It's quite typical that when somethung in the political realm fails, our instinctive diagnosis is moral. House prices rise? Its either corporate greed or NIMBY

It's quite typical that when somethung in the political realm fails, our instinctive diagnosis is moral. House prices rise? Its either corporate greed or NIMBYism. People got addicted to medicines? Pharmaceutical companies are cynical. Welfare system is full of mess? You just can't trust poor ___ people. King lost a war? Someone hasn't been pious enough. Pollution? Ecological degradation? Extinctions? No one cares any more. In the past, we lived in harmony with nature. We took no more than we needed. We had morals. Bollocks. Morality is just the easy answer. These are practical problems, not moral ones. What we need is more competence, not more righteousness. Anyway, I find this striking: "91 percent of potentially recyclable plastic in the U.S. ended up in landfills – or worse, in the oceans. (79% in Europe)" There is a massive difference between landfill and ocean. There is a massive difference between landfill 1 and landfill 2. Recycling has been idealised as some sort of moral goal. Garbage has been vilified as a moral failing. The practical impacts on the environment have a lot more to do with how much garbage makes it to landfill, and what they do with it there. Give me 0% recycling and 0% stray garbage and I think we'd have a big net win.