There’s a sort of parlor game that the economically-minded sometimes play around the Christmas holiday, related to A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Was Dickens writing his story as an attack on economics, capitalism, and selfishness? After all, his depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge, along with his use of phrases like “decrease the surplus population” and the sarcastic use of “a good man of business” would suggest as much, and a classic example of such an interpretation is here. Or was Dickens just telling a good story with distinct characters? After all, Scrooge is portrayed as an outlier in the business community. The warm portrayal of Mr. Fezziwig certainly opens the possibility that one can be a successful man of business as well as a good employer and a decent human being. And if Scrooge hadn’t saved money, would he have been able to save Tiny Tim?

It’s all a good “talker,” as they say about the topics that get kicked around on radio shows every day. As part of my own holiday break, I republish this essay each year near or on Christmas day.

I went looking for some other perspectives on how Charles Dickens perceived capitalism that were not embedded in a fictional setting. In particular, I checked the weekly journal Household Words, which Dickens edited from 1850 to 1859. Articles in Household Words do not have authors provided. However, Anne Lohrli went through the business and financial records of the publication, which identified the authors and showed who had been paid for each article. The internal records of the journal show that Dickens was the author of this piece from the issue of February 11, 1854, called “On Strike.” (Lohrli’s book is called Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-59, conducted by Charles Dickens, University of Toronto Press, 1973. Household Words is freely available on-line at a site hosted by the University of Buckingham, with support from the Leverhulme Trust and other donors.)

The article does not seem especially well-known today, but it is the source of a couple of the most common quotations from Charles Dickens about “political economy,” as the study of economics was usually called at the time. Early in the piece, Dickens wrote: “Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but … I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods.” Later in the article, Dickens wrote: “[P]olitical economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it.”

But more broadly, the article is of interest because Dickens, telling the story in the first person, takes the position that in thinking about a strike taking place in the town of Preston, one need not take the side either of management or labor. Instead, Dickens writes, one may “be a friend to both,” and feel that the strike is “to be deplored on all accounts.” Of course, the problem with a middle-of-the-road position is that you can end up being hit by ideological traffic going in both directions. But the ability of Dickens to sympathize with people in a wide range of positions is surely part what gives his novels and his world-view such lasting power. The article goes into a fair amount of detail, and can be read on-line, so I will content myself here with a substantial excerpt.

Here’s a portion of the 1854 essay by Dickens:

“ON STRIKE”

Travelling down to Preston a week from this date, I chanced to sit opposite to a very acute, very determined, very emphatic personage, with a stout railway rug so drawn over his chest that he looked as if he were sitting up in bed with his great coat, hat, and gloves on, severely contemplating your humble servant from behind a large blue and grey checked counterpane. In calling him emphatic, I do
not mean that he was warm; he was coldly and bitingly emphatic as a frosty wind is.

“You are going through to Preston, sir?” says he, as soon as we were clear of the
CharPrimrose Hill tunnel.

The receipt of this question was like the receipt of a jerk of the nose; he was so short and sharp.

“Yes.”

“This Preston strike is a nice piece of business!” said the gentleman. “A pretty piece of business!”

“It is very much to be deplored,” said I, “on all accounts.”

“They want to be ground. That’s what they want to bring ’em to their senses,” said the gentleman; whom I had already began to call in my own mind Mr. Snapper, and whom I may as well call by that name here as by any other. *

I deferentially enquired, who wanted to be ground?

“The hands,” said Mr. Snapper. ” The hands on strike, and the hands who help ’em.”

I remarked that if that was all they wanted, they must be a very unreasonable people, for surely they had had a little grinding, one way and another, already. Mr. Snapper eyed me with sternness, and after opening and shutting his leathern-gloved hands several times outside his counterpane, asked me
abruptly, ” Was I a delegate?”

I set Mr. Snapper right on that point, and told him I was no delegate.

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr. Snapper. “But a friend to the Strike, I believe?”

“Not at all,” said I.

“A friend to the Lock-out?” pursued Mr. Snapper.

“Not in the least,” said I,

Mr. Snapper’s rising opinion of me fell again, and he gave me to understand that a man must either be a friend to the Masters or a friend to the Hands.

“He may be a friend to both,” said I.

Mr. Snapper didn’t see that; there was no medium in the Political Economy of the subject. I retorted on Mr. Snapper, that Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but that I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods. Mr. Snapper tucked himself up as if to keep me off, folded his arms on the top of his counterpane, leaned back and looked out of the window.

“Pray what would you have, sir,” enquire Mr. Snapper, suddenly withdrawing his eyes from the prospect to me, “in the relations between Capital and Labour, but Political Economy?”

I always avoid the stereotyped terms in these discussions as much as I can, for I have observed, in my little way, that they often supply the place of sense and moderation. I therefore took my gentleman up with the words employers and employed, in preference to Capital and Labour.

“I believe,” said I, “that into the relations between employers and employed, as into all the relations of this life, there must enter something of feeling and sentiment; something of mutual explanation, forbearance, and consideration; something which is not to be found in Mr. M’CulIoch’s dictionary, and is not exactly stateable in figures; otherwise those relations are wrong and rotten at the core and will never bear sound fruit.”

Mr. Snapper laughed at me. As I thought I had just as good reason to laugh at Mr. Snapper, I did so, and we were both contented. …

Mr. Snapper had no doubt, after this, that I thought the hands had a right to combine?

“Surely,” said I. ” A perfect right to combine in any lawful manner. The fact of their being able to combine and accustomed to combine may, I can easily conceive, be a protection to them. The blame even of this business is not all on one side. I think the associated Lock-out was a grave error. And
when you Preston masters—”

“I am not a Preston master,” interrupted Mr. Snapper.

