A Green admires ban on bottled water
Stevedore at g.blog is full of admiration for Leeds University students’ association banning of bottled water sales.
He proudly proclaims:
Note: in this context ‘ban’ means make a democratic collective decision that for the good of the planet. Compare and contrast this for instance to it’s opposite ‘freedom’, as in restore my freedom to live against my will on a globally warming planet by rolling back the ‘ban’ on old style inefficient lightbulbs.
Does this mean that banning the Green Party is a good thing so long as 50.1% of us make a democratic collective decision that it is for the good of the planet?
Nothing worse than a combination of the tyranny of the majority and zealotry.
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Tags: banning, Greens, water
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
A ban? The greenies are sure setting a nasty precedent for all kinds of bans on things that more than 50% of the population think are bad.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 am
Will the greens ban the hyperbole that flows from their Utopian fat gobs?
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:33 am
Green party….fascist,religious moronic anti human dickwads…..take them down every chance you get…for the sake of humanitys future.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:33 am
Ryan – apart from the stupidity of useing bottled water that usually comes from municipal water supplies anyway, what is the problem with bottled water?
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 am
I was leaning more in the whole “couldn’t a similar argument be leveled at cannabis legislation” angle. Or “couldn’t a similar argument be leveled at public-nudity legislation” angle. Or basically anything that has been banned by a majority in the name of a greater good or knowing better than others.
But I believe the arguments against bottled water are more about the costs in terms of manufacture, transport and disposal. It takes five or six times as much water to make a bottle of bottled water (factoring in water used in cooling in the process and power generation), and the majority of bottles (four in five) end up in a landfill.
Personally, I consider bottled water to be a pre-filled water bottle, and am currently still drinking out of one I bought a few months ago.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
Saving the planet idea #569: the Greens should reconsider their ban on GE specifically to allow research into providing humans with camel humps thereby eliminating plastic bottles.
Oh dear, it’s all so distwessingly complicated isn’t it. Maybe banging another effigy’s head into the sand will help as well.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Here’s an idea…if the majority don’t want it and truly want to save the planet…don’t fuckin’ buy it!
but as with all things “green”, it’s just about control, not the environment, not the planet, not democracy.
Banning things gives greenies tiny weeny little hard ons. Even the women. It’s in the latest NZ Geographic. Then they start spying for the cops. And Rochelle Rees slips into their beds late at night. Then the lap top goes missing.
That’s at true story.
Yummmy. Spital laden algae water. scrumptious!
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
“Spital laden algae water. scrumptious!”
Dont be such a wuss.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I’m careful to keep my body so toxic that germs don’t last longer than a few seconds.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I’ll have to remember that next time you’re advocating for FPP.
[DPF: When have I ever advocated for FPP?]
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Handy hints for planet savers:
When refreshing your eco-canteen, place a few tadpoles inside. They’ll eat the backswimmers and create a beautifully balanced micro-ecosystem.
Oxygen weed inside a 2L water bottle makes a fantastic dinner party conversation starter.
Remember, when using fresh water snails to clean the inside of your eco-bottle, choose ones small enough to fit through the neck. When fully grown, slice the bottom from the bottle above a pan of boiling water and enjoy an easy, no mess snack.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Bottled water is particularly stupid when it is foreign water – with the associated environmental costs of transporting something halfway around the world to a country that has…
a. its own sources of bottled water;
b. clean, safe drinking water on tap.
I think the fact that we have competing brands of bottled water is a pretty good example of collective human stupidity. One in five children in our world go without safe drinking water, and we’re paying marketing teams to come up with ad campaigns that say drinking H2O from a bottle with “Pump” written on it is better than drinking H2O from a bottle with “H2GO” written on it.
Go, the human race. It would be comical, if children enjoyed dying of diarrhoea.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
“Does this mean that banning the Green Party is a good thing so long as 50.1% of us make a democratic collective decision that it is for the good of the planet?”
Yeah, because banning a political movement is not THAT much different than banning bullshit little plastic bottles that are ruining the environment. Those greenies are SO histrionic!
[DPF: Actually our Green friend only wanted to ban bottled water. Bottled coke was fine]
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
” Compare and contrast this for instance to it’s opposite ‘freedom’, as in restore my freedom to live against my will on a globally warming planet by rolling back the ‘ban’ on old style inefficient lightbulbs.”
No need to live against your will old son.
Do the world a favour and lessen the human carbon footprint while providing fertiliser for Gaia.
Top yourself.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Greens they are sooh democratic!
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Hold up a moment, weren’t the Greens also banning people who work in small companies from having employment rights for their first 90 days, and banning the successful and respected Buy Kiwi Made campaign, and banning people from having their say and making submissions on important legislation… oh, no, my mistake, that was some other parties.
[DPF: Refusing to fund a campaign is not banning it. I know this concept is foreign to you. Here is the difference. You can out of your own money buy adverts for Buy NZ made. No one is stopping you. However Leeds Uni have voted to actually stop people using their own money to buy bottled water]
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I’m with goodgod – if you dont like bottled water dont buy it. Let the market sort it out. If the externalities arent correctly priced in that needs an entirely different solution then banning.
