It is Earth Day 2024, an annual exercise in self-applause that always is too much fun because of the inanities, hypocrisies, mendacities, and sheer stupidity of the Earth Day slogans, arguments, propaganda, and exhortations. And also because of the embarrassing spectacle of long queues of corporate officials and public relations gasbags desperate to advertise their environmental bona fides so that the green alligators might eat them last.
The Earth Day slogan for this year is “Planet vs Plastics,” and the list of horror stories is staggering. Plastics “flow through our blood stream, adhere to our internal organs, and carry with [them] heavy metals known to cause cancer and disease.” They “transmit hormone-disrupting chemicals.” They “can starve birds and suffocate sea life.” They “are a dangerous blight.”
One would think that this horror parade would have made life on earth ever more sickly, disease-ridden, and short. And one would be wrong: human life expectancy at birth now is 73.33 years, an increase of over 61% from the life expectancy of 45.51 years in 1950. Has the production of plastics declined? Of course not: From 2 million metric tons in 1950, production in 2019 was 459.8 million metric tons. Why else would the environmental left find plastics worthy of its annual screaming?
Such as: “More plastic has been produced in the last ten years than in the entire 20th century, and the industry plans to grow explosively for the indefinite future.” “More than 500 billion plastic bags … were produced worldwide last year.” “100 billion plastic beverage containers were sold last year in the United States.”
One would think that such massive output just might lead the Earth Day sloganeers to hypothesize that plastics offer real benefits for ordinary people. Again one would be wrong. And if you think that the wreckage wrought by plastics is limited to such direct effects, think again. According to Earth Day 2024 propaganda — remember the slogan is Planet vs. Plastics — the fashion industry produces over 100 billion garments per year, 85% of which “end up in landfills or incinerators,” people buy 60% more clothing than was the case fifteen years ago, and over two-thirds of clothing is made “from” (that is, with the use of) crude oil, that evil of evils. The clothing industry is characterized by “exploitative working conditions, low wages, and widespread child labor.”
What does this have to do with plastics? The Earth Day 2024 rant about garments — inserted amid the larger rant about plastics — fails to mention plastics at all, a curiosity fully consistent with the disinterest on the part of the environmental left in rigorous thinking.
What is not so curious is the deafening Earth Day sermonizing about the evils of plastics, the importance of wind and solar power, and the worsening climate crisis, even as the scientific literature increasingly challenges the central Earth Day assumptions. Nonetheless, the Earth Day proponents applaud themselves for their devotion to science, that is, Science! So what does actual scientific research tell us about the relative greenhouse gas emissions engendered by plastics and the important alternatives? In brief:
We assess 16 applications where plastics are used across five key sectors: packaging, building and construction, automotive, textiles, and consumer durables. These sectors account for about 90% of the global plastic volume. Our results show that in 15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer GHG emissions than their alternatives. In these applications, plastic products release 10% to 90% fewer emissions across the product life cycle. Furthermore, in some applications, such as food packaging, no suitable alternatives to plastics exist.
Maybe ensuing research will yield different conclusions — although the common argument that GHG emissions have created a crisis is supported by no evidence whatever — but the Earth Day cacophony ignores such subtleties, because Earth Day is the central religious holiday of modern left-wing environmentalism. But it reverses the traditional introspection, repentance, self-improvement, service to others, and faith in the moral requirements imposed by a higher authority. Instead, under the religious dogma of modern left-wing environmentalism generally and on Earth Day in particular, it is others who must examine their lifestyles, repent, purify themselves, suffer economically, and answer to the ideological demands of elite superiors. As I have noted many times, Dogbert perceived matters correctly: “You can’t save the Earth unless you’re willing to make other people sacrifice.”
Just as the pagans for millennia attempted to prevent destructive weather by worshiping golden idols, so do modern left-wing environmentalists now attempt to prevent destructive weather by bowing down before recycling bins. And so the Earth Day 2024 environmentalist Book of Genesis now begins as follows: “In the beginning, Earth was the Garden of Eden. But Mankind, having consumed the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Technological Knowledge, has despoiled it. After all, Plastics! And only through Repentance and economic suffering can Mankind return to the loving embrace of Mother Gaia.”
That loving embrace is fundamentally totalitarian. Reject it and Earth Day and all that it represents.