“When the respectable combined body of Preston masters,” said I, ” in the beginning of this unhappy difference, laid down the principle that no man should be employed henceforth who belonged to any combination—such as their own—they attempted to carry with a high hand a partial and unfair impossibility, and were obliged to abandon it. This was an unwise proceeding, and the first defeat.”

Mr. Snapper had known, all along, that I was no friend to the masters.

“Pardon me,” said I; ” I am unfeignedly a friend to the masters, and have many friends among them.”

“Yet you think these hands in the right?” quoth Mr. Snapper.

“By no means,” said I; ” I fear they are at present engaged in an unreasonable struggle, wherein they began ill and cannot end well.”

Mr. Snapper, evidently regarding me as neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, begged to know after a pause if he might enquire whether I was going to Preston on business?

Indeed I was going there, in my unbusinesslike manner, I confessed, to look at the strike.

“To look at the strike!” echoed Mr. Snapper fixing his hat on firmly with both hands. “To look at it! Might I ask you now, with what object you are going to look at it?”

“Certainly,” said I. ” I read, even in liberal pages, the hardest Political Economy—of an extraordinary description too sometimes, and certainly not to be found in the books—as the only touchstone of this strike. I see, this very day in a to-morrow’s liberal paper, some astonishing novelties in the politico-economical way, showing how profits and wages have no connexion whatever; coupled with such references to these hands as might be made by a very irascible General to rebels and brigands in arms. Now, if it be the case that some of the highest virtues of the working people still shine through them brighter than ever in their conduct of this mistake of theirs, perhaps the fact may reasonably suggest to me—and to others besides me—that there is some little things wanting in the relations between them and their employers, which neither political economy nor Drum-head proclamation writing will altogether supply, and which we cannot too soon or too temperately unite in trying to
find out.”

Mr. Snapper, after again opening and shutting his gloved hands several times, drew the counterpane higher over his chest, and went to bed in disgust. He got up at Rugby, took himself and counterpane into another carriage, and left me to pursue my journey alone. …

In any aspect in which it can be viewed, this strike and lock-out is a deplorable calamity. In its waste of time, in its waste of a great people’s energy, in its waste of wages, in its waste of wealth that seeks to be employed, in its encroachment on the means of many thousands who are labouring from day to day, in the gulf of separation it hourly deepens between those whose interests must be understood to be identical or must be destroyed, it is a great national affliction. But, at this pass, anger is of no use, starving out is of no use—for what will that do, five years hence, but overshadow all the mills in England with the growth of a bitter remembrance? —political economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it. Gentlemen are found, in great manufacturing towns, ready enough to extol imbecile mediation with dangerous madmen abroad; can none of them be brought to think of authorised mediation and explanation at home? I do not suppose that such a knotted difficulty as this, is to be at all untangled by a morning-party in the Adelphi; but I would entreat both sides now so miserably opposed, to consider whether there are no men in England above suspicion, to whom they might refer the matters in dispute, with a perfect confidence above all things in the desire of those men to act justly, and in their sincere attachment to their countrymen of every rank and to their country.

Masters right, or men right; masters wrong, or men wrong; both right, or both wrong; there is certain ruin to both in the continuance or frequent revival of this breach. And from the ever-widening circle of their decay, what drop in the social ocean shall be free!

The post Charles Dickens on Management and Labor first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Donald Trump’s gut bias towards erasing wind farms easily won whatever debate may have played out, if any, in the nation’s energy future.

In a single stroke, Trump on Monday walked away from five huge wind farm projects along the East Coast – and with it, once again struck a blow for a fossil-fueled based future. The move leaves two large already operational ocean wind farms, but leaves construction and energy workers jobless, strikes against climate change policies, and abandons the Eastern coastal areas without access to an alternative source of power.

Not insignificantly, the projects that Trump tossed already have eating up  $25 billion towards machinery to capture the wind and sources power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.

In Trump’s view, the ugly, costly and inefficient. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum added that they create noise that can interfere with military radar, and labeled these wind projects a national security risk that never arose in earlier reviews, including by the Defense Department.

By contrast, Burgum and Trump were silent about the rising demands for electricity from burgeoning AI data centers, cyber currency businesses and consumer use of more electronic products in everyday life.

The New York Times reminded us that Trump has disparaged the clean energy source ever since he failed 14 years ago to stop an offshore wind farm visible from of one of his golf courses in Scotland.

It’s never made sense. If we need that much more electricity, why t not get it from all sources, not just oil and gas?  Of course, those industries handsomely reward Trump, but somebody in these stories has to be able to add up the demands and compare them with the available resources.

Trump’s personal obsessions are setting climate change back years with a move that neither increases electricity sources or deals with rising prices. It is unclear what problem Trump has solved – other than scratching his personal itch to overturn anything Joe Biden did and assert that climate change is a hoax..

The Order

Specifically, Trump withdrew approval for the federal leases that were signed by the Biden administration – once again leaving open the questions of law, contracts, government commitments and related state and federal legalisms.

From the cheap seats, it appeared that this was another foregone Trump conclusion for which Cabinet members went searching for justification. The wind farms are off New York, Rhode Island and Virginia – now all with Democratic governors. Trump did not move to shut down wind farms when Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, was still governor.

Some of the projects already were in serious financial trouble after an earlier Trump order to halt work for this review. Most were supported by their states. That halt order itself was overturned in the courts.

Wind and solar energy projects had been among the fastest growing job categories in the country. With jobless figures rising, one might have thought that Trump would think again about the impact of stopping these projects. But then he could have stopped future projects without affecting those already underway.

