You've no doubt noticed the list of things environmentalists oppose is long and growing longer. The recently proposed "Green New Deal" highlighted this issue for me and revealed the ultimate goals of leftist environmental kooks.
Lawns have drawn the scorn of these nanny-staters.
Americans often pride themselves on their lawns. Maintaining our green grassy landscapes and colorful gardens is a $36 billion a year industry. Three-fourths of us have told pollsters that "my lawn and garden (are) a reflection of my personality."
But the eco-lobby doesn't want us to have nice things.
"On balance, lawns are awful for the planet," Eric Holthaus wrote last week in Grist, an environmentalist online magazine.
Is there no end to the left's screeching sermons, its demands we "do better," the arrogance driven by a sense of moral superiority that believes it can make decisions for others?
While Holthaus admits lawns can be "pleasing," "help reduce the urban heat island effect," "help restore groundwater and reduce urban flooding," and draw carbon dioxide from the air, Grist is much more interested in dispatching a tirade. We have to "culturally stigmatize" lawns because they are of no "net benefit" and simply "need to die."
Naturally, there isn't a single reference to freedom, liberty, or our right to live as we see fit without interfering busybodies in the Grist screed. But then its purpose is to browbeat, command, and eventually control.
The urge to force conformity to the environmentalists' agenda won't end with lawns. Nor did it start there. The long list of things we're not supposed to have or do was begun some time ago, and now includes:
- Plastic Straws
- Single-use grocery bags
- Styrofoam food containers
- SUVs and pickup trucks
- Luxury cars
- Large homes
- Travel by jetliner
- Air conditioning
- Daily showers
- Beef
- Nuclear power
Remember former New York Mayor Bloomberg proposed to ban large sodas (for your own good, fat kids)!
Next month it will be something else. And then there'll be another target the month after. The eco-lobby will never grow weary in its wrongdoing.
Why are these bans unnecessary? For example, a recent Danish Environmental Protection Agency study found that an organic cotton bag uses more than 150 times as much energy and causes over 600 times as much water pollution when compared with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) grocery-store bags.
Banning plastic bags and straws is akin to sticking your finger in the hole of a dike with a thousand holes; it's not going to help our oceans. If you worked in a small business that was losing $1,000 a month and you told your boss you'd come up with a way to save a dollar next month, you'd soon be out of a job. Cheering on politicians who propose and implement token bans on plastic encourages them to avoid doing the hard work required to solve the real problem.
Drastic reductions of plastic and other waste in our oceans will come about only through working with countries in Asia and Africa to stop plastic pollution at the source. The developed world needs to encourage or assist governments in developing countries to better manage their waste. Private-sector innovation also shows promising ways it might help.
Much of this agenda is being pushed by rich liberals who live in multiple mansions and frequently travel by private jet, like Al Gore. They have a condescending air of superiority about them, "Do as I say not as I do." New Flash: I would be more receptive to your arguments if you weren't such a hypocrite. If you're going to talk the talk, then walk the walk as well.
Finally, just when you thought that the anti-straw crusade couldn't possibly get more ridiculous, there is now a push to remove straws from emojis.
Yes — emojis.
The hysteria surrounding plastic straws is mostly overblown. After all, straws make up only 0.02 percent of the plastic waste that is estimated to go into the ocean each year — and the United States is responsible for only about 1 percent of the total amount of plastic waste that ends up in the ocean overall.
What's more, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the number of emoji plastic straws that wind up in the ocean is precisely zero.
Why?
Because — and this may blow your mind here — emoji straws are not actual straws. That's right: There is absolutely no chance of even a single emoji straw ever harming a plastic sea turtle, so it's actually completely and totally safe for those emojis to continue to exist.