Juno News - June 10, 2019


Liberals promised ＂evidence-based＂ policy, but the evidence says plastic bans don't work

Hosted by
Andrew Lutton
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau
Hate speech should not just be speech that you hate This is how Justin Trudeau reduces his plastic waste

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

160.62

Word count

771

Sentence count

45

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Justin Trudeau has announced that if he s re-elected, he ll pursue a ban on single-use plastics like straws, the sticks that you hold balloons with, and things like polystyrene cups. It s a straw man argument if ever there was one.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 It's a straw man argument if ever there was one.
00:00:05.000 The idea that banning single-use plastics like straws and styrofoam cups in Canada
00:00:11.000 will help the environment globally or even domestically.
00:00:16.000 Justin Trudeau has announced that if he's re-elected, he'll pursue a ban on single-use plastics.
00:00:21.000 Straws, the sticks that you hold balloons with, things like polystyrene cups.
00:00:27.000 He hasn't yet finalized the list of items that will be banned but said he'll be taking a cue from the European Union
00:00:33.000 in deciding finally what will be subject to the ban.
00:00:37.000 Here's what Justin Trudeau said when he announced it.
00:00:40.000 I'm very pleased to announce that as early as 2021, Canada will ban harmful single-use plastics
00:00:55.000 from coast to coast to coast.
00:00:58.000 Our approach, including determining which products fall under the ban,
00:01:03.000 will be grounded in scientific evidence and closely mirror the actions being taken by the European Union
00:01:09.000 and like-minded countries.
00:01:12.000 Yes, and I've seen the same footage as well that Trudeau mentioned earlier in his statements.
00:01:17.000 I've seen the albatross carcass on the beach with the little plastic containers inside it.
00:01:22.000 I've seen the turtle that had to have the straw pulled out of its nose, bleeding and visibly in pain.
00:01:28.000 And I don't like seeing it. It's unpleasant.
00:01:30.000 I don't like seeing animals suffering.
00:01:32.000 I don't like seeing garbage littering God's creation, the ocean.
00:01:36.000 But what I also don't like is this baseless virtue signaling that a single-use plastics ban in Canada
00:01:43.000 will do anything to reduce the amount of plastic going into the ocean.
00:01:48.000 And it's very easy to reach this conclusion because it isn't Canadian plastic that's going into the ocean.
00:01:54.000 And there's research on this.
00:01:56.000 Most notably, a German study that found 95% of all plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from 10 rivers.
00:02:05.000 10 specific rivers that make up 95%.
00:02:08.000 None of those rivers are in Canada.
00:02:11.000 8 of them are in Asia and 2 of them are in Africa.
00:02:14.000 And even then, the consumer plastics that we hear about, like straws for example, or plastic bags,
00:02:21.000 are actually down the list quite significantly as far as what is causing the plastic overload in the ocean.
00:02:28.000 A lot of it is abandoned fishing gear, large industrial things, not the small consumer items.
00:02:35.000 And more importantly, when we look at these things, a lot of companies are already leading by example.
00:02:40.000 There are a number of restaurants that have switched to these biodegradable spoons and forks.
00:02:46.000 You have straws that are already going the way of the dodo bird in a number of eateries that will give you paper straws or no straw at all.
00:02:53.000 Starbucks has infamously rolled out that plastic sippy cup for grown-ups instead of having straws in the long term.
00:03:00.000 All of these things have been industry-driven decisions because customers want to be responsible for less plastic output.
00:03:09.000 And I've got no issues with a company that makes this decision, even if it is more for people feeling good than actually doing anything.
00:03:16.000 But once we start talking about the state mandating it, the government that promised evidence-based decision making
00:03:22.000 is now ignoring the evidence just to win over the environmentalists.
00:03:26.000 Maybe he's worried about a split off to some Green Party support.
00:03:29.000 Maybe Trudeau genuinely believes it.
00:03:32.000 But no study suggests that Canada, which already has a very robust and effective waste management system,
00:03:38.000 is going to see a significant or even an insignificant difference by banning plastic.
00:03:43.000 It just isn't the case.
00:03:45.000 And even in the United States, for example, where an estimated 500 million straws are used a year,
00:03:50.000 the number that are recovered on shores is about a hundred and some odd thousand.
00:03:54.000 That's .000 and a couple of more zeros there before you get to a number as far as the straws that end up in the ocean.
00:04:04.000 And this is because you have to look at the third world or developing countries that are causing these problems. 1.00
00:04:10.000 The countries that have much bigger problems to deal with having to ban plastic, for example, or that just don't care.
00:04:19.000 We cannot legislate their problems away.
00:04:23.000 And again, this is not saying that we should do nothing.
00:04:25.000 It's about recognizing all the work that's being done by the private sector and supporting that.
00:04:30.000 Government can do a lot more rather than legislating these things out of existence
00:04:35.000 simply by making sure that companies are economically well-off enough to decide to do these things themselves.
00:04:41.000 Focus on the basics, focus on the economy, and stop with the straw men.
00:04:46.000 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.