Quote of the Day: Environmentalism as Religion
"I don't recycle my trash because my time is too precious for me to spend it sorting such items into different containers. I never criticize those who do recycle, but environmentalists point accusing fingers at us nonrecyclers. In environmentalists' eyes, those who unquestioningly disregard the value of one resource (time) in order to spend it on the conservation of other resources (wood, plastic and glass) are righteous while those of us who value and conserve time are sinners."
~George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux in today's Pittsburgh paper.
As the late, great blues artist Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown sang, "My time is expensive, baby. I'm tryin' to make it last." Gatemouth clearly understood opportunity cost, and probably didn't recycle.
3 Comments:
Recycling - the only thing that has no value is your time.
The time involved in putting a can in a container for recycling rather than the trash is very mintue. Those who inherit the earth after you are gone would give thanks for the small amount of time you took to ensure a healthy earth was passed on to them.
By saying "I don't recycle... because my time is too precious", one is saying that recycling is not worth the time. As I don't think the author is really saying that minimizing pollution of our environment is not worth his time, then perhaps he is saying that recycling does not help (or helps little) in doing that.
Unless, of course, the author is saying that minimizing pollution is really not important to him compared to other matters. If this is the case, then that's too bad for the earth.
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