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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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there are many more who use that as an excuse for the real goal of de-electrification.

Like some sort of primitivists? I go with mistake theory, I think it's more that leftism is virtually ignorant of the concept of trade offs. Any negatives are because of a lack of will; just get the right people in power and spend money and we can have zero carbon energy for our dense, walkable, clean, safe, cities.

As far as I can tell the environmental movement wants us to repent for our sins of overindulgence by dramatically scaling back our consumption. Whether or not a proposed regulation actually helps the environment is of little relevance. For an example, see plastic bag bans.

It doesn't matter that the "reusable" bags mandated for sale are far more carbon intensive and contain far more plastics than the flimsy plastic bags they've been mandated to replace. It doesn't matter if you know that none of the trash in your region is transported by barge. The true aim of the ban is to curb the sin of consuming disposable plastics. If an environmentalist were looking at a spreadsheet of plastic bag consumption before and after a ban, and they saw a 5% drop, they'd count it as a win, regardless of the fact that post-ban bags are about 30 grams and pre-ban are 5 grams. On a materials basis you'd break even when you reduced consumption to 16% of what it once was.

Google for plastic bag ban effectiveness and all you'll see supporters pointing to are bag counts: www.google.com/search?q=plastic+bag+ban+effectiveness

None are claiming a drop in consumption large enough to offset the extra materials.

They seem completely uninterested in fixes that enable current levels of consumption to continue while mitigating or eliminating environmental impacts.

Have a look at what certain people in the UK see as a viable and desirable vision for the future:

https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/content

Page 6 has a quick chart that explains their vision. No meat, no shipping, no airports, much less heating, much less road use, massive austerity in construction. They're big on electricity production though. And all of this (a 20-30 year Greater Depression) comes with an enormous price tag and mobilization of national resources! An apocalyptic vision if ever there was one.

Perhaps. But a lot of the green activists talk about the need to reduce the number of humans we have.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49601678