Then They Came for the TP

A few days ago I was thinking about all the pleasures and conveniences of life that alleged environmentalists attempt to deny us, from plastic straws to the ever-useful Styrofoam. There’s even a California legislator who has been agitating to banish paper receipts for retail goods. I said “alleged” environmentalists because the purported danger is usually microscopic compared to the environmentalists’ constant quest for power.

As I mentioned, I was reflecting on these things, and, having just purchased a supply of toilet paper, I was feeling happy that there was no attack on that. In the event of blizzard, flood, or civil disturbance, I might run out of food, but I would not run out of TP.

The next day, my eye fell on one of the most depressing news stories I have seen this year — the Guardian’s alarmed account of how much TP, and unrecycled TP, is being used, and of the voices raised against the practice. Seems that toilet paper is actually made out of trees, which have to be cut down to make it! So something, obviously, has to be done.

I remembered a complaint that a student made to me, several years ago, on the first day of class. I had passed out my syllabus — a paper syllabus — and she politely protested the lack of sustainability in my conduct. When I mentioned to her that trees are renewable resources, she looked at me with glassy eyes. So I clarified my statement: “They grow back.” “What do you mean?” she said. I then explained that people who own the trees make sure that their valuable resource does not run out, that they replant the trees they cut, and that this has been going on for generations, quite successfully. It was clear she did not wish to believe my good news. She said she would check it out.

But here it was again, this religious aversion to using any kind of resource, and it was asserting itself in a much less polite, much more dangerous way. The Guardian cited as an authority a spokesman for the environment, who claimed, among other things:

Only around 30% of the world’s population uses toilet roll, so [emphasis added — dig that crazy logic] we know that there are lots of perfectly hygienic alternatives to using paper-based products. It’s important we consider what we’re using to wipe our behinds with, because at the moment our precious planet is getting a bum deal.

Ha, ha. What a funny pun. I can just imagine what the purported 70% of the world uses instead of toilet paper. I’m sure it’s perfectly hygienic. I’m sure their standards of public health are even higher than our own.

Maybe you’ve noticed: two of the leading signs that a social regime is entering its death throes are a decline in public health and a lack of toilet paper.