Todd Wynn writes on his Facebook page:
I am beginning to wonder if the whole world has gone mad and economic logic has just been thrown out the window as irrelevant…..
I distinctly remember when plastic bags were introduced in Oregon grocery stores. I was six or seven years old and I remember my parents and all of my friends’ parents being appalled. In fact, I …
The article he cites goes on to argue why both plastic bags and paper bags are bad for the environment, so naturally the conclusion is that Oregon residents should just grab their groceries in arms, or get one of the new petri dish bags.
George Carlin really sums up this argument well:
And while we are on the subject of environmentalism and Oregon, how’s that “save the spotted owl” thing working out for ya?
Now they’ve gone down the path of “we have to kill the owls to save the owls” since nothing else has worked.
Indeed, maybe the whole world has gone mad. Though, I think it mainly the world that views it through green colored glasses.
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@ur momisugly Curiousgeorge says:
Well, for those who believe in such things, George is probably guarding the Pearly Gates about now, having beat out St. Peter for the job. 😉
I thought he was stuck on the roof…
:
Frisbeetarianism
If George Carlin were alive, he’d be a warmist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO0-u900OG4&feature=related
Mr Moderator:
My last comment lost the link I put in:
Frisbeetarianism
I prefer the Osaka way for garbage: trash, recycle, burnable. They run a very efficient co-gen operation there and plastic is just another fuel
Plastic bags DID save the planet… think of how many billions upon billions of trees were NOT cut down to make the paper to make the paper bags since plastic bags came along.
Then think of how much CO2 those trees (that weren’t cut down) managed to pull out of the atmosphere.
And, to take the California Air Resources Board’s argument a bit further, plastic bags instead of paper bags has increased employment and boosted the economy tremendously. See, paper bags cost much more per bag than plastic bags. Grocery prices are therefore lower with plastic bags. Lower grocery prices puts more discretionary spending money into each person’s pocket. That discretionary spending can then be spent on coffee at the corner coffee shop. There will be more people employed in making and selling coffee.
(The above is EXACTLY the argument that CARB makes in defending the economy-destroying state law on carbon emission reduction, known as AB 32, or the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.)
The problem with trying to show warmists they’re wrong, is that you’re trying to teach common sense….to people who have no common sense.
SamG says:
February 25, 2011 at 5:44 pm
If George Carlin were alive, he’d be a warmist.
=======================================================
He was. My wife and I went to go see him about a year or two before he died. His routine had devolved to a slurs/rants/insults to conservatives, Christians, and just about anything that didn’t agree with the leftist narrative. It was depressing. We didn’t stay for the whole thing. We weren’t the only ones either. Apparently either idiocy or senility had set in and he didn’t realize he was playing to a crowd in SE Kansas. But as I recall he had a bit in his schitck poking at skeptics. He did get one thing right, he said the earth didn’t have a problem when it got tired of what we were doing, it would shrug us off. The idea that we can permanently effect the earth is absurd. If we all vanished tomorrow, 500 years from now, one would have to look far and wide for the traces of our civilization.
James Sexton
I think that’s where the confusion lies with this video. As you state, he didn’t believe the earth had a problem, he did however say “the people are f****d” . He also refers to the natural equilibrium of the planet and the universe as a big electron. Is this not remarkably close to the concept of Gaia?
Based on the second link I posted, Carlin implicitly endorsed militant civil disobediance. Hicks wasn’t much different either.
I used to find these guys funny until I realized they were serious proponents of the left.
I have a theory on the connection between a popular paper product and the decline of the Spotted Owl. Too many Oregonian tree huggers apparently took to heart the message on a bumper sticker of the 1980’s: “Save the trees! Wipe your a$$ with a spotted owl”.
To find a solution to the current Barred Owl problem, the Oregon legislature should fund a study to see if a process could be developed to recycle Barred Owl carcasses into shopping bags. If a process is found, declare an open hunting season on the critters and put a bounty on them. Several problems are solved with the bonus of establishing a new eco-friendly industry in Oregon. Unemployed loggers represent a huge pool of future forest-wise bounty hunters. sarc
Dave Stephens;
As a backup to your need-and-love-fear thesis, consider the immortal Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Actually, the above should have been to Archonix, citing Dave S.
While driving through Oregon I also spotted a simpler bumper sticker:
Eat an Owl, Save a Logger
Obviously a sentiment to some local situation. /sarc
Richard Jeni’s stand up comedy on politics, ending with folks that ride in private jets to energy conservation meetings.