We have a growing list of unneeded projects that Trump wants and on which he spends our money or private donations from the wealthy circle he then is allowing to dictate policy. Those include building renames, a new gilded ballroom taking over the White House campus, an out-of-control deportation program and an uncomprehensive foreign policy. The list of projects that American voters say they need – from health care and housing to business stability and everyday spending sanity — go unaddressed.

Why do his supporters think Trump is a great politician?

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Charles Dickens wrote what has become one of the iconic stories of Christmas day and Christmas spirit in A Christmas Carol. But of course, the experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge are a story, not a piece of reporting. Here’s a piece by Dickens written for the weekly journal Household Words that he edited from 1850 to 1859. It’s from the issue of January 26, 1856, with his first-person reporting on “A Nightly Scene in London.” Poverty in high-income countries is no longer as ghastly as in Victorian England, but for those who take the time to see it in our own time and place, surely it is ghastly enough. Thus, I repeat this post each year on Christmas Day.

Economists might also wince just a bit at how Dickens describes the reaction of some economists to poverty, those who Dickens calls “the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school.” In the following passage, Dickens writes: “I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity …” 

Here’s a fuller passage from Dickens:

A NIGHTLY SCENE IN LONDON

On the fifth of last November, I, the Conductor of this journal, accompanied by a friend well-known to the public, accidentally strayed into Whitechapel. It was a miserable evening; very dark, very muddy, and raining hard.

There are many woful sights in that part of London, and it has been well-known to me in most of its aspects for many years. We had forgotten the mud and rain in slowly walking along and looking about us, when we found ourselves, at eight o’clock, before the Workhouse.

Crouched against the wall of the Workhouse, in the dark street, on the muddy pavement-stones, with the rain raining upon them, were five bundles of rags. They were motionless, and had no resemblance to the human form. Five great beehives, covered with rags— five dead bodies taken out of graves, tied neck and heels, and covered with rags— would have looked like those five bundles upon which the rain rained down in the public street.

“What is this! ” said my companion. “What is this!”

“Some miserable people shut out of the Casual Ward, I think,” said I.

We had stopped before the five ragged mounds, and were quite rooted to the spot by their horrible appearance. Five awful Sphinxes by the wayside, crying to every passer-by, ” Stop and guess! What is to be the end of a state of society that leaves us here!”

As we stood looking at them, a decent working-man, having the appearance of a stone-mason, touched me on the shoulder.

“This is an awful sight, sir,” said he, “in a Christian country!”

“GOD knows it is, my friend,” said I.

“I have often seen it much worse than this, as I have been going home from my work. I have counted fifteen, twenty, five-and-twenty, many a time. It’s a shocking thing to see.”

“A shocking thing, indeed,” said I and my companion together. The man lingered near
us a little while, wished us good-night, and went on.

We should have felt it brutal in us who had a better chance of being heard than the working-man, to leave the thing as it was, so we knocked at the Workhouse Gate. I undertook to be spokesman. The moment the gate was opened by an old pauper, I went in, followed close by my companion. I lost no
time in passing the old porter, for I saw in his watery eye a disposition to shut us out.

“Be so good as to give that card to the master of the Workhouse, and say I shall be glad to speak to him for a moment.”

We were in a kind of covered gateway, and the old porter went across it with the card. Before he had got to a door on our left, a man in a cloak and hat bounced out of it very sharply, as if he were in the nightly habit of being bullied and of returning the compliment.

“Now, gentlemen,” said he in a loud voice, “what do you want here?”

“First,” said I, ” will you do me the favor to look at that card in your hand. Perhaps you may know my name.”

“Yes,” says he, looking at it. ” I know this name.”

“Good. I only want to ask you a plain question in a civil manner, and there is not the least occasion for either of us to be angry. It would be very foolish in me to blame you, and I don’t blame you. I may find fault with the system you administer, but pray understand that I know you are here to do a duty pointed out to you, and that I have no doubt you do it. Now, I hope you won’t object to tell me what I want to know.”

“No,” said he, quite mollified, and very reasonable, ” not at all. What is it?”

“Do you know that there are five wretched creatures outside?”

“I haven’t seen them, but I dare say there are.”

“Do you doubt that there are?”

“No, not at all. There might be many more.”

”Are they men? Or women?”

“Women, I suppose. Very likely one or two of them were there last night, and the night before last.”

“There all night, do you mean?”

“Very likely.”

My companion and I looked at one another, and the master of the Workhouse added quickly, “Why, Lord bless my soul, what am I to do? What can I do ? The place is full. The place is always full—every night. I must give the preference to women with children, mustn’t I? You wouldn’t have me not do that?”

“Surely not,” said I. “It is a very humane principle, and quite right; and I am glad to hear of it. Don’t forget that I don’t blame you.”

“Well!” said he. And subdued himself again. …

“Just so. I wanted to know no more. You have answered my question civilly and readily, and I am much obliged to you. I have nothing to say against you, but quite the contrary. Good night!”

“Good night, gentlemen!” And out we came again.

We went to the ragged bundle nearest to the Workhouse-door, and I touched it. No movement replying, I gently shook it. The rags began to be slowly stirred within, and by little and little a head was unshrouded. The head of a young woman of three or four and twenty, as I should judge; gaunt with want, and foul with dirt; but not naturally ugly.

“Tell us,” said I, stooping down. “Why are you lying here?”

“Because I can’t get into the Workhouse.”

She spoke in a faint dull way, and had no curiosity or interest left. She looked dreamily at the black sky and the falling rain, but never looked at me or my companion.

