In theory, we all are in favour of reforms that seek to protect the environment. Which is as it should be.
When it comes to the nuts and bolts of laws and regulations that should be in place to implement the necessary reforms, problems arise. Which is to be expected.
The changes that need to be carried out will radically transform how things are done. Not just in the field of employment, but as well in matters related to prices, consumer choices open to citizens and ways of life.
Till new equilibria are reached, solutions must be found to arising problems that really protect the environment while also being equitable.
European socialists are doing well to insist that green reforms must at the same time be “social” reforms. It would be a huge mistake were changes to be implemented on the back of those people in society who can least carry the resulting burdens.
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PLASTIC BOTTLES
As the story unfolds, the project – by which empty plastic bottles and similar containers on which a 10 cents surcharge has been paid are traded back for 10 cents each on being returned and slotted into a machine – is increasingly coming to look like an exercise in confusion. At a time when we insist that our initatives should be sustainable, this project hardly makes sense, as it is being run along with another project which has been ongoing for quite a while. The same plastic containers are placed in a bag and left twice or once a week in front of residences.
The less people go to deposit their plastic waste in the machines provided, the more that those running the project will be making money (even if they are supposed to be operating on a “non-profit” basis). For apparently they get all the receipts of the 10 cents “tax” being levied on plastic goods. Now a substantial number of citizens have already decided they will continue to use the “old” system of collection of bags with empties from households. All containers that are cleared in this way are netting ten cents to whoever is providing for a different sort of collection.
Or perhaps I’m not understanding well what is going on?
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GREY NEVER WINS
Once upon a time, I was given the following advice: When people are being asked to choose between two options, the choice they have to make should be set out in stark contrasts. What is close to white must be presented as totally white, and what shades into black must be shown as deep black. Given a choice in which one side says that its white or black has nuances of colour (even where this is a natural state of affairs), while the other side says that its colour has no shades at all, it will be the latter to win the argument, even if the truth is as claimed by the former and applies to both.
Since then, I have noted how over the years, in all political contests that I witnessed as they developed in Malta and abroad, it was this strategy (of total contrast) that was adopted by one and all.
I accepted the advice I was given that “grey never wins” even though I was not totally convinced by it. I still am not.