Selfishness

My favorite of seflishness is a quote by Oscar Wilde (I'm the female cersion of this man, bias so noted): "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

Essentially, when California Law Makers rejected the bill to ban plastic bags, they were saying, "I don't care that I could easily get rid of 19 billion plastic bags a year. I'm too lazy to plan ahead enough to bring my own bag. I won't change my crappy ways to save the planet." That's the definition of selfishness. The planet is being forced to live the way they want to live.

You could argue that int reverse is true, that environmentalists want everyone else to live the way they do, and it's true. Except earth trumps people everyday, because without it, there would be no people. Nice try, though.

Reading through some of the comments in the article was fun, too. You can really see the American overobsession with freedom in them. "People don't like being told what to do, and I think there would have been a huge backlash." People don't backlash against anything in this country. Unless they are the Tea Party and even then the effort is so confused and disorganized it barely gets noticed. The fact is, the idea of offering an incentive is a terrible idea, because who will pay for it? Who will benefit from it? No one. The only option is punishment and banning in cases like this.

"I think that charging a fee of 5 cents per bag would make people think twice and bring their own bags" is complete bullshit. When have you stopped to think about $.05 in your lifetime? I haven't and wouldn't. Any money charged will be pocketed by the store, not for recycling or any other good cause.