“Were you here last night?”

“Yes, All last night. And the night afore too.”

“Do you know any of these others?”

“I know her next but one. She was here last night, and she told me she come out of Essex. I don’t know no more of her.”

“You were here all last night, but you have not been here all day?”

“No. Not all day.”

“Where have you been all day?”

“About the streets.”

”What have you had to eat?”

“Nothing.”

“Come!” said I. “Think a little. You are tired and have been asleep, and don’t quite consider what you are saying to us. You have had something to eat to-day. Come! Think of it!”

“No I haven’t. Nothing but such bits as I could pick up about the market. Why, look at me!”

She bared her neck, and I covered it up again.

“If you had a shilling to get some supper and a lodging, should you know where to get it?”

“Yes. I could do that.”

“For GOD’S sake get it then!”

I put the money into her hand, and she feebly rose up and went away. She never thanked me, never looked at me— melted away into the miserable night, in the strangest manner I ever saw. I have seen many strange things, but not one that has left a deeper impression on my memory than the dull impassive way in which that worn-out heap of misery took that piece of money, and was lost.

One by one I spoke to all the five. In every one, interest and curiosity were as extinct as in the first. They were all dull and languid. No one made any sort of profession or complaint; no one cared to look at me; no one thanked me. When I came to the third, I suppose she saw that my companion and I glanced, with a new horror upon us, at the two last, who had dropped against each other in their sleep, and were lying like broken images. She said, she believed they were young sisters. These were the only words that were originated among the five.

And now let me close this terrible account with a redeeming and beautiful trait of the poorest of the poor. When we came out of the Workhouse, we had gone across the road to a public house, finding ourselves without silver, to get change for a sovereign. I held the money in my hand while I was speaking to the five apparitions. Our being so engaged, attracted the attention of many people of the very poor sort usual to that place; as we leaned over the mounds of rags, they eagerly leaned over us to see and hear; what I had in my hand, and what I said, and what I did, must have been plain to nearly all the concourse. When the last of the five had got up and faded away, the spectators opened to let us pass; and not one of them, by word, or look, or gesture, begged of us.

Many of the observant faces were quick enough to know that it would have been a relief to us to have got rid of the rest of the money with any hope of doing good with it. But, there was a feeling among them all, that their necessities were not to be placed by the side of such a spectacle; and they opened a way for us in profound silence, and let us go.

My companion wrote to me, next day, that the five ragged bundles had been upon his bed all night. I debated how to add our testimony to that of many other persons who from time to time are impelled to write to the newspapers, by having come upon some shameful and shocking sight of this description. I resolved to write in these pages an exact account of what we had seen, but to wait until after Christmas, in order that there might be no heat or haste. I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity; and I address people with a respect for the spirit of the New Testament, who do mind such things, and who think them infamous in our streets.

The post Charles Dickens on Seeing Poverty first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Over the past few years, I’ve been consumed with what feels like an impossible task: Ridding my life of plastics (or at least radically decreasing their use).

Reader, this is hard, if not impossible. I live in Hanoi, where the tap water isn’t always potable, which means I use filtered water that comes in giant plastic jugs (I do send these back to be re-filled which cuts down on the waste problem, but doesn’t solve the microplastics problem). The food I buy at the grocery store is wrapped in plastic. My leggings have microplastics in them. I go out of my way (and often spend more money) to avoid buying and throwing out plastics. But it takes extra effort, almost every day.

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But plastic-skepticism also comes at a strange political moment. As a person who is basically MAHA-lite, I often feel politically homeless: Conservatives have taken up the mantle of “health,” and while I’m happy to see any movement to better regulate things like ultra-processed foods, ubiquitous plastics, and potentially dangerous and unnecessary food dyes, tying common-sense health policies to a movement that opposes childhood vaccines and rejects decades of life-saving scientific consensus is… very very very bad. Watching Democrats negatively polarize also effectively cedes the important stuff (cracking down on the companies that are making the public very sick by selling ultra-processed foods for cheap, requiring actually nutritious school lunches, imposing regulations to cut plastics, and so on) to the MAHA crazies and the MAGA right, who are happy to use the power of government to pull funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics while letting Big Food run amok. I want Democrats to return to their roots as a party that challenges corporate power in defense of consumer safety, and I’d like it if they put public health at the top of that list, which has to include the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the plastics that are increasingly in our blood, brains, and bones.

So I was pleased to get a copy of The Problem with Plastic in my inbox. It’s written by Bennington College professor and Beyond Plastics founder Judith Enck, who has also worked on environmental issues for the Obama administration and the New York Governor’s Office, and co-authored by environmental justice reporter Adam Mahoney. It’s a hard look at how we became so plastic-dependent so quickly, who that’s benefitting, and who is paying the price.

Judith Enck very kindly answered some of my questions about the actual risks of microplastics, how to keep MAHA from having a monopoly on American health, and why you should leave plastic water bottles on the shelf. Our conversation, which was conducted over email, is below.

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1. I was so excited to read this book, as someone who has only recently gotten on board with plastic-skepticism and has tried, and utterly failed, to cut plastics out of my life. It also seems like there’s a lot of mixed information about microplastics and their impacts on human health. So help me cut through the noise: For people who aren’t living near plastics facilities but who are, say, putting their food in Tupperware and drinking their coffee through plastic coffee lids and handing their kids plastic toys, what are the actual risks? What should we be afraid of here? And how much do we not yet know?

