Green guilt trip

clipped from Patt Morrison’s opionion column at: www.latimes.com

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A Dickian dystopia is bearing down on us. The government and the greenies are afraid of making you feel guilty. Not me.

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Plastic: You’re not throwing away plastic bags, genius — you’re throwing away oil. In energy alone, recycling a ton of plastic bags saves 11 barrels of oil.

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And those darling little plastic water bottles you tossed — 18 million barrels of oil to make them.

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Paper: The lungs you ruin may be your own. A mature tree eats 13 pounds of carbon dioxide every year, so every time you don’t recycle a huge stack of envelopes and junk mail and wrapping paper and newspapers, you’re murdering a tree that could have saved you. You could heat your house for six months on the energy saved from recycling a ton of paper.

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Aluminum cans: Too lazy to shuffle to the recycling bin? The energy you waste by throwing away a single soda can would run your TV for three hours. Throwing away an empty six-pack is like throwing away nearly a $3.50 gallon of gasoline.

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