Other than that, Rann’s paragraph is largely accurate

South Australian Premier Mike Rann today demonstrates that the worst rubbish isn’t plastic bags, but what’s said about them by green alarmists:

Every year, four billion of these bags are dumped into Australia’s environment, clogging landfill or choking the nation’s waterways. By stopping this in South Australia, that’s 400 million bags a year that won’t be causing massive environmental damage.

 

Fact check on just this one paragraph of his wild piece:

1. No, 4 billion plastic bags aren’t just “dumped” on our environment each year. A Productivity Commission study estimates just 0.8 per cent of them become litter.

 

2. This, of course, means that South Australia is not removing 400 million bags that cause “massive environmental damage”. It’s in fact removing fewer than 4 million bags which end up as litter, and cause only an arguable amount of “damage”.

 

3. No, the nation’s waterways aren’t “choked” by plastic bags. Look for yourself.

 

4. In fact, the Productivity Commission reports that plastic bags, rather than “clogging” landfills, seem have “landfill management benefits including stabilising qualities, leachate minimisation and minimising greenhouse gas emissions”.

 

5. It seems that the “massive environmental damage” done by plastic bags has actually been massively overstated by green groups, many of which have wildly misrepresented and exaggerated the effect of bags on wildlife.

 

6. Removing plastic bags may in fact cause more inconvenience and even environmental harm than leaving shoppers be, again according to the Productivity Commission study.

 

Other than that, Rann’s paragraph is largely accurate.

 

Andrew Bolt

 

And let's be kind to Rann and assume he's not an opportunistic liar, just an ignorant idiot who actually believes the rubbish that comes out of his mouth.

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous