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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