John Tierney on the ‘plastic panic’ that provides no benefits except to let green activists impose their preferences on others

From Mark Perry.

"In today’s Wall Street Journal, John Tierney explains how “Plastic Bags Help the Environment” and why banning them provides no benefit other than to let green, virtue-signaling activists lord their preferences over others. Here’s a slice:

Single-use plastic bags aren’t the worst environmental choice at the supermarket — they’re the best. High-density polyethylene bags are a marvel of economic, engineering and environmental efficiency. They’re cheap, convenient, waterproof, strong enough to hold groceries but thin and light enough to make and transport using scant energy, water or other resources. Though they’re called single-use, most people reuse them, typically as trash-can liners. When governments ban them, consumers buy thicker substitutes with a bigger carbon footprint.
Once discarded, they take up little room in landfills. That they aren’t biodegradable is a plus, because they don’t release greenhouse gases like decomposing paper and cotton bags. The plastic bags’ tiny quantity of carbon, extracted from natural gas, goes back underground, where it can be safely sequestered from the atmosphere and ocean in a modern landfill with a sturdy lining. If the goal is to reduce carbon emissions and plastic pollution, we can take some obvious steps: Repeal misguided plastic-bag bans.
Green activists have the power to impose their preferences now that environmentalism is essentially the state religion in progressive strongholds. They can lord it over the modern merchant class and corporations desperately trying to curry social favor. The plastic panic gives politicians and greens the leverage to shake down companies afraid that they’ll be regulated out of business.
Most important, the plastic panic gives today’s elites a renewed sense of moral superiority. No matter how much fuel politicians and environmentalists burn on their flights to international climate conferences, they can still feel virtuous as they issue their edicts to grocery shoppers.

Related: I’ve featured John Tierney before on CD including these posts: 1) “John Tierney on the war on science from the supposed ‘party of science’“, 2) “Recommended reading for Earth Day 2017: ‘Recycling is garbage’ from the NYT in 1996 – it broke hate mail record,” and 3) “John Tierney in NY Times: Recycling was ‘garbage’ in 1996, it’s still that way today, and the future looks even worse.”"