Wednesday Morning Rant

Y'know how every so often there will be some new "scientific" craze about something we all just have to do to save something? "To save the environment we must ..." or "to save lives we must ..." or "to save the whales we must ..." or whatever? The promised outcome is always grandiose, usually some kind of large-scale salvation, and the required change is almost always something that appears to be small but is actually very big, very difficult, very expensive, very complicated or very disruptive. It's almost a game at this point for something to come up and kick off a moral panic, then the state imposes a "small" solution that everyone ends up hating, then it turns out to be pointless at best or destructive at worst.

A recent and really big example of this was the "social distancing" push in the COVID era. "Keep your distance" was the small thing that was actually a monumental pain in the butt that would bring about salvation at scale in the form of infection reduction. The Science said so, the media softened up the public, the state imposed the solution, and it worked as well as these things always do. What they promised was infection control. What they delivered was reduced liberty, compliance costs, social destruction and loss of trust. This is what always happens, and it happens like clockwork. In that case, it even came out that the "scientific solution" was nothing of the sort, and there was never any real basis for it. Sometimes, that last piece is optional.

One example of the "scientific" part of it being optional is the moral panic over plastic drinking straws. You probably remember this one. In 2015, a video showing what was alleged to be a plastic drinking straw being removed from a sea turtle's nose spread on the internet. It was fairly unpleasant, the turtle was obviously suffering and the then-current boogeyman of "single-use plastics" was enthusiastically blamed. The normal cries of "SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING" went out and then the special interests, virtue signalers, press organs and of course the state came to the rescue.

There was a "simple fix" for this "major problem:" eliminate plastic drinking straws. Don't stop to think about whether it's actually sensible. Don't consider any other consequences. Don't consider the public. Just implement the simple fix and save the :: spins wheel :: sea turtles. So we did. It started, as it usually does, with the virtue signalers and media organs. After all the stories of the horrors of drinking straws and the inevitable social media amplification, outfits like Starbucks and American Airlines loudly announced that they would eliminate the modern-day horror of plastic drinking straws. Countless other places followed suit, spurred on by social media, NGOs and lobbyists.

Then came the state actions. States like California and its little sister Colorado started prohibiting automatic distribution of plastic drinking straws (the customer must ask for one) and so helped the product to get crowded out, with Colorado going further more recently. Countless municipalities banned straws and often extended those bans to other "single-use plastics" like shopping bags. The little thing was in fact very big, had huge effects on the market and the substitute good - usually, paper straws or bags - was wildly inferior and people hated it.

It was only a matter of time before the revelation that this is all pointless at best came to the fore. As anti-straw fervor spread widely, including to Korea, that country's government commissioned a study on drinking straws. They commissioned the study after taking action, of course, but what they found will surprise nobody who has seen this wheel turn a time or two:

Conventional plastic straws had the smallest impact in 10 of the 16 categories, including climate change, acidification, particulate matter and human toxicity.

Bio-PE straws had the largest impact in 10 categories, including ozone depletion, acidification and smog.

Paper straws had the largest impact in three categories, while biodegradable plastic straws did so in two.

This is what always happens and this incident followed the normal progression. They achieved nothing but compliance for its own sake. Don't expect facts to get in the way or for the bans to be rolled back, though. It was the "right thing to do" and the right kind of busybody mini-tyrants feel far too good about it.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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