DISQUS Doodlings - Like environmentalists, Treehuggers upset we do things they don't like - Granite Grok

DISQUS Doodlings – Like environmentalists, Treehuggers upset we do things they don’t like

straws

Treehuggers want Government to use force to get the rest of us to get in line. They are just blind to the fact that they keep proving the phrase Watermelon Environmentalists – ostensibly “green” on the outside but Red on the inside (the old political version for communism/socialism):

Why plastic straws should be taxed

Plastic straws.  In this case, over plastic straws and a failure to persuade (emphasis mine, reformatted).

A small charge has helped people move away from plastic shopping bags, so why not the same approach for straws?

When waste disposal and recycling companies start speaking out about plastic straw pollution, then you know it’s a really serious problem. These companies are the only ones who could possibly benefit from excess plastic waste, but with straws, there’s no way to recycle them. Straws are used in enormous quantities (500 million a day in the United States) and all of these go to landfill, lingering for decades, probably centuries, without biodegrading.

A British company called Business Waste wants people to start treating straws the same way as single-use plastic bags. It is calling for a 5-pence tax on plastic straws to discourage their use. This proposal would go a long way toward the ultimate goal of phasing out plastic drinking straws within the next few years, something that Business Waste spokesman Mark Hall says is “an ambitious timescale, but one that is certainly achievable.”

“A plastic straw has a lifespan of around 20 minutes, and then it’s thrown away. With the finest minds in the world at our disposal, why is this dreadful state of affairs even a thing?

Again, a failure to persuade, so immediately run to Government:

We don’t need to invent anything new. We don’t need to invest money in more advanced products. We just need to change our way of thinking.”

I think just fine, thank you very much.  If the Free Market could make a buck from it, as it has in the past with LOTS of things formerly discarded as waste and by-products, it would.  They really don’t mean “We just need to change our way of thinking” – they are appalled that WE haven’t changed OUR way of thinking.

So we MUST be forced to do so.  And besides “we don’t need that” according to this control freak (the “tell” of a true Progressive), so she is all in on taking something away from us.  They never can learn to mind their own business:

What would that change of thinking look like? There are two immediate answers:

Your lips!

Get over the fact that you need a straw to sip a drink. You don’t. Your lips can do a perfectly decent job. As Hall says, “Face the facts, you’re not eight years old. Only kids need a straw with their fizzy pop. Why on Earth do you need a straw in your G&T?”

It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter whether or not YOU believe I don’t need it – but it always comes to just Freedom.  An ideal that doesn’t exist in their bubble (as long as you forget they seem to have a “freedom bubble” around them to have the freedom to tell us that we don’t have, or shouldn’t have, freedom for ourselves.

…The tax is a smart suggestion, since nothing inspires behavioral change faster than money. At the very least, it would raise questions, lead to conversations, and get people thinking about something that’s almost too common and normal to notice.

This line is just crazy!  An imposed tax is not “inspiring behavioral change”; it is Force.  Inspires implicitly means “voluntary” – I get to choose.  The bar mentioned in the post did it voluntarily – Enviro-wackos against it convinced the owners/managers to give up straw – perfectly fine.  But that’s not what Katherine Martinko is demanding.  Remember, there is no individual within the Collective – only the Collective.

They are blind to their own Progressive (we must progress to an Environmentalist Utopia!) Totalitarianism. Of course, I tried to let them know what the downside of their ideology might be:

Remember, using Government as a blunt force tool to change other peoples’ behavior (taxes) to fit your sense of “goodness” is a double edge sword – would you be as thrilled as I see all these commenters if “the other side” gained control and forced you into behavior you consider anathema?

Consider it an application of the Golden Rule.

But that never seems to ring a bell with them – that there is a pendulum and it can swing the other way.  These self-same kind of folks are all up in arms here in the US as a new Administration has taken the reins, and that pendulum is swinging back rather quickly on their dystopic outcomes.

>