it baffles my mind that it's 2019 and "progressives" are still talking about banning things, as though they think that is going to work.

i use very little plastic, and almost none of it purposefully or consciously. for example, i bought some eggs sunday morning and they gave me a plastic fork, but i didn't ask for it - and i actually brought it home and plan to reuse it. i have a number of them in my utensil drawer, actually. the reality is that we can't get through life without throwing away some plastic, but i'm about as good about it as a person can be, and the little pile with my name on it is comparable to people living in the third world.

that's really not relevant, though. if people were going to change their habits, they would have done so by now. all that banning things is going to do is create a black market; people will cross the border to buy plastic and bring it back. don't laugh, they will. prohibiting the sale and purchase of things is just not how you actually solve actual problems in the real world, you have to actually find a way to change how people think and behave and act. laws don't change anybody's behaviour - they never have, and they never will.

the root cause of the problem is really actually not in people's consumption habits. i'm not a luddite; i don't have a problem with the use of commodities. humans have always used things and then thrown them away, as evidenced by the mountains of up to ten thousand year old garbage we can unearth in archaeological digs. that is normal human behaviour, and attempting to modify it is a foolish waste of time, not to mention not particularly desirable. i mean, i don't see any broader philosophical value in trying to get people to be less wasteful, for the sake of it. there's nothing wrong with consumption, in itself.

the root cause of the problem is the material that we make plastic out of, namely oil, which is important because what the government is doing is trying to distract from it's failed carbon reduction policies with a litter policy; it's a bait and switch, and actually exactly what doug ford just did. there's no longer a lot of substantive differences between the conservatives and the liberals in canada, unfortunately - this is a recent change, but it's the new reality that we need to get used to. so, they're trying to change the topic, and switch the discussion to waste policy instead of carbon reduction. i guess they don't realize that plastic is made out of oil.

what we need are policies that convince companies to purchase more sustainable types of plastic. so, i ask the following question: if they pass a single-use plastic ban, would the restaurant be able to give me a fork made out of hemp plastic? or would they tell me i have the choice between dirtying a fork in their restaurant or waiting until i got home to eat?

and, what are the ways that you convince the market to move to plant-based plastic? well, you can provide subsidies to specific companies, you can create a targeted small-business tax break, you can create an attitude-changing marketing strategy, etc.

but, just banning things is stupid.

and, you're stupid if you support it.

again: we have a serious problem in search of serious policies, and you're not going to get them from this government.