Earth Day Network’s
misguided anti-plastic campaign is a sign of more nonsense to come
Earth Day Network (EDN) chose “End Plastic Pollution” as their theme for this year’s April 22 Earth Day. It is just
the tip of the anti-plastic activism that now consumes environmental
extremists. A Google search on “Plastic Pollution Coalition” (a group claiming to represent “more than 500 member
organizations” dedicated to “working toward a world free of plastic pollution
and its toxic impacts”) yields almost 90,000 hits, including a video actor Jeff
Bridges made for the campaign.
Even the United Nations has joined in, making “Beat Plastic
Pollution” the theme of its June 5 World Environment Day, “a global platform for
public outreach that is widely celebrated in over 100 countries.”
But demanding heavy-handed action on the
comparatively minor problems that plastics present makes no sense. To help the
public assess these attacks against this miracle material, let’s consider what
leading environmental thinkers have to say about issues EDN raised on Earth
Day, beginning with its use of the term “Plastic Pollution.”
Canadian ecologist and Greenpeace cofounder Dr. Patrick Moore
stresses that plastic is not toxic. “It’s litter, not pollution. Many people
find it unsightly, and the solution is to educate people not to discard it into
the environment and to organize, as is done on highways, to have it removed.”
EDN also says plastics are “poisoning and injuring marine life.”
As Moore notes, “Plastic does not ‘poison’ anything. It’s non-toxic. Do
they think our credit cards, made with PVC plastic, are ‘toxic’?” Of course, plastics can release toxins when burned, but
not when they are simply littered into the general environment. So burning
should be done under careful emission control standards.
“The main
reason birds and fish eat bits of plastic is to get the food that is growing on
them,” Moore adds. “But they’re both quite capable of passing bones and other
fairly large objects through their digestive systems.” Plastics are no
exception.
Paul
Driessen, senior policy analyst for the Committee For A
Constructive Tomorrow and author
of books and articles on energy and environmental policy, points out that “some
animals do ingest plastics or get caught in plastic loops and nets. But the
notion that marine life (and people) are being poisoned by chemicals in
plastics has no scientific basis.”
EDN next complained about “the ubiquitous presence of plastics in
our food.” Moore responded, “This is complete nonsense. If a bit of
plastic gets in our food it is passed right through the digestive system.”
“Plastic wraps and containers help preserve food and keep bacteria
out,” Driessen emphasized. “Which is worse? Barely detectable trace amounts of
chemicals in our bodies, or serious bacterial outbreaks?”
EDN also worried about plastic “disrupting human hormones.” Physician and lawyer John Dale Dunn, a lecturer in Emergency Medicine
at the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center
in Fort Hood, Texas, dismisses this concern. “Hormone disrupter scares … are
based on junk science. Many extensive studies have shown no toxic or lethal
effects from BPA, which is a beneficial chemical that has promoted progress and
provided new products that are well received and very helpful.
“The debunking of hormone disruptor researchers and their claims has
been definitive and devastating,” Dunn notes. “JunkScience.com director Steve
Milloy also has been prolific in his criticisms of hormone disruptor junk
science,” as this excellent article explains.
Bizarrely
and unbelievably, EDN proclaimed plastic as “threatening our planet’s
survival.” Reminiscent of how Comedian George Carlin poked
fun at the plastics scare,
Driessen dismisses this hyperbole. “Earth has survived huge meteor
strikes, massive ice ages, Devonian and other mass extinctions, and other
planetary calamities. Now plastics have usurped dangerous manmade
climate change’s role as the threat to planetary survival!?”
EDN promotes “a global effort to eliminate primarily single-use
plastics.” Steve Goreham, executive director of the Climate Science Coalition
of America and author of “Outside the Green Box – Rethinking Sustainable Development,” responds:
“Single use plastics are a boon for humanity. Packaging food in plastics
instead of animal skins, wood, metal, glass and paper brings major sanitation,
convenience and health benefits, as well as lower cost. The solution is
biodegradable plastics for single-use products, not elimination of plastic.”
In keeping with their climate alarmism, EDN said they want
“alternatives to fossil fuel-based materials.” Driessen replies: “It is absurd
to suggest that non-oil and gas sources would make plastics better – or that it
could be done without turning nearly the entire planet into a massive biofuel
farm to provide energy and plastics. The impacts on water supplies,
croplands and wildlife habitat lands would be devastating.”
As retired
NASA-JSC engineer Alex Pope explains, “fossil fuels and fossil fuel
products have made life better for billions of people on this Earth…. This
better life is due to energy from fossil fuels and to fossil fuel products,
especially plastic products.… The war against fossil fuels and fossil fuel
products is all the same war. I think they know they are losing many parts
of the war against using fossil fuels for energy,” so now they are cranking up
the war against vital fossil fuel products that enhance and safeguard lives.
EDN wants “100% recycling of plastics.” Goreham brushed this idea
aside. “100% recycling of plastics is not an economically sound policy. Either
landfilling, incinerating, composting or recycling plastics is best, based on
cost and applicability. Today’s landfills are environmentally friendly in
modern nations.”
EDN wants people to “reduce, refuse, reuse, recycle and remove
plastics.” Driessen says “this will work in some places and cultures. But where
people have no food, sanitation, clean water, jobs, electricity or real hope
for the future, do you really think they will worry incessantly about plastics?”
The first
Earth Day was held on 22 April 1970 in response to the legitimate concerns of
millions of people that reducing air, land and water pollution needed to happen
more quickly. The movement grew, until today Earth
Day Network president Kathleen Rogers estimates that “more than 1
billion people in 192 countries now take part in what is the largest
civic-focused day of action in the world.”
This should surprise no one. All
sensible people are environmentalists. We want to enjoy clean air, land and
water, and we like to think future generations will live in an even better
environment. These were the original Earth Day objectives, and I am happy to
have presented at Earth Day events in the early 1990s.
However, as Henry
Miller and Jeff Stier observe in a Fox
News article, “In
recent years, Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for professional
environmental activists and alarmists to warn of apocalypse, dish up
anti-technology dirt, and proselytize. Passion and zeal now trump science, and
provability takes a back seat to plausibility.” That is sending science and
rational thinking backward hundreds of years.
All this demonstrates the wisdom of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott
Pruitt’s proposed rule to require that data underlying scientific
studies used to justify federal environment and energy policies be open to
public inspection and criticism. This means actual evidence, full independent
peer review, and data, methodologies, computer codes and algorithms will no
longer be kept secret.
Sterling
Burnett, senior fellow for environment
and energy policy at The Heartland Institute, calls Pruitt’s proposal “one
small step for regulatory reform, one giant leap for scientific integrity and
political transparency.” EDN and its allied groups should have to prove plastics are dangerous pollutants, before governments take any
actions against them.
Meanwhile, Goreham reminds us how
important plastics are to health and safety in modern societies. “They are
a miracle material. We fabricate food containers, boat paddles, shoes, heart
valves, pipes, toys, protective helmets and smart phones from plastic.”
Even EDN and
some other anti-plastics groups seem to recognize that plastics are
indispensable for numerous applications, since they also call for manufacturing
these products. They just want them made from manmade hydrocarbons (biofuels, et cetera), instead of from the oil
and natural gas that Mother Nature created and left beneath Earth’s surface for
humanity to use to improve our lives in countless ways.
Hopefully, applying Pruitt’s new rule, and ignoring the groundless
claims of extreme eco-activists, will ensure that plastics are with us for a
long time to come.
Tom Harris is executive director of the
Ottawa, Ontario-based International Climate Science Coalition.
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