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The budget's PR core is based on nonsense

Wednesday, 12th March 2008

The one story the government would like to come out of the budget is its 'action' on that supposed environmental menace, plastic bags.

But a superb piece of reporting in Saturday's Times made clear that this is one of the great myths of our time. I urge you to read it all, because it shows how one of the most widespread assumptions of our time is complete nonsense. Here's the gist of it:

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are (sic) false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.
...Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.
...The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”
...Professor Geoff Boxshall, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum, said: “I’ve never seen a bird killed by a plastic bag. Other forms of plastic in the ocean are much more damaging. Only a very small proportion is caused by bags.”
...Charlie Mayfield, chairman of retailer John Lewis, said that tackling packaging waste and reducing carbon emissions were far more important goals. “We don’t see reducing the use of plastic bags as our biggest priority,” he said. “Of all the waste that goes to landfill, 20 per cent is household waste and 0.3 per cent is plastic bags.” John Lewis added that a scheme in Ireland had reduced plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.

It's somehow appropriate that the PR core of the budget is based on complete nonsense,

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Verity

March 12th, 2008 4:25pm

These assumpions by the "government" are motivated by two things: an impudent determination to control the voters; and the ignorance of people who have never passed through the portals of the real world and private enterprise. Staight from university, where they studied toy subjects, into a job in the fantasy world of the public sector where people like Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Hodge, Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling, Yvette Cooper and all the reast of the inadequate and malign sleaze sloshing around the ankles of the electorate are considered fit for governance of people far more enterprising and intelligent than themselves. The low quality of people in this and the previous government is mind-boggling. Did the deeply idiotic Tony Blair,for example, ever have a case, as a barrister, that wasn't paid for by the taxpayer? Did anyone ever, ever retain him on merit, out of their own money?

Ian C

March 12th, 2008 6:44pm

Plastic bags are, we must admit, a commodity whose time is up. You are right Stephen it is completely false logic, like the climate change thing that so many have bought into because, rightly, pollution generally and unnecessary wastage of finite natural resources are not good things. So what we have is the plastic bag thing being hijacked to make an old socialist government look green. Keep drawing attention to it as being so, but let's clebrate if we have begun the long road to ridding the world of the sort of plastics that so easily becomes litter on the land or sea - where other sorts of plastic do far more damage. In 100 years time they will wonder how we ever allowed anything to be made of it.

THX1138

March 13th, 2008 10:07am

Stephen P-Do you believe that human activity through the emission of greenhouses gases such as CO2 & methane is causing the global climate to change?

Stephen P

March 13th, 2008 5:12pm

Yes.

THX1138

March 13th, 2008 7:19pm

Stephen P- "Yes" Wow Thanks for such a straight answer I'm really warming to your blog. Geddit . After all the arguing & abuse I have been receiving on Mel’s blog & The Coffee House over this issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming I’m glad that rational thought does exist on the Spectator blog. For some people to so easily disregard & denigrate the huge body of scientists who have dedicated their professional lives to understanding this issue of climate and who are now shouting from the roof tops that we have a problem over this AGW thing seems to me the pinnacle of irrational stupidity this issue should not be about politics but a belief in reason I know that I have & will continue to disagree with you on other issues but so what that’s why I come here to read, fume and comment . Somehow that simple yes puts us fundamentally on the same wavelength a belief in the primacy of science & reason over superstition, credulous thinking and counterknowledge.. By the way I agree with you completely about plastic bags the worst kind of tokenism. I Hope you had a couple of winners at Cheltenham today you deserve it.

Ian C

March 14th, 2008 4:24pm

Stephen and THX 1138 - the latter is complaining that he cannot find skeptical views worth the candle and is being abused. he is just too lazy to be skeptical of what we're fed as the the debate is over'. Try this for part of the deabte and why we have not had more attention drawn to it. http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article.aspx?newsid=10973

THX1138

March 15th, 2008 11:06am

Ian C - Thanks for the link lets hope he is right. You must believe in science otherwise why link to a scientific article on a techie boys toys site. My question to you is why if you believe in the validity of science do you choose to believe this scientists and the handful of other scientists who are sceptical of AGW theories rather than the IPCC? Maybe because your more fundamental views about how you see the world politically and your dislike of Gore and the UN get in the way of seeing this issue from a truly rational POV. Why not believe the huge body of scientific consensus coming from all the worlds major scientific bodies and the IPCC.? This is the point I can never understand about people who hold your view but would like to thing of themselves rationally. It would be a change to get answer that didn't contain the following Al Gore, UN bashing, ecomenatlists or a link to a dodgy blog.

Ian C

March 17th, 2008 10:39am

THX - I no more believe this one than any other until the full science is finalised. What we have with the Global Warmists is politicians telling us that the science is known once and for all and that all other opinions are irrelevant, the debate is over etc. AND we must spend billions doing what they say on this basis. I have said elsewhere we have to be sceptical, very very skeptical of what politicians and people in their pay (the vast majority of warmist scientists) are saying, as we have to be sceptical of any view financed by a vested interest. Let the independent minded have their head.