While watching tv the other night I was inundated by a certain commercial about the number of plastic water bottles the US uses in a year. This stirred some thoughts that I have gradually accumulated over the years, so I decided to share them.
I recall back when I was younger, there were calls for grocery stores to move from paper bags to plastic. The claims were that we were killing trees and that we could/would recycle the plastic bags, which would be better for the environment. Lets flash forward to today; we have those same people complaining about the number of plastic bags ending up in landfills. What did they expect, for a number of years there were no recycling programs in many areas. Never mind the fact that paper bags are recyclable along with the fact that they are also biodegradable if they end up in landfills.
I also remember the move away from glass bottles to plastic bottles for soft drinks, etc. Again the claim was recycling. The thing that I couldn't understand is that the glass bottles could be cleaned and refilled (to me that is better than recycling) if there was nothing wrong with them and the glass could be melted down and made into new bottles as well as other things. Again, many areas of the country did/do not have recycling programs so we have bottles ending up in landfills. One other thing that I could not understand is that Michigan (where I grew up) would have a bottle deposit on soft drink and beer bottles, but nothing on water/juice/wine bottles. Why not, they will end up in landfills if they aren't recycled. It made no sense to me then nor does it now.
Environmentalists have called for moving to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) to replace the bulbs that we have used for years. The claim was that they will help conserve energy, I will comment on that in a few minutes. The problem is that CFLs contain mercury inside the tubing. In some places if one of the bulbs break, you are forced to bring in a company to do hazmat type clean up at your own expense (see http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp). Maine has since stopped recommending that clean up be done by a company, but who knows what the more extreme states (CA, MA, etc.) will do.
Now let's touch on this whole notion of "conserving energy"; energy is not like water in a canteen, where as you use it you are getting closer to none being left. Once all the water is gone there is no more, so you conserve it to make it last until you are able to refill the canteen. Nor is it like what you get from a battery, where there is a limited amount. The electricity in your home comes from plants (factories) that continually produce electricity, let me repeat that, they continually produce electricity. Yes there is a limit of how much they can produce, but once the energy is used there is more available. Should we be efficient with our energy use, absolutely. Should we conserve energy, unless you are using batteries for your power source it is impossible to.
Environmentalists also pushed for hydroelectric power, banning nuclear plants, wind power, etc. Now there are complaints that hydroelectric power dams are endangering fish species, that wind turbines are killing birds and that nobody wants them in their "back yard", and now there is a push to move back towards nuclear power to move away from coal and fuel power.
To me the environmentalists have created more problems with their ideas than they have solved. I think that anytime one comes up with a "solution" to a problem, we should thoroughly scrutinize it considering what could happen if it is implemented.
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