Is Soft American Toilet Paper Really Worse for “Global Warming” Than Gas Guzzlers?
Ned Barnett
It is characteristic of the Far Left that, when they gain some measure of ascendency – as they have in 2006 and 2008, a gift from RINO Republicans who wouldn’t mend their ways – these Lefties over-reach. Instead of implementing the fairly reasonable elements of their agendas, they insist on having it all. That is their fatal flaw, and why – in the end (if you’ll pardon the pun) – they will destroy their own cause. Now, thankfully, they’ve done it again.
The movement to limit American’s freedom by taking away our toilet paper began, as far as rational Americans know, when Environmental Scientist Sheryl Crow, Ph.D. (who is also a well-known singer and former Lance Armstrong shoulder-candy), writing for the Huffington Post Environmental Journal, put forth the dual recommendations that toilet paper be washed and re-used, and that Americans make do with one square per sitting, “except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 or 3 could be required.”
Dr. Crow was so roundly and publicly laughed at – even by mainstream environmentalists – that she quickly recanted, at least in public, her proposal to save the rain forests by limiting Americans’ freedom to use toilet paper as we see fit, a right clearly enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Surely, if there was ever a power intended to be delegated to the people is the right to use toilet paper as we see fit.
However, following the last election, the environmental extremists are no longer worried about being laughed at, and they have taken a step even bolder than those advocated by the apparently repentant Dr. Crow. Now, extreme environmentalists are calling extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply toilet paper made from “virgin forests” causes more damage to the environment than gas-guzzlers, fast food or McMansions” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america). Led by Greenpeace, the environmental movement wants to force Americans to used recycled toilet paper, even as they acknowledge that Americans perceive recycled toilet paper as being so low in quality that “it’s like cardboard and impossible to use.”
Others go a step further. Like Dr. Crow, they advocate using the reusable toilet wipe, according to conservative Australian journalist Andrew Bolt.
However, in addition to attacking Americans’ inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness (and what, after all, makes us happier than sufficient quantities of soft, absorbent toilet paper), the Greenies have also made a major factual error, one that anyone who’s driven through the Deep South’s extensive slash-pine forests knows at first hand. Toilet paper – in fact, virtually all of the paper used by Free Americans – comes from farms. The trees are crops, raised to be harvested for paper pulp, then immediately re-planted to prepare for the next harvest in 15 or 20 years. I know this at first hand.
I moved to Georgia at 15 when my father’s business relocated executive operations from Illinois to Georgia; as President, he could have lived anywhere, but he chose to live in Atlanta, a half-day drive or a one-hour flight from the company’s manufacturing plant in rural Jeff Davis County. The company’s chairman and major investor owned 16,000 acres in Jeff Davis County, all of it planted in slash pines and periodically harvested by the pulp companies, which then immediately replanted.
Because of sound forestry management that dictated crop rotation, most of those 16,000 acres looked to be mature pine forests. The local wildlife was undisturbed by the harvesting – which was done in small patches rather than in huge swaths – and the area looked to be a virgin forest. However, that was an illusion – before the its owner decided that it was more profitable to convert his vast holdings to slash-pine forests, the land had been planted in cotton, then in peanuts and other South Georgia crops. Virgin forests in that part of the Deep South had been cut down two centuries before to make room for the agriculture needed to support the area’s residents and the South’s economy.
There is essentially no negative environmental impact to harvesting such crop trees, just as there essentially no negative environmental impact to harvesting other, more seasonable crops such as corn (for ethanol, which does enough damage all by itself). But most people don’t know this, and those who care more for the Virgin Rain Forests and those who fear the myth of “Global Warming” more than they think they value a soft wipe may be tempted to join in this new crusade. However, one roll of brownish one-ply recycled toilet paper will convince all but the most butt-numb
Ned Barnett is a Las Vegas-based political commentator and campaign strategist. During the most recent election, he was frequently featured in American Thinker and on Neil Cavuto’s Fox Business Network program. He’s been quoted by Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, and has given more than 100 media interviews during the past two Presidential elections. He can be reached at ned@barnettmarcom.com.
