Things that we should recycle we mostly do



Everyone's talking about the environment these days, whether it's Al Gore's army of global warming slide show presenters or billionaire Richard Branson's quest for alternative fuels. I'm nostalgic for the old days when all the environmentalists wanted was for us to recycle. In class a few years ago I was lecturing on the economics of environmental protection. As I described the market's surprisingly robust ability to conserve natural resources, one student asked me "Do you recycle?" "No," I answered. "Thanks for the effort," he replied sarcastically. He then angrily marched from the room. I detected that most of the remaining students shared his sentiments, and that day's lecture was awkward and unsuccessful.

Only later did I realize that I'd given the wrong answer. In fact, I do recycle. Consider a typical day. After I awaken, I shower and dry myself with a towel that I've had for a few years. I don't discard it after one use. When it gets dirty, I rejuvenate it by processing it through recycling machines that my wife and I own: a washing machine and clothes dryer.

Then I brew coffee and fix breakfast. Each day, I use the same coffee maker that I used the day before. I clean it after each use, recycling it for the next brew. My wife and I drink the coffee from mugs that have been used many times in the past. (One set of our coffee mugs was handed down to us after my wife's parents used them for several years.) We also eat our breakfasts using dishes and utensils that are recycled from countless past uses. After breakfast, we recycle our mugs, dishes, and utensils with the help of another recycling machine: an automatic dishwasher.

After breakfast, I dress in clothes that I've worn before and that I will wear again. My underwear, my pants, my shirt, my necktie, my belt, my coat, my shoes - all are recycled from previous uses. Indeed, I take my suits and coats to a store specializing in recycling such garments: my local dry-cleaner. In fact, the very house we live in is recycled. It was built in 1993 by the Van Brocklins who, when they moved out of the area in 2001, didn't abandon the house or trash it; they sold it to us. My family and I recycle a lot. Everyone recycles a lot.

If I'd responded in this way to that student, he probably would have asserted, "That's not recycling. Real recycling is re-using things that many people think of as garbage." That student, like most people, thinks of recycling as dealing with a handful of items that are wrongly thought to be semi-precious: cans, bottles, plastic containers and newspapers. But why do I treat clothing and dinner dishes differently than I treat empty beer cans and old newspapers? The student who walked out on me sees that as a moral failing. I don't.

No moral issue turns on recycling. It might be immoral to waste things, but contrary to popular misconception, failure to recycle every physical item is not wasteful. Real waste happens when someone recycles without weighing the benefits against the cost, especially the time required to recycle. If it's immoral to waste, then it's immoral to recycle when the benefits of doing so are less than the value of the time it takes to do so. It would indeed be wasteful for me to discard my fine china after each use. So I don't do it.

But I do discard paper plates - for the same reason I recycle my china rather than discard it: it would be wasteful to do otherwise. After all, I could recycle paper plates. Careful washing would enable me to reuse each paper plate two or three times. But valuable time and labor would be wasted. Time I could spend playing with my son, reading a book or fixing a leaky faucet would be wasted cleaning paper plates. And to what purpose? Paper plates are expendable precisely because the materials used to manufacture them are so abundant. This abundance is reflected in their low price. If the materials used to manufacture any items become sufficiently scarce, the prices of those materials will rise. These higher input prices will raise the prices paid by consumers for these items, giving consumers greater incentives to recycle them.

Reflecting on the impressive amount of recycling that actually takes place daily casts doubt on the prevailing misperception that Americans are naturally wasteful and mindlessly irresponsible. In fact, market prices compel us to recycle when recycling is appropriate - and to not recycle when recycling is inappropriate. I'd like to see that logic applied to all environmental pursuits

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Bad Science & Government Inertia

Post lifted from OC Blog



I included this article in last Friday's News Roundup, but thought it deserved its own post. Obviously, science isn't infallible. Public policy ought to be informed by the best science available, but continuing research sometimes reveals what we previously thought factual turns out to be wrong -- as in the case of the bacterial test being used to determine if beaches are contaminated by human waste:

The bacteria traditionally used by health agencies to reveal the presence of human sewage can grow independently in the environment, an Orange County scientist said Thursday, raising doubts about the reliability of the nation's most widely used ocean-water testing methods.

E. coli bacteria also used as a flag for sewage appears to grow on its own as well, Ferguson said. Both bacterial types usually do not cause illness themselves, but are commonly assumed to survive only in human fecal material.

That's why they are used as "indicators," signaling the likely presence of more harmful microbes, such as disease-causing bacteria or viruses, that can be found in sewage.

If that assumption turns out to be untrue, Ferguson and other scientists said, some Southern California beaches may be getting branded as contaminated and unsafe for swimming when, in fact, there is no contamination at all.

Some Orange County beaches, especially those near storm drains, are frequently posted with signs warning of bacterial contamination.

OK, so now we know. Consequently, local governments will suspend programs and spending based upon this untrue assumption, pending a re-examination of how to proceed from here -- right?

Not quite:

The findings are, for the moment, unlikely to influence water-quality regulations, water agency officials said.

Why not? As Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff told the OCR:

"To me it calls into question our whole strategy about keeping the water clean," said Newport Beach assistant city manager Dave Kiff, who attended Thursday's meeting.

Exactly.

But Kiff also said:

"We are building projects based on old laws and old science. But that's the only thing we can do right now."

Why is that? Bureaucratic inertia? One-size-fits-all state and/or federal mandates? It doesn't make sense to steamroll along with projects based on science that is known to be unreliable.

Government in action.






Greenpeace Caught Polluting

Post lifted from Crazy Jim Smith

I have written about this before but time constraints prevented me for elaborating and exposing the lies that Greenpeace has been peddling over Lafayette Mining’s project located on the island of Rapu Rapu, in the Philippines.

The first lie that Greenpeace is has been telling is that the local community is in opposition of Lafayette’s mine. Go to the Greanpeace website and watch the video located on this page. The video makes the claim that the local people are against Lafayette’s mining operations, in particular the local fishermen due to chemical spillages at Lafayette’s mine.

Have a look at the photo of a group of people that are protesting.

This picture is from Lafayette’s quarterly report and it shows locals protesting in support of Lafayette continuing its mining operations.

Does Greenpeace’s pretty video have any footage of people protesting?

The Greenpeace website also goes on to claim that Lafayette had recently recommenced mining operations. Here is the text from the Greenpeaces website that makes that claim.

The waters surrounding the island of Rapu Rapu are teeming with marine life. Local communities depend on the sea for their livelihood. However, Rapu Rapu also has a large open pit mine, run by Lafayette, an Australian company. This mine was temporarily closed after two toxic spills last year. It recently reopened despite the recommendation of a presidential fact finding commission.

Now the company hasn’t actually started mining operations. The company had been granted a temporary lifting order from Government authorities, where under close supervision the company would commence a staged process where the first stage involved the process of water to ensure there were no leakages.

The second stage involved water and waste rock processing followed by the third stage, which involved actual ore processing. Now the first two stages have been completed and operations proceeded smoothly.

So Greenpeace’s claim that mining operations had recommenced is another lie, which leads to the environmentalist’s claims of another chemical spill, which occurred when Lafayette was in its first stage of commissioning using water only.

So who could be responsible for the chemical spill if Lafayette hadn’t commenced mining operations and had only been using water in its first testing stage that was under very close scrutiny by government officials? Here is a press release from the Sorsogon Governor. Perhaps that will provide you with an indication of who polluted the creek.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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