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The Lies About Plastic Bags

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Re “Plasticity Time: Did All Adults Leave the Room?

When plastic bags were outlawed in County territory on July 1, the Daily News enthusiastically burbled:

Outside of the heroic (?) County Board of Supervisors, “few other elected officials have had the courage to stop the scourge of the urban tumbleweeds that have trashed our neighborhoods, parks and rivers, clogged storm drains, littered beaches and washed out to sea to cause more environmental damage.”

Unless you die tonight, you may read loonier blather, but this nut-based editorial is a strong contender.

I think of filmy-minded environmentalists and their unaware lives about half the time I am washing the dishes.

I am obligated (I never said I was the boss) to thoroughly scour certain useless pieces that are going to the trash before burying them in “the recycle bin,” as my wife calls it.

For what purpose? So that the persons rummaging through nuclear waste dumps will have dirt-free plates or silverware?

I would not be surprised to learn that two-thirds of the lightheaded who have been railing against the unfortunate Casey Anthony this month call the environmental community their home.

How fruity are the Ban the Plastic Bag escapees?

If their heads will stop buzzing for a moment, at least two environmentalists must remember that about 20 years ago we were told we must, absolutely must, replace traditional paper bags with plastic bags.

Why? To save the trees, pal.

Which is it? Is this Save the Trees Day or Preserve the Guppies Day?

All depends on which lunatic ward is in the ascendancy, I guess.

How can we save the trees and the oceans at the same time?

Maybe Swishy will hand down a new law from on high. He will permit us only to buy at the market what we can shlep in our arms and cram into our pockets. No containers allowed.

Then we won’t need any old bags at all. Except for my second wife. Why isn’t she outlawed?

We have often said that being liberal is obtaining permission not to think, to be as darned inspecific as you wish. If you say I love you, you don’t have to say why. As you know, plastic bag bans and related addle-brained ideas are unrelated to cleansing the environment. They aren’t that swift. Such laws are entirely about controlling our shrinking lives, baby. The more authority they seize for themselves, the less control we have.

Look closely at the people applauding. In many cases, the imposition of such laws is a highlight in uncomplicated lives.

Two numbers in the Daily News editorial arrested my eyes:
Twenty million plastic bags are used annually in California. Oh? Sounds like one of Swishy’s smooth-swallowing, but typically untrue, jobs numbers. Twenty? Where is evidence. Maybe it’s 75, 100, 12. But when you are liberal, accountability is the enemy.

Next: Plastic bags, the newspaper swears, cost the County an “estimated $18 million a year to deal just with the single-use plastic bags used here.”

Single-use is one of numerous lies this gang of misled do-gooders trumpets. I use them over and over. And for gosh sakes, don’t put the plastic in the wrong barrel.

But the bulgiest lie of all: the County spends an “estimated” — I love that term; gives the perpetrator such leeway for torturing truth — 18 million.

On what?

After finishing their day jobs, do Antonovich, Ridley-Thomas, Molina, Knabe and Zev the First hop into their rickety ol’ pickup trucks and shlep 3½ million bags to their constituents?

The plastic bag boobs were less bother when they harmlessly stood on street corners and prattled on about global warming or climate change or whatever is tomorrow’s phrase du jour.

If only they weren’t so darned angry.