Bishop Hill Pluralism - an explanation for greens
This letter was sent by Steven Landsburg, professor of economics at the University of Rochester and the author of several popular books on the subject, to his daughter's teacher. It concerns the school's attempts to indoctrinate the girl in environmentalism. The letter forms part of an article by Landsburg in which he discusses the need for pluralism and respect for those with different views, noting how these environmentalists seem to fail on both counts. This is also worth a read for those with the time.
Dear Rebecca:
When we lived in Colorado, Cayley was the only Jewish child in her class. There were also a few Moslems. Occasionally, and especially around Christmas time, the teachers forgot about this diversity and made remarks that were appropriate only for the Christian children. These remarks came rarely, and were easily counteracted at home with explanations that different people believe different things, so we chose not to say anything at first. We changed our minds when we overheard a teacher telling a group of children that if Santa didn't come to your house, it meant you were a very bad child; this was within earshot of an Islamic child who certainly was not going to get a visit from Santa. At that point, we decided to share our concerns with the teachers. They were genuinely apologetic and there were no more incidents. I have no doubt that the teachers were good and honest people who had no intent to indoctrinate, only a certain naïveté derived from a provincial upbringing.
Perhaps that same sort of honest naïveté is what underlies the problems we've had at the JCC this year. Just as Cayley's teachers in Colorado were honestly oblivious to the fact that there is diversity in religion, it may be that her teachers at the JCC have been honestly oblivious that there is diversity in politics.
Let me then make that diversity clear. We are not environmentalists. We ardently oppose environmentalists. We consider environmentalism a form of mass hysteria akin to Islamic fundamentalism or the War on Drugs. We do not recycle. We teach our daughter not to recycle. We teach her that people who try to convince her to recycle, or who try to force her to recycle, are intruding on her rights.
The preceding paragraph is intended to serve the same purpose as announcing to Cayley's Colorado teachers that we are not Christians. Some of them had never been aware of knowing anybody who was not a Christian, but they adjusted pretty quickly.
Once the Colorado teachers understood that we and a few other families did not subscribe to the beliefs that they were propagating, they instantly apologized and stopped. Nobody asked me what exactly it was about Christianity that I disagreed with; they simply recognized that they were unlikely to change our views on the subject, and certainly had no business inculcating our child with opposite views.
I contrast this with your reaction when I confronted you at the preschool graduation. You wanted to know my specific disagreements with what you had taught my child to say. I reject your right to ask that question. The entire program of environmentalism is as foreign to us as the doctrine of Christianity. I was not about to engage in detailed theological debate with Cayley's Colorado teachers and they would not have had the audacity to ask me to. I simply asked them to lay off the subject completely, they recognized the legitimacy of the request, and the subject was closed.
I view the current situation as far more serious than what we encountered in Colorado for several reasons. First, in Colorado we were dealing with a few isolated remarks here and there, whereas at the JCC we have been dealing with a systematic attempt to inculcate a doctrine and to quite literally put words in children's mouths. Second, I do not sense on your part any acknowledgment that there may be people in the world who do not share your views. Third, I am frankly a lot more worried about my daughter's becoming an environmentalist than about her becoming a Christian. Fourth, we face no current threat of having Christianity imposed on us by petty tyrants; the same can not be said of environmentalism. My county government never tried to send me a New Testament, but it did send me a recycling bin.
Although I have vowed not to get into a discussion on the issues, let me respond to the one question you seemed to think was very important in our discussion: Do I agree that with privilege comes responsibility? The answer is no. I believe that responsibilities arise when one undertakes them voluntarily. I also believe that in the absence of explicit contracts, people who lecture other people on their "responsibilities" are almost always up to no good. I tell my daughter to be wary of such people — even when they are preschool teachers who have otherwise earned a lot of love.
Sincerely,
Steven Landsburg
Reader Comments (137)
He's not a nut. I recycle and I respect his decision. His point is far bigger than if he likes to recycle it is about boundaries and respect. Environmentalism has no respect or tolerance of different POV as it is dogmatic. I don't agree with him but I absolutely see the value and integrity of his beliefs. I'm not a pluralist but in this issue there is room for dialog and respect.
