 Credit: Green England |
On June 1, 2008, China joined countries like Bangladesh, Ireland, and Rwanda, and the city of San Francisco in instituting a ban on plastic bags. As a result, China saved 1.6 million tons of oil in the year following the ban, the amount of oil it would have taken to manufacture 40 billion plastic bags.
In addition to reducing China’s dependence of foreign oil, the country is also taking a stand against a form of pollution that has incredible detrimental environmental consequences. Plastic bags make up 10 percent of the debris that washes up on America’s coastline, they are choking whales, dolphins, seals, and turtles that mistake them for food, and are breaking down into toxic petro-polymers which we consume as they enter the food chain.
 Turtle with plastic bag Credit: Melbourne Zoo |
With all the economic, environmental, and public health benefits of doing away with plastic bags, I made the mistake of thinking State Senator Marc Basnight’s proposed plastic bag tax, which would levy 10 to 20 cents on each plastic bag, the revenues from which would go to pay for college scholarships. Win-win right?
Nope. Dare County Republican Party Chairman Keven Connor has a complaint about politicians who want clean air and water. According to Connor:
They cower to broken science without any consideration whatsoever of the economic consequences to thousands of people and the businesses they depend on for a livelihood.
If a plastic bag ban is bad for the American economy, then why wasn’t it bad for China’s economy? This is a country that is expected to outrank the United States as the world’s largest economy and exporter in the near future. How is reducing America’s dependence of foreign oil bad for the economy? How is preventing toxins from having deleterious effects on the public health bad for the economy? How is sending kids to college bad for the economy?
Why is Connor so confused. Here’s a hint:
This is a textbook example of why science is not perfect; it’s all subjective.
It’s obvious that when Connor uses the term “subjective” to describe science, he is confusing the field with his own discipline, politics, where obfuscation, distortion, and spurious interpretations of the facts are required skills for success. Not so with science, where an impeccable, reproducible, and thoroughly peer-reviewed understanding of the truth is mandatory in order to produce complex medical procedures, nuclear power, computer systems, and all the conveniences of modern life. Try making a subjective interpretation of the second law of motion and see how many rocket ships you get into space.
Liberalism in America poses a threat to one of our most basic freedoms: private property rights. They’re already working to ban smoking in privately owned establishments; now they’re trying to dictate how retailers will bag our groceries based on an imperfect science.
This is the most disingenuous part of Connor’s largely entirely unsubstantiated letter, the idea that we are going to have to just keep putting mercury in your food supply, bisphenol-A in your baby bottles, and pollution into the air you breath because to do otherwise would infringe on people’s “property rights.” That’s because, in Connor’s world, your health and well-being are neither property nor a right.
 grocery bag graveyard Credit: halflifehalflived |