The hard truth is that everyone is eating, drinking, and breathing plastic every day in the form of microplastics — the smaller bits of plastic that shed off of larger, plastic products. Think of plastic like your skin. Just like your skin is constantly flaking off in tiny pieces, plastic is constantly shedding tiny bits that break off into the product. This can happen, for example, when you open a plastic clamshell container of lettuce, unwrap a slice of cheese that is encased in plastic film, turn the bottle cap on a bottle of soda or water, or, yes, open your Tupperware container of leftovers. When you eat and drink products that were packaged in plastic, you’re eating and drinking the tiny plastic particles that come with it.

Microplastics are little shards of plastic that are 5mm or less. Nano plastics are even smaller.

Knowing all that, it should surprise no one that microplastics have been found in just about every part of the human body, including the lungs, blood, testicles, placenta, brain, and breast milk. It’s even been found in the feces newborn babies. Think about that: Babies are being born pre-polluted with plastic.

The confusion around plastic’s health effects is partly because there are two conversations to have: the health risk of the plastic itself and the health risk of the chemicals found in plastic. The plastic particles themselves can irritate, inflame, and even puncture cells, but equally worrisome impacts come from the plastic’s chemical additives, which can leach out of the plastic and into the body. Over 16,000 chemicals are found in plastic. At least 4,200 of those are considered to be highly hazardous to human health and the environment, and thousands more haven’t even been tested for their safety. The chemicals known to be hazardous have been linked to cancer, nervous system damage, hormone disruption, obesity, diabetes, and fertility problems.

Plastic’s human health impacts have been steadily coming to light as researchers uncover the extent of our exposure. A study published earlier this year in The Lancet found that plastic is responsible for at least $1.5 trillion a year in health-related damages worldwide. Last year, a study found that people with plastic in their carotid arteries were nearly five times more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. Though there’s still much to learn, findings from the past five years are alarming enough to warrant legislative and regulatory action — something we are not going to see from Washington, so state and local governments will need to lead.

2. I am always stunned to go into the grocery store and see how much of our food supply comes wrapped in plastic. When consumers are shopping, what should we know about plastics and food?

Companies have decided to put many food and beverage products in plastic, whether the use is practical or not. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never needed my potatoes to be individually wrapped in plastic. The same goes for a bag of bananas. And even though everyone knows what pasta looks like, manufacturers added a little plastic window on the box so we can scope out our spaghetti before buying it. Not only is this plastic unnecessary; it’s also not non-recyclable and toxic.

The best thing consumers can do when shopping is buy products not packaged in plastic, when possible. The less plastic packaging, the better — for our health and for our planet.

3. In our current highly polarized political environment, do you see a risk that plastic-skepticism will become MAHA coded? How can follow-the-science liberals follow the science here, when there’s so much we still don’t know?

I think the more people who become aware of the extent of the plastic pollution problem and are motivated to do something about it, the better. This is a bipartisan issue that affects everyone’s health, planet, and future. The MAHA movement has expressed concern over certain toxic chemicals used in plastics, like phthalates, and their potential health impacts on children. This is a very valid concern that everyone should agree on. The science shows phthalates have been linked to cardiovascular disease, premature death, hormone disruption, and even lower IQ scores in children. This is one of the many reasons why our government — on the local, state, and federal level — should pass policies to reduce the production and use of plastic, as well as ban certain chemicals from being used in consumer products.

It’s critical that people get their information from sources that don’t profit off of plastic or its chemical additives. You’re right in that there’s still a lot we don’t know when it comes to plastic’s impacts on human health, but there’s a lot we do know too — and it’s not good. New, independent, peer-reviewed studies on this topic come out every couple of months — microplastics found in a new organ, or associations discovered between microplastics in the body and human health. It’s enough for me to want to limit my own exposure as much as possible and urge policymakers to do more to protect us. We have science for policymakers to take action.

4. There seems to be growing skepticism of recycling from the left — whether it even does what it promises. So: Is recycling worth it?

People should absolutely continue to recycle their paper, cardboard, aluminum, and glass. And compost your yard waste and food waste. The skepticism around plastic recycling is justified — it’s not the magic wand the plastics industry has spent decades telling us it is. Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the United States, and that’s because plastic is just an inherently non-recyclable material.

In order to recycle plastic, all the different types — with their different combinations of chemicals, colors, and polymers — have to be separated. You can’t just throw a milk jug and a soda bottle into the same recycling batch and expect a usable product. It doesn’t work like that — they are two different types of plastic and have to be recycled separately. The countless variations of plastics, colors, and chemicals make the sorting and recycling of every plastic product financially untenable and technically unviable.

Plastics companies have known this for decades, but they have spent millions of dollars telling us not to worry about all of the single-use plastic in our kitchens. “Just toss it in the recycling bin!” This is deceptive. The deception is so serious that in September 2024, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the nation’s biggest plastic maker, ExxonMobil, for deceptive statements about the recycling of plastics.

We can’t recycle our way out of this mess. Companies need to stop using so much plastic in the first place — and it’s up to policymakers to hold them accountable, because companies will not change simply because it makes sense.

5. The long-time narrative about plastics and the environment has been pretty simplistic — the sea turtle with the straw up his nose, the bird tangled in the plastic six-pack rings. Your book paints a more complicated picture. How are plastics fueling climate change and extreme weather? What are the less-visible impacts on our environment?

Plastic is made from fossil fuels, so it makes sense that the plastic pollution issue goes hand in hand with climate change. Many people don’t realize the extent of plastic’s impact on our climate, and one stat in particular usually hits home for them: Plastic production generates four times more greenhouse gas emissions than aviation. Think about that for a second: Plastic is FIVE TIMES worse for climate change than air travel!

Plastic contributes to climate change at every stage of its life cycle. This starts when greenhouse gases escape during extraction and refining of fossil fuels. It continues with more emissions from the energy-intensive process used to make plastic. And then there are even more emissions when plastic is transported, laying in landfills, or incinerated.

As we’ve seen in Los Angeles and other places, wildfires are becoming much more common as previously less dense areas get developed and hot temperatures and drought conditions fueled by climate change get worse. A May 2023 peer-reviewed study found that nearly 40% of the burned forest area in Western Canada and the United States can be attributed to 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and Shell — some of the primary corporations behind plastic production. Essentially, the extraction and burning of fossil fuels — which are the foundation of plastic — have raised global temperatures and amplified dry conditions across the West, thereby increasing the amount of land burned by wildfire.

The climate crisis and the plastics crisis are one in the same.

6. One of the simplest changes you encourage readers to take on is getting rid of plastic water bottles. Why? What makes single-use plastic bottles so awful?

I strongly encourage people to use reusable cups and bottles whenever possible. Unless clean water is inaccessible, there are few reasons to use single-use plastic water bottles. You’re paying for plastic — not the water you can get for free — and that plastic is used for just a moment before polluting the planet for centuries to come.

On top of the environmental toll, an alarming amount of microplastics have been found in bottled water. A 2024 study found that bottled water can contain 10 to 100 times more plastic particles than previous estimates. One liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics!

7. I appreciate how you focus the book on the fact that we need political change, not just individual — forgoing plastic water bottles is not going to solve this problem. If you had a policy wishlist, what would be on it?

Unfortunately, companies have added plastic to so many products that it’s impossible for consumers to avoid it, and thus it’s impossible for individuals to avoid exposure. That’s why it’s on policymakers on all levels of government to pass policies limiting the production and use of plastic, as well as incentivizing reusable and refillable alternatives. Plastic pollution is a problem created by companies, and it’s up to policymakers to hold them accountable and curb their reliance on plastic.

For individuals wanting to do something to effect change, listen up: Don’t underestimate the power of your voice. Whether you’re writing a letter to the editor urging your elected officials to pass a plastic bag ban in your county or participating in a rally to pass a state bill reducing unnecessary packaging, your voice makes a difference. Speak up. Get involved.

If I had a policy wishlist — and who’s to say I don’t — it would be for the New York state legislature to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act when legislators reconvene in January. When passed, this bill will reduce packaging across New York state by 30%, require the remaining packaging to be reusable or truly recyclable, require companies to pay modest fees on packaging, and require companies creating the waste to foot the bill for managing it. This is the kind of comprehensive policy we need on all levels of government to effectively rein in the plastic pollution problem. New York has an opportunity to lead the country and set a blueprint for other states. We’ll be joining countless New Yorkers next year in urging New York state legislators to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, and for Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the bill into law. I hope this is the year they’ll put people over plastic.

Thanks for reading. And here’s to all of us resolving to use fewer plastics in the new year.

xx Jill

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Do you have any idea how much of a bumbling just-picked-up-a-paintbrush amateur Bari Weiss is in her new job as Editor-in-Chief of CBS News? I’ll tell you. She killed the big “Inside CECOT” story about the torture prison in El Salvador that was supposed to run on “60 Minutes” Sunday night. The story involved the Venezuelan immigrants who were flown by Trump’s ICE, against a judge’s order, to El Salvador, where in the prison they were beaten and sexually assaulted. Weiss told the producers that one of the things the story needed was an in-person interview with chief immigration Nazi, Stephen Miller. She helpfully provided them with Miller’s contact information, you know, because Bari Weiss is so plugged-in that she has stuff like White House phone numbers and email addresses at her fingertips.

There are several “as if’s” here. As if the producers hadn’t thought about interviewing Miller themselves. As if they hadn’t already contacted his office and requested an interview or at least on-the-record comments for the DECOT story. As if the damn “60 Minutes” team hadn’t been doing this kind of reporting better than anyone on the planet for the last 56 years.

Can you think of another bumbling amateur who is running a large organization he is not qualified to run? Hmmmm…let’s see…could it be Pete Hegseth? You remember Major Hegseth, who hadn’t run anything larger than a small non-profit supporting veterans before he became Secretary of Defense and was put in charge of more than 4.5 million uniformed and civilian people who work for the Department of Defense. Hegseth was the genius who included his wife, brother, and the editor for The Atlantic in a chat group on Signal as the Navy and Air Force bombed and rocketed Houthi strongholds in Yemen back in March, during which he shared the exact times of attack, what aircraft were involved, and what weapons they were using – all of this in real time as the attack was taking place.

We know enough about Pete to last us about 3 extremely unpleasant lifetimes. Let’s have a look at Bari. I’m not going to bore you with the story of her career as a junior editor at the Wall Street Journal and her time writing for and occasionally editing stories for the New York Times editorial section. Enough ink has been wasted on her dramatic resignation from the paper citing the firing of editorial page editor James Bennet and alleged “bullying” by Times staff members for her conservative political views.

Weiss worked for other people at both the Wall Street Jornal and the Times. She had no authority over other employees in either job. It was after her departure from the Times that she became an executive of a conservative-leaning Substack called “The Free Press.” I’m sure her newsletter on Substack, which the press refers to as a “media company,” made quite a bit of money and employed more people than Weiss herself before it was acquired by Paramount Skydance this year for $150 million.

But she could only have been in charge of a tiny fraction of the estimated 1,700 to 2,500 employees who work for CBS News. And as practically every article written on Weiss has noted, she had zero experience in television or running a large news-gathering organization.

Wow. Maybe Pete and Bari should get together for coffee sometime. She could give him advice on dealing with recalcitrant generals who have no respect for him, and he could tell her a thing or two about how to handle reporters who are going through your drawers asking questions you don’t want to answer.

