The plastic bag ban is hollow virtue signaling (Opinion)

They’ve done it. The strictest-in-the-nation ban on plastics was signed into law Wednesday by progressive Gov. Phil Murphy. Of all his boasting at the signing ceremony there’s one thing he said that really jumped out at me the most because it was so specious.

“...we are addressing the problem of plastic pollution head-on with solutions that will help mitigate climate change.”

If by “help” you mean on such an insignificant, microscopic level that it makes the micro plastics in the ocean look like the Titanic then sure. But let’s get real. This is going to inconvenience millions of New Jerseyans and thousands of businesses and do nothing real to help climate change. Not when other nations are routinely backing trucks up on docks and dumping garbage and plastics directly into the water. Climate change is a global issue and New Jersey is changing nothing by doing this but the way we live.

Also, the danger to the oceans has been oversold. As far as the dreaded “filling up our landfills” did you know decades ago the green movement claimed we would run out of landfill space in five years? Whereas professor Clark Wiseman of Gonzaga University says even given the exponential growth of waste in the U.S. we can still fit the next 1,000 years of garbage into a single landfill 120 feet deep and 44 miles long. With as much empty space as America has left this is negligible.

Businesses trying to survive the pandemic don’t need to be threatened with $5,000 fines either. This is an all-around awful ban that makes progressives pat themselves on the back but does virtually nothing to change the planet.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski. Any opinions expressed are Jeff Deminski's own.