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ALPERN AT LARGE - One of the 800-pound gorillas in the room that our one-party state has to endure is that we’ve elected some very stupid people to represent us.
Stupid as in…they think with their hearts (or their wallets) and not their heads.
Perhaps we need to not only see our electeds’ tax records but also their high school and college transcripts to learn if they’re even qualified to make decisions on science, transportation, urban planning, the environment, etc.
Not only did the plastic bag effort backfire because we now have bigger and more reusable bags (to say nothing of the fear and terror we had during the worst of the COVID pandemic), but we’ve yet to even do anything more than jack up the cost of going to the grocery store (again).
Landfills of bags building up, and yet no biodegradable bags, recyclable bags, or even bacteria to gobble up the plastic (if we create the right plastic, and the right bacterium/bacteria).
But we DID get a nice plastic bag tax to help (again) fund our State government…YAY!
And if we complain about this childish policy, we’re declared by the State to be haters, anti-environment, and probably racist to boot—a great way to shut us up, and threaten us with losing our jobs and reputations, but it’s really nothing that truly helps the environment.
If helping the environment is truly what the city, county, and state governments are really pushing for.
If it’s their true end game.
If it’s their true agenda.
There was once a time when we sought cost-effective and outcomes-based energy and environmental policy:
The aerosols that DID rapidly create thinning of the ozone layer at both north and south poles (leading to lots of Australians with skin cancer) for example…had to be addressed.
And then the landfills loading up with non-biodegradable trash…had to be addressed.
Plastic bags and other trash accumulating in regions/currents of the Pacific and other oceans…had to be addressed
Smog, water toxin levels, and lead/asbestos…all very real issues that had to be addressed.
And clearly these and other, newer problems must continue to be confronted and addressed.
But there’s big business to declare oneself a champion of the environment—Big Green, with lots of money and power, is not too helpful for the average human, animal, or tree on our planet.
But we’ll vote in Big Green, which is comprised of the same blockheads that talk out of any orifice of their body they can manage to convince us we need to do more, pay more, sacrifice more…
…without any outcomes-based evidence we’re all doing the right thing.
…because as with the homeless problem, there’s lots of big money and power to “deal with” the problem but no big money or power to actually fix and resolve it.
For the last few years, we got lots of rain, and yet those who’ve screamed about the evil environmental issues surrounding reservoirs and dams are now trying to cover their tracks or tell us we need to conserve more water, and with accompanying higher utility rate.
And the El Niño and La Niña winters, with all of the precious water we now enjoy, are supposed to be BAD because either the water’s too warm, or we can’t catch it, or it’s too unpredictable, and/or it’s a climate change threat…
…because while we DO have human-influenced climate change, the humans assigned to run it are either misanthropes, science-flunkers, poseurs, or downright frauds.
They’re the same folks who say we just CAN’T create large and effective water desalination plants, and we just CAN’T create large water pipelines and infrastructure to capture the feast/famine cycle of large rivers overflowing and heavy winter rainstorms for our long-term benefit.
And they’re the same folks who flunk physics and math who proclaim that we have to go wind/solar instead of nuclear because of political considerations instead of truly “following the science”.
But screaming about Chicken Little and the sky falling is very, very lucrative, and decrying those who actually stayed awake in school is very, very satisfying.
Which leads us to the question we really should be asking ourselves:
WHO IS THE WORST GROUP OF BLOCKHEADS...
...THE ELECTED ASSIGNED TO FIX OUR ENVIRONMENT, OR THOSE OF US WHO KEEP RE-ELECTING THEM?
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father. He was active for 20 years on the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) as a Board Member focused on Planning and Transportation, and helped lead the grassroots efforts of the Expo Line as well as connecting LAX to MetroRail. His latest project is his fictional online book entitled The Unforgotten Tales of Middle-Earth, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