"Cayley was the only Jewish child in her class". Teachers who are capable of suppressing any temptation to giggle at names like "Cayley" should be capable of shutting up about bloody environmentalism.
We have a great recycle policy in Lincolnshire UK. We have bins for recycling, they are collected at different times and ALL goes to landfill!!
His book 'The Armchair Economist' is available for £5.59 on Amazon, where the spread of comments over the 1 to 5 star categories looks like a sample from a uniform distribution. I read in one that the book was first published in 1995, which makes it the first of the pop-economics series such as Freakonomics according the guidance off the top of my head. Anyway, the article makes me like the cut of this chap's jib, so I've ordered a copy, not withstanding Paul Matthews' reservations above. They will encourage me to read the book more critically than I might otherwise have done.
Allan,
I most certainly don't have that "osis" condition you mentioned but thank you kindly for your concern.
What was wrong with the rag n bone men anyway?...
Allan M 10:48. Yeah, yearn for the good old days. I don't seem to recall the 'rag and bone men' of my childhood living in luxury.
No but they made a living.
Even moderately well off people were hard up in those days. I remember working in the local Parks Department in school holidays. One of the workman with a family told me how they had been given a record player. Now they were saving up to buy an LP record.
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:07 AM | splitpin
Maybe it's a cogenital abnormality, but I seem incapable of looking back on those times as "good."
After the second time in half a century, when the "leaders" of Europe had managed to balls-up big time, expecting, as usual, the rest of us to pay for it, maybe, for once, for a short time, they learnt something. Peoples lives have got better in all sorts of ways.
But the learming seems to have been temporary. Now we are assailed by "sustainability:" a weasel word for subsistence. After all, if we, the plebs, were richer we would only spend it all on drink. ((Sorry about all the commas. I must have been influenced by reading 'Origin of Species.'))
Sending a letter like that to teachers in the UK would lead to a visit from social workers. And it would be noted in the childs records.
It is completely cost-effective to recycle. Bury rubbish in the ground, wait a few thousand years for everything biodegradeable to rot away, and mine what little remains for metals. If you visit a Roman site, there's very little left.
The problem with modern-day recycling is that people try to do it quickly and therefore expensively.
Re-use is a different matter entirely, so the best real-world environmentalists may be charity shops.
Yes! Steve Landsburg does come across as a bit jarring in the way he delivers his opinions.
But he is right.
We need to go back to the 1950s and 1960s at least here Australia, when the environmental movement started to get going and all these prescriptive must do's and musn't do's and "stop it or you will go blind" demands of the usual bunch of self selected and smug do gooders who had started to adopt the green environmental mantra who were by then provoking even more snarls with their constant grating demands to clean up this or that or whatever happened to take their fancy at the moment.
Plus their grating demands as to what and how everybody should be behaving and acting when it came to that newly invented and somewhat remote but "very important" thing out there beyond the city limits called THE ENVIRONMENT which most of us had always assumed was the name given of the collective state of a whole list of things in our immediate vicinity and surroundings.
In short it was known as OUR environment, not THE ENVIRONMENT.
As that all started to be pushed down the throats of the public there was a great deal of resentment and a serious back lash against that forcing of a pattern of behaviour onto the populace by a bunch of fairly arrogant self selected police state type enthusiasts.
And I know of plenty of instances where the by then increasing holy ENVIRONMENT was quite deliberately defiled because of the strong resentment against these arrogant pushy self selected imposers of politically correct behaviour upon our personal behaviour patterns.
The point I am making is that each of those who are criticising Steve Landsburg are doing it from a long term brain washed state where they have become programmed with what they now assume is supposedly normal behaviour of a normal human being.
It's not normal behaviour of human beings to clean after themselves to any great extent if the anthropologists are right in what they find in the caves where human created rubbish and debris and left overs are the anthropologist's gold mines of information of past peoples,
For the present Steve Landsburg is just doing what was quite natural before the various do gooders of environmentalism and recycling and all those other "feel good but we don't know if they actually do anything for the holy environment of for anybody or anything else" type activities got ahold of the public psyche and started to both take away the independence of our thinking by filling it with al sorts of strictures as to what we should be doing and what we are not allowed to in the world around us.
Steve Landsburg is just saying like we all did half a century ago before this whole corrupted environmentalism ideology got the western world by the short and curlies, get out of my life and my kids lives and let us do what we want to do .
So stop interfering with my kids lives by trying to impose even if inadvertently because you are now programmed, brain washed to think this way to try and impose your own personal beliefs and ideologies that conform with the newly created environmental ideology onto them.
He is saying in a way in which there can be no misinterpretation, They are my kids and your job is to teach them the necessities to take them through the first part of their lives so they can get a good start in life and go on from there
What they believe and what is the mine and the my families culture is ours to teach our kids,It is not and never will be your right to impose your own brainwashed beliefs onto my kids.
Blunt ; Yes!
His right; Yes
Grating; Yes
Is he wrong; No!
It's we who have allowed ourselves to be brain washed to this state where the environmental ideology is now corrupting and limiting the increasingly narrow view so many seem to now have of the world around them,
A view of the world that isolated from reality inside of the big cities.
We / they have been thoroughly brainwashed over the last five decades and two generations and have adopted a glorified and hypothetical view of the so called ENVIRONMENT that no longer reflects the reality of the real environment that is the real Nature, red in tooth and claw, and almost totally unpredictable.
Steve Landsburg is going back to our human roots in the way he is reacting to what can generously only be described as the attempted imposition of a politically correct brain washed culture onto his kids and person.
Perhaps more of us should do the same.
And oh yes, I also like a clean world around me.
"With all due respect to Mr Landsburg, in a civil society, individual rights should not exist without individual responsibilities. The absence of either is a recipe for conflict."
With due respect I must disagree, the purpose of individual (and indeed collective) rights is to set the bounds of what the government and it's organs can do, more specifically to delineate what it cannot do. Individual responsibilities are set down by laws. Laws passed within the framework of what can and cannot be done.
Conditional rights are not rights, the rights/responsibilities equivalance is most commonly made by those who dislike the idea of people having rights and wish to take them away.
'If something is worth recycling, drug addicts and drunks will do it for you
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:17 AM | Unregistered Commenter tmitsss '
That is, quite simply, a brilliant comment containing so much truth. With your permission, I intend to use it in future arguments,
"If something is worth recycling, drug addicts and drunks will do it for you"
Soylent Green?
What was wrong with the rag n bone men anyway?...
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:47 AM | Jones
Horse shit!
And I bet they didn't recycle many electron microscopes.
(If this rings a bell from a couple of decades ago, do I recognise you, in a musical way, from a large Lancashire town/city, back then?)
What was wrong with the rag n bone men anyway?...
Apr 22, 2014 at 11:47 AM | Jones
Horse shit!
...
Apr 22, 2014 at 12:31 PM Allan M
My grandad would have disagreed.
After the rag n bone men's horse (or the milkman's horse or the coal merchant's horse) left a steaming pile, he would eagerly run out with a coal shovel to gather the treasure for his compost heap before one of the neighbours could beat him to it.
After the rag n bone men's horse (or the milkman's horse or the coal merchant's horse) left a steaming pile, he would eagerly run out with a coal shovel to gather the treasure for his compost heap before one of the neighbours could beat him to it.
Apr 22, 2014 at 12:40 PM | Martin A
Must have kept him fit in the times before jogging. Perhaps that was why life expectancy was so much greater in the '"good old days!" Us what were dragged up in mill terraces couldn't afford a compost heap.
Mailman nails it on the very first post.
I have read the letter but not the referenced article.
The general point he is making, I believe, is that the school has no business trying to teach children ideas and practices to which their parents are implacably opposed. What is learned while very young is almost never questioned in later life and can be changed only very, very reluctantly. Of course, his specific objections to the treatment of his child by others might not be generally shared.
“... the guy sounds like a bit of a whack job”
[Apr 22, 2014 at 8:27 AM | Mailman]
Landsburg appears to be whacky only because so few people can be bothered to paddle against the prevailing current. Parents have a right and duty to bring up their children as they see fit, nobody else. The children are the biological extensions of their parents and belong to the parents in the same sense as an appendage belongs to its body. Children do not belong to the state although many government departments pretend otherwise. Who would not object if the state attempted to dictate exactly how right arms were permitted to be used? Well, to me the principle is the same.
He is evidently a parent who takes the education of his daughter as an extremely important matter and is determined to see that she is not corrupted. Modern society has been fashioned to a great extent by parents who seem not to care in the slightest how their children turn out. It is understandable that teachers have come to feel that they have a free hand and it is therefore right that responsible parents should remind them of where the responsibility lies.
It is a bit of a surprise to see such little support here for the alleged or perceived wackiness of a proper parent. “Power to his ‘right’ arm!” I say.
Recycling as our public sector do it is wasteful ,economically and environmentally disastrous ! the levels of illegal dumping and fly tipping has shot up since we caught the 'green' infection and the collection services truck in our area seems to take great pride in littering along every lane for miles around on top of the wind tipping the boxes every week to add to the mess!
There is an EU directive in place about segregated collection but I am not sure that there is one in place about segregated disposal.
I agree with others who point out that it is a matter of costs and benefits. In most instances recycling is never as important as ensuring that certain toxic substances are separated and handled in an appropriate manner. The efficiency of our manufacturing processes and the cheapness of much of our raw materials allows us to return much of our waste and discarded material back to the ground from whence it came - earth to earth, so to speak. Where land is very expensive and/or haulage costs are high, then perhaps the CB analysis bends in favor of recycling. It should be a matter of commonsense not blind faith.
On the bigger issue and despite the few well placed zingers, I think the letter fails because tolerance is by far the more important issue and Landsburg does not strike me as being particularly tolerant.
"If something is worth recycling, drug addicts and drunks will do it for you"
Possibly before you've actually finished using it.
I believe the Council takes rubbish as having been recycled from the moment it is put in the correct bin. What happens after doesn't matter. It just gets round the EU Landfill Tax.
Definition of an environmentalist:
A person who is happy to dispose of his waste in your back yard -- but will sometimes offer to split the cleanup costs with you.
Just sayin'
Bishop, what is it about the letter that appeals to you? Is it the appeal from authority - that the author is an economics professor? Would you be so impressed if he were a bus driver, an accountant or scrap-heap picker? And on indoctrination, I guess you are happy with parents indoctrinating children and have no concern that the child in question is being thouroughly indoctrinated by a very odd parent. If I were her teacher I would be wondering about calling in social services... (joke)
You also said, that "The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves." You clearly have an advantage over me in that you know that to be true, whereas I only suspect that much recycling is unhelpful. But I have trouble understanding anyone who objects to recycling in principle. A relative of mine once worked as a dustman and one of the perks of the job was that the valuable items, mostly metals, were picked out and sold to the local scrap dealer.
As your liks says:
I'd particularly support the reduction in consumption of plastic bags and hope there is a charge put on their use soon.
Recycling is not as practical as it would appear to be.
Whatever one's take on re-cycling, that piece from The Heartland Institute is full of school-boy howlers and unsubstantiated assertions, some of which I have seen discredited by informed contributors to this blog in the reasonably recent past. The "HowStuffworks" piece is little better.
Neither article even troubles to define what it means by "recycling". I regularly buy parts for my car which have been salvaged from scrap by businesses that have been operating for years and can thus be presumed to be profitable. When did you last see a car in a landfill? And so on.
When my girls were in junior high, they took a field trip to the sewage treatment plant (ewww! they said). They had to write about cloth vs disposable diapers--and there was only one correct answer. And the teacher made it a matter of great morality that disposables were ruining the world. Really. And having done the cloth diaper thing for a while, I can tell you the stench and unsanitariness are unbearable. It was not allowed to do an economic analysis or consider the health benefits, merely the volume in landfill was the metric.
The point of the letter that there is no allowance for different points of view is quite true. Things like recycling are not merely "good" things to do, all else equal, they are essential and not to be questioned. And doing "good deeds" can often substitute for things that actually benefit the environment. Look at how windmills kill birds, especially the larger birds like raptors. One may not question this and the windmills in US get special pass from the government--no fines.
I work in the wood products industry and can tell you that when pulp mills get bales of paper to recycle, there are tons of plastic and junk in there which they have to strip out, and then they have to wash out all the ink. So these costs are not even borne by the municipalities.
Several cities in US (San fran?) have mandated that everyone have a compost (slop) bucket/bin to reduce waste. But for an urban dweller, there is no way to escape the stench of this and there are no grass clippings to mix in. It is not sanitary. And in places in England where days between pickup have become longer, these compost/organic waste bins have become awful. I know that when I have had let's say a whole chicken spoil before I could cook it I was glad I could triple wrap it in plastic and even then the stench escaped the trash can. But there is no way to argue that this level of "virtue" is going too far, is there?
@James Griffiths Right
seems to me people have 2 ways of thinking
1. Closed , they like to shortcut by refering to a simple dogma that magically sums everything up, hence the kneejerk reactions here. "oh but everybody thinks"
2. Those who can face that the real world is full colour complex ..and that you can't shortcut by saying , "all recycling is good" ..
.. It's easy to believe that people are willing to go the easy way and accept oversimple view the education system feeds them
Chandra, there have been numerous reports that UK waste is being sent to China and India to be sorted. They are now rejecting the waste as too contaminated and sending it to landfil or returning it. It would be better to incinerate the stuff here and generate energy, which is what many EU countires decided to do when the landfill tax was planned.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/14/waste-trade-china-recycling-rubbish
http://populationmatters.org/2013/newswatch/china-refuses-recycle-britains-rubbish/
Can you argue that it is ethical to export waste to be sorted by children or to send it on a round the world cruise?
I AM an environmentalist, for some issues. But not necessarily for others.
A large number of fish species, to take one important example, are being fished worldwide at unsustainable levels, so that their populations are ever decreasing. I think it is important, not just for retaining ocean ecosystems in a reasonable balance, but also for the ability to feed people who depend upon fish, to ensure that we have an adequate supply of fish in the oceans.
For those not familiar with this issue, the Grand Banks in Canada's Atlantic seaboard formerly held huge stocks of cod. Every year, the population declined as too many fish were taken. Scientists correctly told the fishermen and government bodies that pretty soon, there would be very few cod to catch. But no measures were taken, and in 1991 or thereabouts, the fishermen could barely find cod. So THEN, too late, a moratorium on fishing for cod was put in place, with the hope that they could recover. But they haven't yet.
It seems to me that everyone would have been better off if they had listened to scientists who studied and understood the issues - no comparisons to Michael Mann, please - and had put into place sustainable catch policies around the early 1980s. If they had, one of the world's (formerly) greatest fisheries would still be producing huge numbers of cod. That is a clear and large loss. (Yes, some other fish stocks have recovered in other places, after being commercially fished out, thank goodness.)
I read Bish's blog because I think the mainstream environmental groups have gone way overboard, and are trying to impose their views on everyone else, without honest debate, on climate change. It is crushing for me to see how these people are so arrogantly sure of themselves that they tell everyone that the science is settled, as if agreeing that CO2 can warm the climate is the only science (or economics) that matters.
Don't mean to be long winded. But a person who condemns teaching some less argumentative aspects about how natural systems actually work is in the Stone Age, in my view. I want to know how natural systems work, I want my kids to understand that as well.
And I don't want climate alarmism taught as a religion.
There will be environmental issues where some people think that what is being taught is science, while others think it is indoctrination. We are always going to have disagreements of that sort about specific issues.
But I do not condemn all environmentalists or environmentalism, because of the very bad stench climate alarmists are giving to the term environmentalism.
TinyCO2, if you want a discussion it will be more rewarding to address something I have said instead of what you imagine I might say. My preferences are (probably not a complete list, but it will do):
- reduce the amount of stuff that needs disposal
- reuse where possible
- tax plastic bags etc
- refundable deposits on reusable or recyclable containers
- packaging and product standards that aim to make recycling easier
- recycling of all metals and any other valuable resources
- compost or biogas production for biological waste
- incinerate (preferably using modern plasma methods) what is left
Note though that getting local approval of an incinerator is difficult.
I like this Professor. Environmentalist extremists are a huge threat to us all and it is time to stop coddling them or permitting themm to set the agenda.
Further to the Rt. Rev.'s comment
"The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves."
Apr 22, 2014 at 9:07 AM | Registered Commenter Bishop Hill
(term of address from the Episcopal Church Style Guide ;-) )
I recommend reading Rathje and Cullen's "Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage" in which the authors report on their digs through several modern-day garbage dumps and report on the contents together with interesting analysis of some of the economics of modern recycling. The authors confirm the Rt. Rev.'s assertion re the cost of recycling most materials. The equation becomes even worse if one assigns their local's minimum wage to the time that we spend sorting and handling the waste at our homes.
It is a highly readable book.
Cults require special behaviours which adherents must follow: recycling, not eating cow/pig/shrimp, casual Fridays, chopping off body parts, reciting pledges, etc. Cults regard other cults' behaviours as peculiar. The reason for the behaviors is to set up the understanding of 'us' and 'them', and not much else.
Myths about recycling.
http://perc.org/sites/default/files/ps47.pdf
Myth 1: We are running out of Space
for our trash
Myth 2: trash threatens our health
and ecosystem
Myth 3: Packaging is Our Problem
Myth 4: Trade in trash is wasteful
Myth 5: We are running out of
resources
Myth 6: Recycling Always Protects the
Environment
Myth 7: Recycling Saves Resource s
Myth 8: Without Recycling Mandates,
There Wouldn’t be Recycling
More myths on recycling.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/11/jesse-kline-the-great-municipal-recycling-scam/
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/11/friday-was-america-recycles-day-let-november-18-be-mandatory-recycling-squanders-valuable-resources-day/
You need to use a reusable bag, 130 to 170 times, before it has a lower eco-footprint than a plastic bag. And that is if you don't wash it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358885/Why-need-use-environmentally-friendly-cotton-carrier-bag-171-times-green.html
Foam cups have smaller environmental footprints than paper.
Abstract An analysis of the overall relative merits of the use of uncoated paper vs molded polystyrene bead foam in single-use 8-oz cups is described here as a manageable example of the use of paper vs plastics in packaging. In raw material requirements the paper cup required about 2.5 times its finished weight of raw wood and about the same hydrocarbon fueling requirement as is needed for the polystyrene foam cup. To process the raw materials about six times as much steam, 13 times as much electric power, and twice as much cooling water are consumed to produce the paper cup as compared to the polystyrene foam cup. Emission rates to air are similar and to water are generally higher for the paper cup.
Virtually all primary use factors favor polystyrene foam over paper. Once used both cup types may be recycled. Landfill disposal of the two items under dry conditions will occupy similar landfill volumes after compaction and will confer similarly slow to nonexistent decomposition to either option"
http://www.springerlink.com/content/b55256333584v60n/
How about using a regular ceramic coffee cup. That mus be more eco-friendly, no? The answer is "no".Resuable cups use the same or more energy per use, as paper or foam.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/c275588280002wp8/
Chandra, what? Was I responding to what I decided you were getting at and not what you meant? Gosh, who'd do such a thing ;-)
You wanted to know why some recycling uses more resources than it saves. I gave you an example where it's going wrong.
<I>"When Labour was in power, Mr Miliband championed wind farms as energy secretary. In 2009 he suggested that opposing wind farms should become as "socially unacceptable" as not wearing a seatbelt or ignoring a Zebra crossing."</I>
Let's see... wearing a seatbelt saves lives and prevents injuries in crashes.
Let's see... obeying Zebra crossings saves lives and prevents injuries.
Let's see... putting up giant wind farms kills and injuries scores of birds.
Which one of these things is not like the others?
What a wonderful day it will be when <I>not</I> killing birds is deemed socially unacceptable. Maybe we'll all have to decapitate one personally to prove our bona fides.
If something is worth recycling, drug addicts and drunks will do it for you
Or thieves.
Haha...
I just had a visit from the Gendarmes who were asking if I had seen anything that could help them identify the thieves who had taken scrap metal from a skip down the road over the weekend (and who presumably are now in the process of seeing that it gets usefully recycled).
