Funny or Chilling?

Our local state senator put this ad from the Super Bowl up on his Facebook site and asked for comments. I gave more than a few. What is chilling about this ad is the plausibility of government intervention in an arguably overdrawn concern for the environment.

Why do I say "overdrawn"? Well in Chemistry 101 you learn that under ordinary conditions matter is neither created nor destroy. (We'll leave the very small and rare exception of nuclear reactions to one side.) This means that pollution is largely an incoherent idea. Now if you concentrate hazardous materials together you have a problem. It's dangerous. But most environmentalism instead of concentrating on this kind of thing concentrates instead on stuff like aluminum, plastic, and paper. Of the three the one that is certainly economical to recycle is aluminum. Paper is less so since to recycle paper requires the use of lots of caustic chemicals which have to be discharged into the environment and makes for your trouble expensive paper of inferior quality. "But it saves the trees!" -- someone says. Well tree are a renewable resource and the trees from which paper is made were specially grown to make paper. So that's pretty much nonsense. It's not clear to me what they do with the plastic. I'll have to google that.

Well back from the google adventure. The biggie seems to be litter and landfill space. Oh my! Now I should probably make my position clear. I have nothing whatsoever against recycling. I just don't think it's a religious crusade or needs to be somehow mandated by government. If you want to throw your trash in the landfill so what. You dig a big hole and put the trash in it and it makes the hill a little higher. If there is an economic advantage to recycling then there should be an economic benefit to the folks that recycle, like "pay me" ... doesn't have to be much. There are lots of people that will recycle and even bring the stuff to the recycling plant for a couple of bucks. But don't impose a lot of aggravation and hostility on me because I don't share your passion to put other stuff in the landfill than I put in. Get a life! and get out'ta mine!