Baltimore really cares about the planet.
It cares so much, in fact, that it installed water-efficient toilets for its Poe Homes public housing complex. The only problem is that even after a recent water main break was restored, water pressure was so low that the toilets wouldn’t flush. Forced into practicality, Baltimore spent nearly $189,000 to replace the eco-friendly toilets with traditional ones from Home Depot. So much for saving the planet.
The environmental debacle, which was reported by the Baltimore Sun earlier this month, illustrates a common problem among virtue-signaling companies and cities in America: First, you make an eco-friendly move. Then, you realize it actually harms people. Finally, you walk back the decision and end up expending way more resources than should’ve been necessary in the first place.
While Baltimore was scrambling to replace toilets, its citizens were left without the benefits of indoor plumbing. As the Baltimore Sun’s Scott Dance wrote, “The invoices show that the city’s latest infrastructure failing not only had public works crews working around the clock, but required thousands of dollars in spending on labor and toilets to solve a problem created by what started as an effort to conserve water.”
Does this remind anyone of paper straws? The issue isn’t just about empty virtue-signaling leading to impracticality, either. It’s also reminiscent of another trend: elites using environmental concerns to dismiss the concerns of the poor.
The Economist was widely criticized for tweeting last week, “More poor people are eating meat around the world. That means they will live longer, healthier lives, but it is bad news for the environment.”
The implication — ”If only poor people could be more environmentally conscious!” — is nothing short of elitist posturing. As the Washington Examiner noted in a recent editorial, “A rash of articles have decried increases in global wealth because it allows the masses to visit Paris, Machu Picchu, and the Taj Mahal.”
In “Too Many People Want to Travel,” a recent article from the Atlantic, one author blames the global middle class for spiking worldwide tourism to popular destinations, which “has led to environmental degradation.”
If only the poor and the middle class would get out of the way of environmental progress. Absent genuine solutions to climate and environmental concerns, some leaders and writers make them up. Unflushable toilets? Great idea. Disintegrating paper straws? Perfect. Keep meat off the plates of the poor in order to save the planet? Brilliant. Discouraging tourists from seeing the world because they’ll just trash it? Sounds like a good way to embrace your own rectitude while denying goods from people who could use them.
It may not work, but at least the performative environmentalism looks good on (recyclable) paper.
