Paper or Plastic?

Remember back when environmentalists cried, "Save the trees! Save the trees! Use plastic." Remember how they clamored for the stores to offer a choice - plastic or paper?

Back then, I had a stock answer for paper or plastic. "I'll take paper, please. I think plastic is worse for the environment." And sometimes I had to justify that opinion to teenage bagboys!

But eventually the choice disappeared and stores just went to plastic, because it was easier to bend to the demands of the environmentalists.

Now, in California, the environmentalists want to take away the plastic. They call them urban tumbleweeds! They say they do not break down readily in waste sites. Imagine that! It took this long for the environmentalists to figure out they were wrong!

I don't feel animosity toward environmentalists in general; I, too, am concerned about the environment. But I don't like environuts who think they have the only answers and insist everyone follow their commands. I don't like pushy environuts who adopt weakly-backed theories or "adjust" scientific data to justify their junk theories and force them down our throats.

I hope, but don't expect, that this paper-plastic about-face will show them they aren't always right. I hope, but don't expect, they'll take time to think about their agenda.

A few years ago (about ten or fifteen), they were warning of an impending ice age, now the issue is global warming. A few years ago, fluorocarbons were responsible for damaging the ozone layer, now it's carbon dioxide. Now the geniuses who backed all of the foregoing fads, are trying to force "going green" at the expense of jobs, higher taxes, higher prices, and perhaps even the destruction of this country given the fiscal shape it is in.

All I ask is a little thinking, a little sense. The paper-or-plastic error isn't nationally disastrous, but some of the environut agenda could be.