USA, we use 100 billion bags a year.
Oooo. Sounds scary, kids. But, wouldn’t it be better to have paper bags? After all, paper is made of trees. Aren’t trees natural? Wouldn’t a paper thing break down faster than plastic anyways?
Guess not…
Plastic bags cost about a penny each, paper costs about a nickel and compostable bags can run as high as 10 cents each. The California Grocers Association, which lobbied against the ban, doubts this new industry can produce enough of the compostable bags quickly. The bags also must be segregated from regular plastic, making recycling efforts more difficult.
Paper bags, meanwhile, generate 70% more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This is because four times as much energy is required to produce paper bags and 85 times as much energy is needed to recycle them. Paper takes up nine times as much space in landfills and doesn’t break down there at a substantially faster rate than plastic does.
Ooopsie. Looks like the Greenwits are again proven to be halfwits.
Yes, once again the conventional “wisdom” of the Greenies makes them look like unthinking, fools. Nice goin’, Greenwits.
USA Today makes another fine point. It is better to focus on anti-littering campaigns to help train people not to throw their plastic bags about the countryside than to get the government involved in banning things they have not taken the time to study the efficacy of the banning of.
But, logical thinking is NOT a thing that occurs very often to a Greenwit because it’s all about feeling good about yourself, not really the environment.
It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings about leftists:
“Modern liberalism, for most liberals, is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.” – James Burnham
“Glow” away, San Francisco, glow away.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston