My Uber Green buddy, Hank Green recently posted an interesting observation about paper versus plastic. It turns out that plastic takes less energy and has a smaller impact on the environment than recycling paper bags. Paper "feels" more green because it's reusing a natural product but as Hank points out, "the amazing thing is that even with all the billions of plastic bags we use every year, they constitute about 0.03% of our oil use in the U.S."
I would like to suggest we go one step further. I calculated that .o3% of the U.S. oil consumption is equivalent to 2.2 million barrels of petroleum annually. My preference would be that we leave those 2.2 million barrels in the ground and as I was pondering this, I realized that's exactly what we should do. We should INSIST on plastic, in fact we should ask for all our groceries to be doubled bagged. By taking the plastic bags and sending them to the land fill, we will be returning these petroleum based carbon compounds back to the earth where we found them. Each plastic bag we throw away in the land fill represents more carbon out of the atmosphere and returned to mother earth.
Join me in an effort to maximize plastic usage. If we try hard, we might be able to pull enough petroleum away from those nasty cars and return them to the earth to save the planet! Pass the plastic please!
1 comment:
I appreciate your heart Mr. Vice President, and all that you have done in enlightening the world to the plight of our Mother through "An Inconvenient Truth".
However, I cannot believe that you have fallen pray to the lies about petroleum and plastic bags. Maybe you spent too much time cavorting with the Bushes in the Hamptons, or perhaps the Nobel Prize has swelled your head beyond proper reasoning!
I pray to the Blessed Spirit that your betrayal has not offended Her and that you will soon come to your senses and return to the glory you radiated to the world at the invention of the Internet and your heart wrenching (yet technically proficient) film for the ages.
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