Les Johnson, the links are to papers that aren't free to view. I'd be dubious of any paper claiming that a traditional cup uses more energy that a paper or foam cup because it probably ignores the point that most people already have some ceramic cups if only to avoid looking like a cheap loser, so the energy invokved in making them is unconnected to whether you use them or not. There is also a long history of cups being passed from hand to hand so even if you don't want to buy news ones, there are plenty of second hand ones out there. I don't think there's much of a market for second hand disposable cups though I have reused mine as plant pots.
As Peter wrote at 11:59, charity shops (and ebay) are the right way to recycle.
"The problem with most recycling is that it uses more resources than it saves."
Is that really what it's all about? Surely, we don't recycle because it's economically effective. We do it because we're running out of holes to stick all our discarded crap in. Isn't that it? I always assumed it was.
Like most dogmatists, Landsburg believes he has succeeded in distinguishing between those beliefs that are "obviously true" (those he agrees with) and those that are "irrational nonsense" (those he disagrees with.) He's thus livid with rage when someone disagrees with him, because they're not just disagreeing with him--they're treating irrational nonsense as if it were obviously true.
In fact, his child's preschool was indoctrinating his child with all sorts of "irrational" beliefs (one should share toys, abstain from violence against one's classmates, and so on) that he didn't object to, because he happened to agree with them, and therefore considered them obviously true. It was only when they included a belief he disagreed with (environmentalism) that he suddenly exploded in outrage at his daughter's "indoctrination" with irrational nonsense.
Now, I have considerable sympathy with Landsburg's view of environmentalism, but the simple fact is that he had no obligation to send his child to that particular preschool, and the preschool in turn had no obligation to promise only to indoctrinate its students with principles that every single parent, including Landsburg, agreed with. (Landsburg the libertarian should have understood this, but Landsburg the dogmatist seems to have taken over in this case.) Rather than send a rude letter explaining why they should stop acting as if their irrational nonsense is obviously true, he should have had as much respect for the school's beliefs as he'd like them to have for his own, and attempted as diplomatically as possible to explore options for respecting the beliefs of both.
tinyco2: The abstracts should be sufficient.
A group of five different types of reusable and disposable hot drink cups have been analyzed in detail with respect to their overall energy costs during fabrication and use. Electricity generating methods and efficiencies have been found to be key factors in the primary energy consumption for the washing of reusable cups and a less important factor in cup fabrication. In Canada or the United States, over 500 or more use cycles, reusable cups are found to have about the same or slightly more energy consumption, use for use, as moulded polystyrene foam cups used once and then discarded. For the same area paper cups used once and discarded are found to consume less fossil fuel energy per use than any of the other cup types examined. Details of this analysis, which could facilitate the comparative assessment of other scenarios, are presented.
I don't agree that Mr Landsburg comes across as a "nutter" or his letter is a rant. There is maybe a hint of arrogance, but not overwhelmingly so.
I also disagree with his view on personal responsibility.
Those two things said, I am in agreement with much of the rest he says.
On recycling - I'm staying out of the that debate, as I am not well read on it. I am aware that the City of Seattle, which is very proud of its recyling efforts, ships most of the collected recycle material to the landfill. By ordinance they are required to keep it for a set number of days, after which, if no one has purchased or claimed it, it gets shipped off with the rest of the garbage.
At my Portland home, if you wanted to recycle yard waste you had to pay extra for the bin and pickup. Then one day Yard Waste bins showed up at everyone's home free of charge. That tells me they found a market for it.
I generally feel people should be free to recycle, but that it should not be forced on people if it costs them more doing so than not. I also believe that if there is no market for recycled materials, doing so is pretty foolish. Finally, if we ever do get to the point where scarcity of materials is a major problem, we simply mine landfills.
Here is a link to the city of Winnipeg. Note that recycling costs more than simple disposal...
http://garbage.speakupwinnipeg.com/2011/03/what-does-garbage-and-recycling-cost-us/
fwiw (For what it is worth...)
I have seen costs of $500K per pound for extracting Phosphorous from sewage -- sold as a good deal and a reason to put in a new sewage treatment plant... They omitted the cost of the treatment of the addition of phosphorous recycling...
