If there's one thing that Democrats are, it's green.  They are all about the environment.  If there's another thing Democrats are, it's that they are committed to masks.  They are deeply invested in the mask narrative.  But what happens when those two narratives collide, and Democrats learn that almost 1.6 billion disposable masks are polluting the ocean, with many more certain to come?

Conservatives believe in maintaining a healthy and vibrant environment for the good of those now living and for the benefit of generations to come.  Democrats and other leftists believe that humankind is the worst parasite the Earth has ever produced.  Every one of their green initiatives is intended to return the world to a virginal state, without any consideration for human well-being.

Thanks to Democrats, fuel prices have shot up 30% since Biden entered the White House, dishwashers and washing machines don't clean the way they used to, you can't get plastic bags or straws in California, nuclear facilities that provide clean energy are being shut down, cities buy electric buses that quickly degrade, and car manufacturers are being pushed to produce only electric cars even though America's power grid cannot handle that and few people have the ability to break a trip for 45 minutes to an hour to "fill the tank."

The real giveaway that Democrats imagine a practically virgin earth, free from the human stain, is the utter disdain they have for people who dare to have children.  Children are merely a burden on Mother Gaia.  We shouldn't have zero population growth; we should have negative population growth.

With this attitude, you'd think leftists would have embraced COVID as a good purge to free Mother Gaia of all those pesky, destructive humans.  But no!  Instead, Democrats and other leftists decreed that everyone over the age of two must wear a mask at all times in order to survive a virus with a less than 2% mortality rate and one, moreover, that primarily strikes the very old and very sick.  Democrats didn't care that masks are ineffective against the virus; that people wear them incorrectly (below the nose, under the chin, on again and off again with constant cross-contamination); or that the disposable masks contain graphene, a dangerous chemical.  We were told to wear them or else!

But here's where we run into the delicious moral conundrum that the Democrats must face.  (And it is a moral conundrum because Democrats frame all their demands as moral imperatives.)  It turns out that those masks are devastating our oceans:

Nearly 1.6 billion disposable face masks ended up in the earth's oceans in 2020, out of the roughly 52 billion produced in response to the pandemic, according to a study.

While governments around the world continue to support mask mandates in public spaces, the impact of disposable masks is only just emerging.

OceansAsia, which produced the study, had some more grim statistics for the über-green Democrats who are hell-bent on making masks a permanent fixture:

This will result in an additional 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of marine plastic pollution, says the report, entitled "Masks on the Beach: The Impact of COVID-19 on Marine Plastic Pollution." These masks will take as long as 450 years to break down, slowly turning into micro plastics while negatively impacting marine wildlife and ecosystems.

[snip]

"The 1.56 billion face masks that will likely enter our oceans in 2020 are just the tip of the iceberg," says Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff, Director of Research for OceansAsia, and lead author of the report. "The 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of face masks are just a small fraction of the estimated 8 to 12 million metric tonnes of plastic that enter our oceans each year."

[snip]

"Marine plastic pollution is devastating our oceans," says Gary Stokes, Operations Director of OceansAsia. "Plastic pollution kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals and turtles, over a million seabirds, and even greater numbers of fish, invertebrates and other animals each year. It also negatively impacts fisheries and the tourism industry, and costs the global economy an estimated $13 billion USD per year."

The organization, being leftist, recommends reusable masks, even though they are the least effective when it comes to preventing even large particles from passing through.

I am concerned about what's being done to the world's oceans and coasts in pursuit of a nonexistent magic bullet to end COVID contagion.  Nevertheless, I always enjoy it when leftists engage in a civil war over their competing values.  These wars are brutal, destructive, and exactly what we need to help expose the world to the contradictions inherent in leftism, especially because both sides of these battles are invariably in the wrong.

As for you, if you don't want to wear a mask, just murmur something about pollution.  See if it works...

Image: Face mask pollution in our oceans.  Oceans Asia video screen grab.

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