The plastic bag guilt

By Julian Sudre

"Scientific progress engenders a rash of pseudo-rationales looked to at times through a subjective magnifying glass."

Newton warned against using the law of motion and universal gravitation to view the universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock.

Scientists and philosophers relentlessly battle on the front line of objectivity by propounding resounding theories. They stimulate heart-singing discourses or cast gloomy shadows of foreboding catastrophe. Newton like Galileo - the Father of Modern Science - have etched into modern science elements of veracity; they have amplified and broken down to us the aspects of our solar system and the laws of gravity. The evolution of our understanding of the world, be it as it may, has proven to be on occasion mismanaged thanks to an anthropocentric viewpoint. The Gaia hypothesis developed by James Lovelock has apparently drawn a trickle of exposure from the public arena, perhaps due to a lack of self-awareness or more possibly ignorance. Moral values should be inherently yoked to our environmental pantheon as scientific progress engenders a rash of pseudo-rationales looked to at times through a subjective magnifying glass.

When Confucius said that men's natures were alike but it was their habits that carry them apart, his reasoning nonetheless points the finger at an imminent dysfunctional, epileptic behaviours that have become formulaic in scientific spheres. Once upon a time, we heard the soothing voices of scientists reassuring us that antidepressants such as Prozac or homoeopathy had the ability to alleviate modern-day anxiety and much later, once their honeyed words had sunk in that yeasty arguments would flare up abruptly and extinguish our beliefs. We would be rocked onto an ocean of unpredictability where our comfort could be jolted at any times by the arbitrariness of those arbiters of so-called life sciences. The most troubling recent examples of bad science is Andrew Wakefield's allegation, subsequently comprehensively quashed , of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. History is sadly overpopulated with other examples. Of course time and again, scientists and environmental lobbyists have exaggerated a grain of truth into a larger falsehood.

Plastic bags now are demonised; they were inevitably pitched into the global markets, but today they are at the core of the environmental issue. Countries such as China banned them from June 2008 and Australia is in the process of phasing them out. In South Africa they are cynically known as the national flower and vendors can be sent to jail for 10 years for handing them out. Despite fresh reports from scientists that they did not deserve the hype of endangering the environment, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is pushing ahead with the imposition of tax on plastic bags. Taxing is certainly not the answer to the symptom. Now I wonder if the cure is safer than the disease; the reality is at heart more complex than it is revealed. The brouhaha of ill-conceived schemes is about to send us back to the Oldivai Gorge.

Governments and scientists, on the face of it, give the impression that they muddle the facts, abuse the naivety of a pandering audience. Why waiting for people with authority to instill in us the next steps to take and then laying the blame on them when we latch on to the facts that they were misleading us? Our reaction is counter-productive. Our focus should be based on how we affect Nature on an individual basis and think about the consequences of our conduct. It is down to the individual to make choices; a behavioural change is capital because even small changes can make a big difference.

We are not talking here whether it be better to use paper bags over plastic bags but to use a bit more of our common sense and recycle as much as we can. It does not have to lead to a radically different lifestyle. It is simply to try to eliminate superfluous accouterments such as the plastic bag out of our life by re-using durable bags to go shopping instead for example.

Our symptomatic endeavour to re-address the problem indicates the gravity of our deeds. We are trying to remedy our symptoms by diagnosing the aftermaths. Perhaps it is high time we looked at the issue more objectively and excise the behavioural tumour mankind has developed.