The anti-capitalist anti-freedom left, which is now using
environmentalism as its bulwark, is going after bottled water?of course
because of the oil that it uses and the CO2 it contributes to the
atmosphere and the global warming it?s causing, blah, blah, blah. Here?s an excellent article about the issue from Angela Logomasini over at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Thanks to environmental activists and busybody
lawmakers, bottled water may soon be more expensive and less
accessible. They say bottled water is wasteful and environmentally
irresponsible, and they are pushing a host of silly laws to tax, ban or
otherwise hinder access to the product.Among the anti-bottled water complaints is the claim that making and
transporting bottled water uses too much oil and that switching to tap
water could significantly reduce U.S. oil consumption. Yet even if
everyone stopped drinking bottled water, U.S. oil consumption would
decrease just 0.02 percent, based on figures found in a recent New York
Times article criticizing bottled water.
But of course this is not about bottled water per se. As is typical
of the eco-left they use environmental causes as a ruse to attack what
is private and profit making?that which they do not, through their
wholly owned subsidiaries in government, control. What this is about is
protecting socialist monopoly water from competition. As Logomasini
points out, ?greens insist that bottled water is different than other
products because it can be replaced with tap water,? that is government
monopoly water. There is no question in my mind that if there was not a
competitive free market bottled water industry but instead a
government-run bottled water monopoly, there would be no problem?the
true mission would be accomplished.