(York Region Ontario)
I have seen composting done where the justification was the recovery on the sale of Nitrogen (Several Hundred Dollars per pound)
(City of Ottawa) (Also Niagara Region)
People simply gloss over the costs...
Just sayin'
There are lot of comments here that miss the Point. Taking care of the Environment is a laudable aim, as is ensuring the health of wetlands. But flooding the Somerset Levels by 'making space for water' is a little more than taking care of wetlands. So it also is for recycling which is now used as a weapon by the 'environmentalists. That bin is for paper and cardboard - not ink and paint - onlly paper and cardboard without ink - but do not throw painted cardboard into the standard rubbish bin. This bin is for garden waste not kitchen waste - that onion is obviously from the kitchen??... oh and no soil on the garden waste...the bin will only be emptied every two weeks but cannot be full or its lid a fraction open. This is the way a lauddable aim is deliberately turned by 'Common Purpose' into a Kafkaesque work-to-unworkable-rules nightmare. The EPA uses this type of ruling all the time - a muddy patch is suddenly 'protected wetland, industrial dust regulations for factories are applied to drought ridden farms.
This is the way that Agenda 21 is being used by the Fabian 'progressives' to control the populaton partcularly those of independent thought that they would wish to oppress. Reading the chapters of Agenda 21 the intent seems anodyne and surely nobody could be against it? However it is its imposition with apostolic zeal together with petty minded legalistic hair-splttng from rigid minded bureaucrats that causes the problems.
The professor is correct in trying to limit the inculcation of the tenets of this modern politicalaly generated religion into his children; and instead to teach them that there are multiple shades of grey rather than black and white, and as in all things in life protecting the environment is a judgement call that they will have to learn to make.
James Evans
My understanding is that northern Europe has no shortage of holes in the ground to use for landfill but that EU dictat demands that we not use them
His full letter doesn't sound as extremist as commenters here respond to when you note that he's just formally thinking like serious economists tend to do about various real and hypothetical ironic effects. He sounds much like the tone of economist Bjorn Lomborg in his early book The Skeptical Environmentalist, where Lomborg utterly skewers popular upper class environmentalism as being a selfish Yuppie pose combined with not in my backyard activism against development around their mountain lairs, along with doomsday Malthusians within official organizations. Later, Lomborg completely moderated his message, never again focusing on the neurotic psychopathology along with taint of evil that comes with a budding new pagan doomsday religion. A distinction between guru fanatics and their mere layperson followers does make it difficult to skewer the concepts involved without shocking casual believers. That nearly all scientific bodies loudly support climate alarm and fossil fuel rationing gives even the gurus a serious claim to authenticity, for finally does their missionary zeal find support by both academic psychologists and theory dominated scientists. Yet the biggest lever skeptics have is so rarely used, that being demonstrations not just of alleged bias in climatology but a serious and often brazen pattern of outright fraud that is always loudly defended instead of condemned within the core of the IPCC and hockey stick gang.
A very lucrative niche industry in the Houston, Texas area are 'scrap companies'. They advertise heavily for scrap metals, and will even take bulk electronics and unstripped wire. It seems that they are actually fences for stolen construction and manufacturing items, as well as for stolen air conditioners.
Our City is looking to rationalize the recycling mania by returning to a one bin system.
The enviro-extremists (and those who are profiting from the two bin system) are having none of it.
Chandra said:
I'd particularly support the reduction in consumption of plastic bags and hope there is a charge put on their use soon.
There are already charges on the consumption of plastic bags and they have been very successful in reducing their use, especially in Wales. I assume you live in England since you seem incapable of distinguishing between England, Britain, and the United Kingdom.
"ALL goes to landfill!!"
Indeed. We have an anomaly locally, in that our private recycling (green wheelie bin) is allowed paper/card, clean(ish) tins and glass and those plastics with a recycle symbol, i.e. not the laminated plastic foils used for crisp packets and the like. Not sure where that leaves foil-lined card tetra-paks (which claim to be recyclable) but they are allowed in my work/commercial green bins, where the contents simply have to be clean and dry!
I suspect that not much of this is actually recycled at all.