The problem both have is that they were thrust into jobs that are clearly more than they can handle for political reasons, not because they had spent careers building up expertise in their fields. Well, at least Weiss can be said to have had a field with journalism. I don’t know what the fuck Hegseth’s career amounted to before he walked into the Pentagon, other than flexing his muscles to show off his Nazi tattoos and blathering on Fox and Friends on weekends.

Weiss now has the newsmagazine “60 Minutes” under her control, along with its staff of veteran reporters and producers, not to mention camera and sound people, many of whom have done their jobs in combat zones and places on the planet no person not working for “60 Minutes” would want to find themselves. I’m sitting here at my desk in Milford, PA, writing my Substack column, so I am certainly not putting down Substack as a place of business that can give you experience conveying information to a readership and these days, with live video and video podcasts, a viewing audience. But the Substack “media business” Weiss developed and sold for an obscene quantity of greenbacks did not qualify her to pick the outfits for CBS on the air talent, much less run its worldwide news gathering network.

I have some experience with “60 Minutes,” having been interviewed on the program twice. Let me tell you just a little bit about what that’s like. Getting a call from a “60 Minutes” producer is, I’m not exaggerating, life changing. It isn’t the prospect of “being on TV” and how that might change things in your life and career, which can of course happen. It’s…there is no other word for it…gravitas. You’re on the phone, and you’re thinking, even given all the reporting and writing and covering big stories I’ve done, these people are the fucking big leagues!

Because they are. Their standards are at the top of television news. I don’t mean near the top. I mean the top. Before they even call you, much less interview you on camera, they know everything that can be known about you and what you have to do with the subject of the interview. For one story, they knew everything I had written about the West Point honor code, and they knew as much as anyone could know about a then recent scandal involving cheating at the Academy.

To be honest, it was a little scary. You’re thinking, what did I write that they’ve read? Was I wrong about any of it? Was there anything I learned about the subject after the story was published? Because you can count on it that they know if anything changed between the time of your story and the interview with “60 Minutes.”

There was a third time that I was supposed to be interviewed by “60 Minutes.” It was 1998, and I had written an op-ed page story for the Times about the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. An 11-year-old and a 13- year-old had taken guns owned by one of their grandfathers and killed 5 people and wounded 10 at the middle school they attended. It turned out that both boys had been trained by their parents at a so-called “practical shooting course,” which taught them how to shoot rifles at human silhouette targets at various distances. My story pointed out the moral incongruity of teaching children to use high-powered rifles in exactly the same way I had been trained to use them in the Army.

Before being called by “60 Minutes,” I had been interviewed by Katie Couric on the Today Show about the Jonesboro shooting. On the program with me was the chief spokesperson for the NRA, Tanya Mataxa, who was poo-pooing everything I said as liberal claptrap even though I had been introduced as a gun owner and military veteran with extensive firearms training. Let’s just say, the interview wasn’t going well. Mataxa was filibustering, dominating the interview. Finally, there was a pause, and I asked Couric if I could ask Mataxa a question. Couric, obviously relieved, said “go ahead.”

I asked Mataxa if she thought teaching children to fire at targets in the form of human beings was good parenting, and if the NRA endorsed such “practical shooting courses” for children. Mataxa was stumped by the question. She was unprepared to take a stand in the name of the NRA. She filibustered until Couric interrupted her with “Answer the question, Tanya,” in an unusually loud voice for TV. Metaxa blinked into the camera and reached down on the floor next to her chair and picked up a copy of the Washington Post and opened it to a full-page anti-abortion ad and started shouting that “this is what we should be talking about! Killing babies!”

Shocked at this development, Couric shouted over her again: “Answer the question, Tanya!” Mataxa finally answered it, saying that the NRA stood behind parents who wanted to teach their children to shoot at human shaped targets.

I heard from friends with contacts in the NRA that Mataxa was almost fired for that answer. Time passed, and “60 Minutes” called wanting to interview me about school shootings. I said yes, of course, and we set up a time for their producers to come to New Orleans, where I was living at the time, to interview me.

A few days later, I got a call from the “60 Minutes” reporter who was scheduled to do the interview. They had to cancel the interview because no one from the NRA or any of the other pro-gun organizations such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation would appear on a program on which I was one of the interviewees. The reporter explained that they had called every pro-gun group they could find, and the answer was the same. They would agree to be interviewed only if I wasn’t on the program.

I told the “60 Minutes” reporter that if they went along with the demands of the pro-gun groups, they were effectively giving them the power to control who they interviewed and what viewpoints would get on the air. He apologized and said there was nothing they could do. They wanted to do a segment on school shootings, which were in the process of becoming a “thing,” so they would need to get someone else from a gun control group to interview on the show.

I have told this lengthy story, about which I have written before, because Blundering Bari proceeded to blunder into a very similar thing with “60 Minutes” over the CECOT story. The demand by Weiss that the CECOT segment wouldn’t air unless the producers interviewed someone from the Trump administration, preferably the odious Stephen Miller, effectively gave the White House veto power over what “60 Minutes” could put on the air. The Trump administration could continue to refuse to provide people to be interviewed for any story they had problems with.

When an email from Alfonsi leaked that discussed the issues raised by Weiss about the CECOT story, Weiss responded on a morning editorial call, essentially telling staffers that they should keep complaints in-house, implying that she had not been treated with “respect” in Alfonsi’s email about the dispute inside CBS News.

Just a squeak of irony from Bari Weiss, whose resignation letter from the New York Times, in which she complained about “wokeism” at the Times, became a cause celeb on the Right.

