Take a look around the various lares and penates that surround you every day, and note how many of them are made from plastics. If you're reading this on a computer, the computer case, a lot of the circuit boards, the monitor, the keyboard, and the mouse are all made predominantly from plastics. If you're reading this on a tablet or a smartphone, that device is made predominantly from plastics. Your car or truck contains a great deal of plastics, as do many of your kitchen appliances. Plastics pervade our lives; much of our modern lifestyle would be impossible without them.
Here's the part that climate scolds don't seem able to assimilate, and given a moment's thought, it's easy to see why: Most of these plastics are the by-products of coal and oil.
So when a climate-scold group called "Rising Tide" takes to the waters in Australia to protest shipments of coal in Australia's Newcastle Harbour in plastic kayaks, in an attempt to block the port, you can see the irony, even if they can't.
Last week Rising tide provided an impressive showcase for plastic fossil fuel products during their climate protest.
Arrests made as Rising Tide climate change protesters take to Newcastle Harbour over coal exports
By Romy Stephens and Bridget Murphy
In short:
Activism group Rising Tide says multiple people have been arrested at an anti-fossil fuels demonstration in Newcastle.
Thousands have attended the multi-day protest, where Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett delivered a speech and performed.
Here's the fun part:
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) November 24, 2024
If you look closely at the picture above, you would struggle to find one thing which is not made of plastic, other than the ship carrying the coal. Their life jackets are plastic, their oars are made of plastic, their kayaks are made of plastic, their T-shirts are mostly plastic, and if we could see them, we would likely discover whatever they were wearing on their feet is likely made of plastic.
If all the petroleum products carried by and being used by the protestors were to suddenly disappear, they would all find themselves naked and swimming in the water.
As for where the coal goes, the answer is China. To be made into plastics. For things like plastic kayaks.
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) November 24, 2024
Maybe, in those coal-based plastic kayaks, they can feel the ocean warming - who knows? They wouldn't be the first ones with magical ocean-sensing powers:
See Related: Doom Pixie 2.0: 17-Year-Old Surfer Girl From Brazil 'Feels' the Oceans Growing Warmer
I've never been to Australia, but we see a lot of kayaks on car tops and so forth here in Alaska. They're all plastic. Most canoes made these days, unlike the 17-foot aluminum monster in my shed that I've had since I was 14, are plastic. The life jackets these protestors are wearing are largely plastic. The paddles they are using are almost certainly plastic. There are plastics in their clothes. It's a safe bet that all these people are carrying largely plastic smartphones. And even if they drove to the launching point in electric vehicles, those vehicles contain hundreds of pounds of plastic.
And most of that plastic comes from oil and coal. There's a lot more to it than just plastic, too; a great deal of pharmaceutical precursors come from petroleum by-products. Isn't healthcare still an issue?
Of course, the protestors are concerned, they claim, with the burning of coal for electrical generation, which is only one of the many uses coal is put to. If they were serious about clean energy production, they would be advocating for nuclear power. But that's not the concern; virtue-signaling in their plastic kayaks is the point of all this.
See Related: Could Canada Be the Saudi Arabia of Uranium?
The climate, of course, always has changed, and it always will. It would change if we were able to throw a magic switch and cease all the coal and oil-burning electrical generation today, and it will continue to change if we stay our present course. These protesters will, by and large, be ignored, and China will be first in line to not give two hoots about a bunch of Aussie kids in plastic kayaks.
But for once - just once - it would be interesting to see these young skulls full of mush investigate the industries they oppose. As the linked article notes, if one was able to strip all the coal- and petroleum-based plastics away from the people in this protest, they would all be swimming around naked. While that would be roundly entertaining - it's still sad, although not surprising, that these people are so ignorant - and that their ignorance is rooted in such irony.
