War on Plastic Bags: Folly or Smoke Screen?

'The future's not orange, the future's green'

WALK DOWN the street with an AK47 assault rifle and you may have a police officer tell you you're being a "very naughty citizen indeed" and you'll have to go to bed without any supper. Walk down the street with a plastic bag; you'll be eating pavement within 3 seconds and an armed response unit will be pinning down all four limbs.

There has been a recent movement, over the last couple of years, that suggests plastic bags will be the downfall of the planet and many retail outlets are joining the banned-wagon and are either forbidding them completely or are making you pay up to 5p for their use. If the supermarkets don't "suitably enforce" a charge-per-bag policy in the near future, 2009 will see a government-implemented charge for every bag we take our shopping home in.

Because people in Britain aren't taxed enough.

So if plastic bags are not problematic for the planet's pollution levels, why is it, second only to the War on Terror - the War on Plastic Bags is so prominent?

Surely, whales having stomachs full of plastic and birds getting their feet tangled up in last Tuesday's shopping carrier is an issue with the disposal of plastic bags and not because we haven't been charged to use them?

Charging us for the use of plastic bags is a noticeably flawed method of reducing any harsh impact to the environment.

The fundamental, and possibly critical, error in all of these poor attempts from a well-intentioned, but often deluded, Government is the ignorance to the fact that tackling global warming is an attack on fuel and the West's entire socio-economic prosperity relies on fuel.

Charging everyone 5p for using plastic bags is not having a direct effect on the global climate but it may cause great inconvenience.

For a while now there have been green fanatics who have been installing solar panels and wind turbines, building their own ark in case of torrential flooding and eating lentils by candlelight while listening to The Archers. By doing this, whether the intention is environmental or economical, it has meant they're sitting on piles of extra cash while those of us who spent time running over vegetarians in gas-guzzling 4x4s have suddenly realised that the pennies are not going to look after themselves.

Show the nation images of polar bears drowning in the arctic and they're unlikely to bat an eyelid. Show them last month's electricity bill and they're suddenly hugging trees and adopting whales.

Now the threat has moved from icebergs to our pockets, the situation has suddenly become a lot more urgent.

The future's not orange, the future's green and because of this economic tension, we may just start to see an indirect reduction in pollution levels because people can't afford to live.

It's obvious that we need to reduce carbon emissions, but charging 5p to use plastic bags, driving cars powered by farts at 3 miles per hour and being shot in the kneecaps for putting cans in the glass recycling bin may not be the most effective way to go about it.