Monday, November 19, 2018

No Straw For You!

Breaking news: Washington D.C. sucks!

Fear not, local government has taken the matter into their own hands:

While Washington, D.C., is the nation’s 16th most dangerous city, has the highest rate of cocaine use and the 49th worst schools, the local government is right on top of its biggest problem: single use plastic straws. In fact, the municipality will now penalize not just businesses, but also churches and other non-profits, if they hand out plastic straws or stirrers with beverages — this includes with free coffee offered as charity. – The New American

d.c. straws

As Selwyn Duke points out, the panic over single straw plastic waste pollution is not so much an American problem as it is a third world lack of waste management problem.

160628183502-plastic-philipines-super-169

This romantic belief in the “butterfly flaps its wings halfway around the world…” theory is about as cogent as your mother’s argument for you eating your peas because there were children starving in China. Starving children did not benefit from this logic fallacy and the garbage in Delhi, Manila, Beijing and Port au Prince will not disappear if the church ladies in D.C. stop handing out plastic straws with the coffee. Nor will open borders in the U.S. address endemic poverty around the world. Of course that’s irrelevant when you’re more concerned with virtue signaling than actually fixing stuff.

STRAW NAZICows and Horses Hardest Hit