Huh! My mom uses large sturdy baskets. They are in the trunk, so she packs the stuff from the trolley right in there. And I put most of my stuff in a rucksack, which works for my bachelor life-style.
The average Brit can walk with so many plastic bags from an average shopping tour that I sometimes feel I should challenge them in the car park over their out of hand conduct. Some people reall need a dozen bags to pack the contents of one trolley. Sounds familiar to anyone?
The simplest way to recycle paper bags is to burn them for heat.
Plastic shopping bags? Great things.
Put one bag inside another to form a double-skinned bag, half fill with potting soil that has a dash of well rotted compost in, plant a chitted potato. Top up as the potato grows, feed with tomato fertilizer once a week. I grow Arran Pilots, a delicious first early.
After ten weeks empty the bags into a wheelbarrow and collect your bug ‘n’ slug free potatoes.
No digging, trenching, backfilling etc. and the outer plastic bag is well on the way to decomposing into brittle flakes.
I have always re-used plastic bags until they are no longer practical (torn). Why not produce and encourage the re-use of bio-degradable plastic bags by offering a small discount or shopping points at the checkout?
Pretty soon we will have a tax on clean clothes, meant to encourage us to reuse our garments instead of washing them. I could turn my bras inside out, but then you would notice all the hardware that goes into making middle age bras that are worth a damn. Talk about yer panty lines!
I’ve started fires with plastic. Pretty flammable stuff, burns hot, and can keep wet fire starter material burning long enough to get the kindling going.
Plastic bags have all kinds of uses, from burning in the woodstove for heat (get a hot fire going first, and they’ll burn completely w/no smoke or leftovers), or balling up & tossing overtop the fiberglass insulation in the attic for some additional insulation. Doing that once of yr for several yrs has built up a respectable new layer for free. I also use a screwdriver to jam them into crevices in the house’s ground-level cement block/wood transition to cut air leakage & infiltration.
The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan had (has) four fundamental goals. It has failed spectacularly to meet any of them.
1. The NWFP has failed to protect northern spotted owls
By most estimations, the northern spotted owl population has fallen 40 to 60 percent since inception of the NWFP.
2. The NWFP has failed to protect spotted owl habitat
Since inception, millions of acres of spotted owl habitat have been catastrophically incinerated. Millions more acres are poised to burn.
3. The NWFP has failed to preserve habitat continuity throughout the range of the northern spotted owl
The dozens of huge and catastrophic forest fires have left giant gaps in the range. The Biscuit Burn alone is 50 miles long and 20 miles wide.
4. The NWFP has failed to protect the regional economy
Since inception of the NWFP, Oregon has experienced 16 long years of the worst economy in the U.S., with the highest rates of unemployment, bankruptcy, home foreclosure, and hunger of any state. These are not just statistics, but indicators of real human suffering. Over 40,000 workers lost their jobs, and the rural economy has been crippled ever since.
The plan to save the owls has not saved anything; not owls, not old-growth, not the economy. The cost for nothing? $100,000 per job per year x 40,000 jobs x 16 years = $64 billion. That’s what Northwesterners have paid, for nothing. And the bills continue to mount.
The parallels between junk wildlife biology, junk climatology, and junk government policies are too numerous to detail. Suffice it to say that when the junkers hold sway, everybody suffers enormously.
The solution is one much of the world is too hypocritical to endorse: Grow hemp, weave bags from it. Trees stay uncut and the plastic not made into bags leaves more for fuel and other value-added items we’ll miss if the Peak Oil theory holds water…no pun intended.
Meanwhile, we waste corn on the ethanol scam while hemp for paper, cardboard and yes, fabrics, is NOT grown on marginal land that doesn’t require irrigation.
And no, I don’t smoke dope.
Wallowa County, Oregon, 90 years ago, ranked 2nd in the state for number of hogs sent to slaughter. Several other agricultural products ranked high. And logging kept forest floors clean.
Now we rank highest in cougars, wolves, and rotting fuel strewn forests. No hogs, just a few bags of wool, maybe a train car of cattle, less and less elk and deer, and empty buildings.
All this will not end well.
What a picture.
It´s simple economics: The more items we recycle, the less items are produced, the less jobs are created to produce new ones and the more poorer we will become…..Oh!,,,,,,How intelligent we are! (BTW: The more madcows we will have, because of prions´generation by recycling).