On my jog Monday morning, I noticed a lot of paper bags out for the trash man. Many shoppers think mistakenly that paper bags are better for the environment than plastic ones. I remember ads for water filtration systems that criticize bottled water because the bottle is in the gym for 30 minutes and in a landfill forever. The crusade against plastic has to end. What would the world be like without it? More dangerous and less prosperous.
During the 2008 election, I vainly searched for an ad on plastics I remember from years ago. The ad questions what life would be like without plastic and then takes the viewer on a tour to see what would change without it. You see computers fade away, cars disappear out from under their operators, police Kevlar vanish, pens vaporize, buildings collapse, etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is that plastic makes it possible.
Plastic is cheap, light, and malleable. This means that compared to previous means of manufacture it can bring goods into the hands of people who otherwise couldn’t afford, life, or engineer things to be like consumers demand or have come to expect. Using other materials would be cost or space prohibitive. Many other materials cannot be molded like plastic. Plastic means that computers, like the one on which you’re reading this, can sit in the palm of your hand instead of taking up 4000ft2 of office space.
Every modern convenience and every advancement in technology has been facilitated or hastened by the use of plastics. Scientists use them, doctors use them, you drive them in your car, push them on your remote, and interface with them at the bank. We need more plastic.
To that end, we also need more oil, which is from whence plastic comes. As our politicians crusade against oil, restrict drilling, cancel contracts, and regulate for more environmental protection, remember that if they succeed, many other things will cost more money or vanish entirely. OPEC has cut production, and while prices for oil have fallen and stabilized near $50/barrel, new taxes and fees will cost jobs, reduce investment, and hurt availability during a time of unemployment and stretched budgets and energy insecurity. We have plenty of oil in our own country if they let us go get it. We have the capability to not depend on OPEC for it if government gets out of our way. Yet, they will continue to impede and restrict in the name of the children or the environment or fairness ad infinitum, trading our well-being for the well being of people we don’t know and places of which we’ve never heard.
Human beings are the only species of which I know that facilitates the survival of other species at the expense of its own. Obama's energy policy is premised on the assumption that someday soon we won't need oil. Even if we stop burning it for fuel, oil gives us a lot more than that. Ergo his premise is flawed and the policy predicated on that premise promises poverty to the people. Mark my words.
During the 2008 election, I vainly searched for an ad on plastics I remember from years ago. The ad questions what life would be like without plastic and then takes the viewer on a tour to see what would change without it. You see computers fade away, cars disappear out from under their operators, police Kevlar vanish, pens vaporize, buildings collapse, etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is that plastic makes it possible.
Plastic is cheap, light, and malleable. This means that compared to previous means of manufacture it can bring goods into the hands of people who otherwise couldn’t afford, life, or engineer things to be like consumers demand or have come to expect. Using other materials would be cost or space prohibitive. Many other materials cannot be molded like plastic. Plastic means that computers, like the one on which you’re reading this, can sit in the palm of your hand instead of taking up 4000ft2 of office space.
Every modern convenience and every advancement in technology has been facilitated or hastened by the use of plastics. Scientists use them, doctors use them, you drive them in your car, push them on your remote, and interface with them at the bank. We need more plastic.
To that end, we also need more oil, which is from whence plastic comes. As our politicians crusade against oil, restrict drilling, cancel contracts, and regulate for more environmental protection, remember that if they succeed, many other things will cost more money or vanish entirely. OPEC has cut production, and while prices for oil have fallen and stabilized near $50/barrel, new taxes and fees will cost jobs, reduce investment, and hurt availability during a time of unemployment and stretched budgets and energy insecurity. We have plenty of oil in our own country if they let us go get it. We have the capability to not depend on OPEC for it if government gets out of our way. Yet, they will continue to impede and restrict in the name of the children or the environment or fairness ad infinitum, trading our well-being for the well being of people we don’t know and places of which we’ve never heard.
Human beings are the only species of which I know that facilitates the survival of other species at the expense of its own. Obama's energy policy is premised on the assumption that someday soon we won't need oil. Even if we stop burning it for fuel, oil gives us a lot more than that. Ergo his premise is flawed and the policy predicated on that premise promises poverty to the people. Mark my words.
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