The left in this country continues to exhibit its arrogance, ignorance and yes, stupidity. The latest example of this is the furor over plastic polluting the planet. That has caused the banning of plastic straws in some super-liberal parts of the country.  It seems that plastic straws, because of their size, don’t get picked up by the recycle sorting machines. Well guess what? 

A recent research study discovered that something over 90 percent of the plastic we “recycle” ends up in our landfills anyway.  Turns out its not economically feasible to grind it up and melt it down (or whatever they do) to make new plastic products.  That worked well for aluminum cans, which started the recycling craze, which then spread to newspaper and cardboard.  Most newspaper doesn’t really get recycled and reused either, since it is very costly to removed the ink and come up with reusable paper.

No matter.  Recycling made people FEEL better about themselves.  It was similar to the rationing which went on during World War Two in this country.  We actually had plenty of sugar, coffee, meat and even gasoline to go around, unlike Great Britain, which was being staved out by the German submarine blockade.  However, the Roosevelt administration thought it was important for the civilian population of this country to feel like they were DOING SOMETHING to help in the war effort.  So the ration books got printed up and distributed.

That’s what’s going on now with recycling.  The United States contributes something less than 2 percent of the plastic pollution in the oceans.   The other 98 percent comes from elsewhere, mainly India and China.  Same for airborne pollutants.  China, India and a host of Third World countries continue to build huge coal fired power plants, and then burn the worse types of coal in them, without the “scrubber” technology which we mandate in ours to limit what comes out of the smokestacks.

However, there is always the dreaded “Law of Unintended Consequences” to deal with.  Example.  I formerly lived in Sun City Hilton Head in Beaufort County, South Carolina.  The environmentalists down there (who I suspect had moved there from other parts of the country) pushed through a law which banned plastic bags from being used in supermarkets and other retail outlets.  They were supposedly overtaxing the landfills.  One little problem.  The residents of Sun City and elsewhere repurposed those grocery bags to pick up the feces deposited by their many dogs every day.  How to pick up that warm and smelly mound now?  Many just left it, or used a small “Pooper Scooper” to toss it into the bushes or forest.  That’s illegal, of course, but if nobody sees you do it……….

So Fido’s poop now gets into the groundwater, which eventually pollutes the streams and rivers, which flow into the…….. Oops, the OCEAN!  What’s next, doggie diapers?  And they better be bio-degradable, too. But wait, THAT will pollute the landfill, groundwater, etc. etc. etc.  The only possible solution to this problem is to ban dogs in this country, and cats too if they can’t be trained to use the toilet!  Look for this solution soon in a Progressive area near you.  You just can’t fix stupid, can you?