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Despite drawing attention to the ban I tend to agree with KiwiGreg – correctly pricing the externalities of bottled water would be a better solution. The waste management legislation will begin that process but it’’s going to take some fairly significant changes in price signals, given that many people are willing to pay $3 or more per 750 mls for something they can get for free. And don’t forget that correctly pricing in environmental externalities will probably require some fairly well resourced bureaucracy to make the calculations and collect the resultant taxes.
December 22nd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
MT-Tinman “” Compare and contrast this for instance to it’s opposite ‘freedom’, as in restore my freedom to live against my will on a globally warming planet by rolling back the ‘ban’ on old style inefficient lightbulbs.”
No need to live against your will old son.
Do the world a favour and lessen the human carbon footprint while providing fertiliser for Gaia.
Top yourself.”
You have to remember that Greens are a western phenomena. They like to have runnign water, electricity for their internet and so that they can boil tap water to then cool down in a fridge and put in their reusable drink bottle. They don’t care about Africans who they want turning foot treadmill pumps 18 hours a day to irrigate their fields. Greens are anti-human.
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
KiwiGreg says:
Seems so easy, doesn’t it. So seductively simple. Clearly, KiwiGreg, you just don’t understand. Let’s see if I can explain it.
See, there are ordinary humans – flawed, greedy, slothful and stupid. Then there are politicians – noble, omniscient, and driven only by the purest motives.
Sadly, if we could be relied upon to understand the issues and act in our own best interests, there’d be very little need for politicians, and they’d mostly be genuine public servants – there to enact our will. But so deeply flawed are we that we must turn to these god-like creatures for guidance and, where we fail to see the indelible rightness of their way of thinking, then – with much regret, you understand – they have to resort to bans and – with even greater regret, it must be said – penalties.
These student pollies are only practising for their future. A future whereby they save us all from ourselves and make our lives immeasurably better by regulating, banning, penalising, punishing and imprisoning us.
If only we had their understanding, their self-sacrifice – accepting as they do mere six-figure salaries for becoming MPs, regulators and busybodies – their inherent superiority…
It is all our fault we were not born into this class, and we should be thoroughly ashamed.
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Yes….its a major irony that the Greens are the bastrad children of the very Capitalsit system they despise.Capitalism created so much wealth and human wellbeing on such a scale that it freed the young from having to work to survive day to day and allowed them to muse on academic waffle from Socialists.
If the Greens had to scavange in the fields for enough food to stay alive they would have no time to spare on their fluffy minded bullshit which if, enacted, would drive humanity back to those very scavanging days….while killing millions on the way via disease and starvation.
So the bounty Capitalism bought man may have also allowed the seeds of its destruction to be planted in the minds of its youth by its very sucess at freeing people from burden and allowing them time to think…..and think poorly and irrationally…….sigh!
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
One of the best real world examples is the environmental record of West Germany versus East Germany – same people, same country, two different systems. One was and is prosperous and green. One was an impoverished environmental shit hole. It’s getting better now that they are down to one system but the West East divide is still noticeable.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
…and Stevedore – you dont need a bureaucracy to deal with the externalities. I’m not entirely sure what the big bogey of bottled water is, particularly in countries (like Mexico) where there really isn’t potable tap water but other than packaging waste (in which regard water is no worse then any other packaged product), which can be dealt with by charging appropriately for landfill there doesnt seem to be anything specific to water requiring a really complicated answer.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
The real problem that no one wants to pay for their actions. The cost of disposing of the bottle is not built into the item so only the cost of manufacturing and this follows through the whole supply chain, from the oil extracted to the waste bottle. These costs are covered by the environment and taxpayers but getting those that benefit to pay for the true costs is virtually impossible.
As for train verses trucks if the trucks paid their full costs then you might find rail and coastal shipping could be viable.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:29 pm
“I’m careful to keep my body so toxic that germs don’t last longer than a few seconds.”
I have generally found that high quality tequila does the job rather well.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 am
Lee
what utter twaddle you talk at times!
It is well known, in Scotland, that the best cure for germs in the body is highland spring water, flavoured with single malt passed through a purifier that eliminates germs through the well known process of distilling them onto the sides of a copper kettle to produce “The Cure”, as that well known social scientist William Con Nolly has labelled it..
Drinking at least four ounces of this form of 80% pure water per day has kept Scots a leading authority on purity and germ-free lifestyles for at least three centuries longer than the TOW (Treaty of Waitangi) has existed. (NB The date on which the Cure was first prescribed is the subject of various claims for proprietary interests lodged by the tribes (clans) that inhabited the country prior to invasion by the English.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 am
Pickling – some forms of preservative never go out of fashion.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:41 am
The greens talk that much crap they spread didymo everywhere.
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
The Greens will be banned from Parliament by the will of the people in 2014 thanks to MMP being given the rocket at the 2011 referendum.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
Honesty in advertising is the answer. Require every bottle of water to be labelled with “This is no different from the stuff that comes out of the tap except that you are stupid enough to pay top dollar for it”.