https://restoration-news.com/green-machine-targets-plastics-at-consumer-expense
By Kevin Mooney
Anti-trust investigations target pressure groups teaming up with corporate America.
Your casserole went stale, and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.
Or, so you’ve been told.
In reality, green activists operating in the name of “sustainability” have joined forces with corporate interests to increase consumer prices and coerce inferior products into the marketplace. All in the name of combatting plastics—and the motivations are not difficult to understand. Green activists who have lost ground on their climate agenda under President Donald Trump have repackaged that same agenda under a different name. As to the corporations, they are only too pleased to limit competition and charge consumers more while giving off the appearance of being concerned about the environment.
Here’s the deal
Pressure groups, including the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, have joined with heavy hitters like Coca-Cola, Target, Unilever, Mondelez, and Nestle to impose burdensome environmental targets. These include: arbitrary recycled-content quotas and directives to redesign everyday packaging — just to make certain products are as expensive as possible.
Fortunately, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has entered the fray to take on the “sustainability agenda.” Earlier this month, he initiated an anti-trust investigation and issued Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the plastics trade groups and the corporations complicit with their agenda.
In a statement Uthmeier said, “Environmental groups are pressuring corporations to abandon free market principles and raise prices on consumers for products they don’t want.”
Contrary to what green activists would like the public to believe, plastics come with significant benefits as a direct result human innovation. They keep food fresh, alleviate waste, make products lighter and therefore more affordable. They also contribute to life-saving medical devices.
If environmental activists turned government bureaucrats were genuinely interested in environmental improvements, they would focus on more efficient waste management, enhanced recycling infrastructure, and biodegradable innovations. But none of those solutions are on the table. Instead, the radicals push a top-down policy approach that suffocates the free market.
Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, took down the concept of “sustainable development” in an interview with Restoration News, saying:
What needs to be understood about ‘sustainable development’ is that what is being peddled is itself unsustainable. Absent government mandates, industry collusion, and interminable lawsuits, the alternatives to plastics could not stand on their own two feet. The marketplace, which reflects consumer preferences, is the best place to separate the sheep from the goats. Just as the PC vanquished the electric typewriter, and internet transmissions quashed the fax machine, superior products prevail over inferior ones. But this is an arena the anti-plastics lobby does not dare to enter. They know they will lose. Florida’s attorney general sees this game for what it is, and is to be applauded for taking appropriate action. May other state AGs follow his example.
“Sustainability” is an invention of the United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held as part of the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992. The agenda aimed to spur action at the international, national, regional and local levels with the common goal of achieving “sustainable development,” which the U.N. defines as an approach to growth and development that satisfies contemporary needs without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
At a time when the climate agenda is running up against scientific facts, and economic realities, let’s not give that agenda new life under a different name.
Time to face facts. The war on plastics amounts to nothing more than a war on modern conveniences made possible by the innovations inherent in the free market. The green cultists would prefer humanity return to a time when casseroles and mayonnaise spoil in hours instead of days, and cell phones use inferior materials and fall apart in months.
