Addiction

"Sanitize" means to make something healthy or clean. When waste and dirt like our poop used to contain germs like cholera but when processed became compost or food for plants, to "sanitize" it made sense. We made what was unclean clean, what was unhealthy healthy. Not a Sanitation Issue. A Too-Much-Production Issue Situations like the picture below are increasingly normal. People call them sanitation issues, but no sanitation department can keep up with our production. Watch The Story of Plastic for how the countries where we send our waste look. We are creating too much long-lasting poisonous waste. We think we can't live without it, but of course we can. That's the addiction speaking. We can't live with it. With plastic, PFAS, and today's pollution,…

Listening to a free-market podcast lately I heard the common pro-fossil fuel line: "how can carbon dioxide be a pollutant if it's necessary for life?" Some people can't imagine life without fossil fuels, which seems to me dependence to the point of addiction. I wish I could have replied in person, "I saw a man drowning and instead of helping him, I told him water was necessary for life. What could be the problem?"

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I remember people saying about visiting places of natural beauty, from campgrounds to local parks to national parks, beaches, and so on: "Leave it better than you found it." "Take only pictures, leave only footsteps." Today, every place possible in America has litter. I saw litter at every stop of the forty-eight hour train ride from Los Angeles to Houston, where we would go hours without cell phone access or seeing signs of people. Every road shows litter people through from their cars. Cities are buried in it, certainly New York. It's easy to associate litter with poor areas, but rich people produce far more pollution, plus they're the shareholders and decision-makers who profit from choosing to drill…

Someone being addicted rarely hurts themselves first. Addiction usually hurts the people around the addicted person first and most. Pile of Refined Sugar One of the hardest parts of recognizing addiction all around is seeing it in people you love, hearing them rationalize and justify hurting people for their pleasure, comfort, and convenience. Someone in my family flew to a birthday party of someone who lives a few miles from her. Instead of a party at home or nearby, they flew to Cancun. To hear her talk about it, the only factors she had to balance were her feelings; nothing about the people and wildlife hurt by her actions. Mention them and she attacks, clearly protecting herself from making conscious her feelings of guilt and…

Short answer: because they realize they are complicit and want what plastic provides. Long answer: Picking up litter every day, I find almost not one type of trash comprises things I buy. Nearly all is doof, mostly beverage bottles and can, takeout, chips, coffee cups, wrappers, and such. I buy or consume none of them. There's plenty of packaging from Amazon, doof purveyors, retail bags, and more things I don't buy. Cigarettes, other smoking things, and yet more things I don't buy. As the weather warms and people consume more doof, the trash cans overflow earlier in the day, and people are too addicted to stop buying even when they see the cans full. Instead of holding on to their garbage until they can find…

I'm beginning to think that every meal and snack of nearly every American involves some polluting, disposable packaging. When I see people consuming on the street, they're nearly always consuming doof. Even if they buy food, it's nearly always packaged. Not that I've been checking, but I can't remember a time I saw someone eating an apple on the street. Hundreds of times a day I see people carrying disposable coffee cups. I see them drinking coffee while riding their Citibikes. When I find myself in supermarkets, even the fresh produce generally has a sticker or twist-tie, and nearly everyone puts their produce in plastic bags, often needlessly, like one apple. Even at farmers markets, vendors give bags to nearly everyone. Come to think of…