3 November 2019 — 0501 mst
Climate Smart Glacier wants you
to pledge not to use plastics on Fridays
China is not the problem
American recycling firms have stopped receiving certain plastics, because China’s plastic remanufacturing plants are refusing shipments of salvaged plastics from the United States. Our plastics, the Chinese correctly contend, are contaminated.But let’s not blame the Chinese for our recycling problems. Shipping garbage overseas is obscenely irresponsible. We must localize recycling, reusing, and remanufacturing.
That’s right: no coffee in an expanded polystyrene cup, no synthetic fiber underwear, no Gore-Tex rain jacket, no plastic handled toothbrush, no eyeglasses with polycarbonate lenses, no hearing aid, no catheter for the incontinent, and don’t touch that polypropylene medicine vial filled with blood pressure medications. That’s the logical outcome of attempting to abide by Climate Smart Glacier’s Plastic Pledge, which was on display at yesterday’s so-called plastics symposium in Kalispell that drew a sizable crowd that was treated to China bashing.
Why Friday? Damned if I know. Perhaps the pledge’s authors are secularized Catholics who miss meatless Fridays and are substituting polyvinyl chloride for a medium rare t-bone as a way of satisfying their need to suffer through self-denial.
Or perhaps it’s not a substitute penance. Climate Smart Glacier has a beef with human carnivores. See the seventh tip.
Not using plastics on any day, of course, is impossible. Perhaps the pledge exists to goad people into realizing that our lives are so intertwined with plastics that abjuring them and leading any kind of normal life is impossible. Perhaps. But that’s something virtually everyone already knows.
I think the pledge’s authors probably are serious, sincere, sanctimonious, and oblivious to how patronizing their plastic using, and therefore sinful, neighbors will find this demand to be more green, more pure, more moral. They truly want people to confess their environmental sins, to accept the premise that plastics are bad, and through ostentatious self-denial to seek redemption and nature’s forgiveness.
I think this approach energizes the choir, but offends and angers those who can be saved. Our friends and neighbors will rightly resent the pledge’s reek of moral superiority. And the pledge will frighten and dismay people who depend on plastics for living a normal life.
I made this point back in September, but Climate Smart Glacier wasn’t listening.
Chastising and belittling voters who buy plastic straws, use plastic bags, drive gas guzzling SUVs, eat beef cheeseburgers instead of tasteless veggie burgers, as climate wreckers who are destroying the planet with their selfishness, does not win votes. Instead, it convinces voters that the supporters of straw bans and such consider themselves morally superior human beings — smug city dwelling, college educated elites — who intend to use the power of the state to “improve” the personal habits of the hard working Joes and Jills who wear red truckers caps.
Most people try to live environmentally responsible lives. Some are more successful than others. Not all can afford an ultra-green lifestyle. Almost all are doing the best they can. They don’t deserve being accosted by well meaning I’m-greener-than-thou zealots who demand that they prove, by taking a pledge, their commitment to keeping Earth a livable planet. Asking someone to take a pledge is an inherently hostile act, a way of saying “I don’t trust you.” It’s an attempt to coerce behavior, to shame people into submission. Demanding that someone take a pledge is no way to make a friend. Your Plastic Pledge, Glacier Climate members, just isn’t smart.