It’s too easy to say that this is what happens when incompetent and inexperienced fools are put in charge of large and powerful organizations such as the Department of Defense and CBS News. But fuck it. It is what happens. Bari Weiss would never have been hired at CBS News if its new owner, David Ellison, wasn’t the right-wing son of a right-winger who has given millions to Donald Trump, essentially buying the regulatory good will to gift his son a plaything he will use to keep the White House invitations coming for daddy.

We are already waist deep in dangerous political waters that threaten to swamp the First Amendment along with the 14^th Amendment and every other Constitutional provision that Donald Trump doesn’t like, including the 22^nd Amendment that limits a president to two terms in office.

Oh, well, we’ll have Bari Weiss picking stories for the CBS Evening News and “60 Minutes” that will tell us when the snakes and gators are about to gobble up all rights under the Constitution.

Won’t we?

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I hadn’t given much thought to the meaning of the word “honor,” in years, and now I can’t think of anything else.

I think what did it was the photograph of a worker installing Trump’s name above that of the man the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is named for. I had such a visceral reaction, I searched for a word to describe my feelings. What Trump did was dishonorable. That’s all I could think: The man simply and completely lacks any sense of honor.

He lacks a lot of other things, too – decency, empathy, taste all come to mind. But his lack of honor stands out among the rest, because honor involves a sense of loyalty and dedication to others.

I went to West Point, which prizes honor in its motto: Duty, Honor, Country. On the first day that you become a cadet, which for me was June 4, 1965, they take the time out of an incredibly busy day to teach you about honor. You’re given a brief lecture by an upperclassman about the Honor Code, which states that “A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.”

That’s a lot to take in on your first day at West Point, when you are weighed, your height is measured, and you’re issued uniforms; you’re taught to salute and given what they call your three answers -- yes sir, no sir, no excuse sir; you’re taught how to arrange yourself into squad, platoon, and company formations and you’re taught to march; and then, having marched to Trophy Point, where stands Battle Monument, honoring those in the Union Army who gave their lives during the Civil War, you recite the oath that will guide your service to your country for the rest of your life.

They hammer into you the importance and necessity of honor to the profession of arms. It boils down to a simple concept: If you are to lead in combat, everyone must depend on the fact that you are giving truthful and honorable commands and answers to questions to and from those whom you command and those who command you.

That’s it. You’re told honor works both ways: they can depend on you, and you can depend on them. If you are asked what the position of your unit is, and you have not yet reached the place you were ordered to be, you must respond truthfully because units around you are maneuvering as well, and to lie about your position might subject you and your soldiers to friendly fire, or to artillery fire aimed at the enemy but which might hit your position if you lie about what your location is.

That’s what they call “the combat example,” but it’s way more broad than that. If you’re tested academically, those in charge and those around you in your own class, must be able to depend on your score not having been achieved by cheating. And on it goes, encompassing everything you do. When you graduate, the idea of the Honor Code is that everyone graduating with you has accepted and lived by the same code you did. You could depend on them while you were cadets, and you can depend on them now and in the future.

While you’re at West Point, you think about the Honor Code all the time because it applies to everything you do as a cadet. When you graduate, the Honor Code, with its threat of expulsion if you are found to have violated it, is behind you. You don’t think about it as much. I don’t recall the word “honor” coming up even once in my brief time as an officer. It wasn’t even a category on the report that rated your effectiveness as a leader. “Loyalty” was, but “honor” wasn’t.

What does this have to do with Donald Trump and what he did in renaming the Kennedy Center? Given everything we know about the enormity of Trump’s capacity to tell lies about practically everything, why does Trump’s putting his name above that of John F. Kennedy stand out?

The Kennedy Center is the memorial that this nation, in grieving his death after he was assassinated, decided to erect in Kennedy’s honor. Not a limestone or granite monument like those honoring Lincoln or Washington or Jefferson. A center for the arts with Kennedy’s name on it was built as a “living monument” to a man who was not only a Senator and a President but a war hero who oversaw the rescue of the crew of his PT boat during World War II after it was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

Kennedy served his nation honorably in combat as well as in government. To take from him the name of his memorial by placing your name above his is to steal his honor. Everyone knows what that is: to steal honor is to claim the honors awarded others without having earned them. It is a crime under the Stolen Valor Act to impersonate a soldier and wear medals that you did not earn.

That is what Donald Trump did in taking the Kennedy Center for himself. He stole John F. Kennedy’s honor.

As we all know, Trump is obsessed with putting the name “Trump” on buildings, vodka bottles, airplanes, a so-called “university,” and we could go on. When he visited Mount Vernon during his first term, he is said to have wondered why Washington had not named his home after himself. “If he was smart, he would have put his name on it,” Trump was quoted as saying.

Trump recently put photos or paintings of all the nation’s presidents along the colonnade outside the West Wing of the White House and affixed plaques beneath them. Much has been made of the inaccurate or disparaging nature of some of the plaques and the fact that the photo of Joe Biden isn’t of his face but instead shows an auto-pen. But what Trump calls this display says even more about the way he sees himself, the White House, everyone who preceded him, and the presidency itself. He calls it “The Presidential Walk of Fame.”

It seems silly to have to say this, but fame is not honor, even though Donald Trump clearly mistakes the two. Nor are gold appliques on White House walls. Nor is placing your name above that of a man who by his service to this country in and out of uniform brought honor not only to his name, but to the country he served.

Greatness will forever elude this small, pathetic creature in a suit and polished shoes, because greatness cannot be packaged and named like a product or a building. It can only be lived and then accorded by others.

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