Anton Savage: Save us from the self-righteous lecturing of Mark Ruffalo

Originally published in the Business Post.

Mark Ruffalo’s anti liquified natural gas (LNG) video this week came from the same source as the new stupid lids on milk cartons – an attempt to do something good delivered in a fashion so hamfisted as to be totally counterproductive.

In the case of the milk, the objective was to make sure the lid stayed with the carton when recycled. This was a laudable goal, demonstrably not achieved. Had they simply gone back to the Tetra Pak of yesteryear, which formed its own handy spout and was therefore lidless, the job would have been a good ‘un.

Instead they designed a lid that is so annoying it serves only to make the user mutter “goddamn environmentalists” while ripping it off its ridiculous little plastic umbilical cord so it can function as an actual lid. But somewhere someone feels warmed by the glow of their own self-righteousness. And if you point out how annoying and counterproductive a design solution it is, you are attacked as anti-environment.

It was the same with the introduction of paper straws. Those who had the temerity to declare that they functioned as well as a chocolate bicycle were pilloried as anti-green luddites, when mostly that wasn’t the case. Many shared the objective that we should get rid of single-use straws, but were just of the belief that it can’t be beyond the capacity of man to find an alternative that isn’t shite.

But for so many in the green movement, activity is more important than impact, and so we have Mark Ruffalo lecturing the Irish people about the Green Party breaking its election promises.

“If Mark Ruffalo has achieved anything positive, it may be annoying people enough that they embrace the Greens out of spite“

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