Category: Environmentalism (Paper Products)

Earth Day 2019: Print This Email!

George Noga
Fight back against paternalistic, proselytizing, political preening.
Earth Day 2019: Print This Email!
By: George Noga – April 21, 2019

        “Please consider the environment before printing this email” is a common liberal animadversion appended to personal and business emails; it is wrong for four reasons: (1) it gratuitously injects politics into a non political situation; (2) the sender is clueless that it is a divisive political statement; (3) it is virtue signaling; and (4) it is factually wrong as printing does not harm the environment, but actually helps save our forests.

      Progressives would (rightfully) take umbrage if emails were appended with: “Please consider adoption before abortion”. It is even worse when businesses make political statements. Why would businesses, which would not deign to hector you about contentious political issues, arrogantly foist their ersatz environmental views about paper products on customers? You can and should push back. When I receive an offending personal email, I attach the following subscript to my reply.

         Please print this email. Trees are a farmed product grown expressly for paper. It makes no more sense to conserve paper to save trees than it makes to conserve cloth to save cotton. Paper is natural, biodegradable, organic, renewable and sustainable. Working forests employ millions of Americans and help the environment by providing clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. There are more trees planted commercially each year than are consumed; there are more trees than 100 years ago. Failure to print hastens the conversion of forests into strip malls and parking lots.

         When I receive an offending business email, I append the preceding paragraph but also let them know that I resent their presumptive and unwanted intrusion into my personal life by injecting politics into a business relationship. I usually couple this with a demand that they remove my name from all their lists. When I receive responses from businesses, they claim they weren’t being political; they arrogantly and ignorantly believe there is universal agreement that conserving paper helps the environment. Well, if that were true, then what is their purpose in adding it to all their emails?

Tree Glut Causes Humongous Price Drop

 

         In the southeast US timber growing region, there is a veritable glut of trees which has driven prices down 50% to 70% and is causing growers steep losses. The volume of southern yellow pine (used for paper) has quadrupled in recent decades as many farmers replaced cropland with trees. In total, 2.2 million acres were replaced. Prices now are so low that it sometimes isn’t worth the cost to harvest trees. Somehow, this surfeit of trees, decades in the making, has eluded progressive tree huggers.

      Actually, I fully agree with the environmentalists’ admonition to “consider the environment before printing“. However, they (surprise) got it backwards. By all means, you should consider the environment – and then go right ahead and print all you want, the more the better. By printing, you can take great satisfaction in knowing you are doing your part to help the environment and to save our great American forests.

Next on April 28 MLLG begins its new series about the spending crisis;
This is by far our most thorough and analytic presentation of this issue! 

Please Print This Email!

George Noga

By: George Noga – June 1, 2013

      How often do you receive paternalistic, proselytizing and presumptive emails, both personal and commercial, that contain animadversions in the form of footnotes or subscripts exhorting you to “do not print” the email to “protect the environment”? If you’re like me, it’s far too often. This is nothing more than your friends or the businesses you deal with gratuitously foisting their politics on you.

   Friends or companies, who normally would not initiate a political discussion, somehow believe it is acceptable to derogate you thusly. Businesses that do this would not deign to attach email subscripts urging you to vote a certain way. They would not presume to lecture you about abortion, gun control or gay marriage. Yet somehow they arrogantly believe it is copacetic to inflict their somewhat extreme environmental views about paper products on you.

   I decided to fight back. Upon receiving an offending email, I always attach (without comment) my own footnotes to the reply; I have one for personal emails and one for business. The following paragraph contains my footnote for personal emails.

Footnote or Subscript for Personal Emails

    “Please feel free to print this email along with all the attachments. Trees are a farmed product grown expressly for paper. It makes no more sense to conserve paper to save trees than it makes to conserve cloth to save cotton. Paper is natural, organic, biodegradable, renewable and sustainable. Working forests employ millions of Americans and help the environment by providing clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. There are more trees planted commercially each year (by a vast margin) than are consumed; there are more trees than 100 years ago. In a very real sense, failure to print can hasten the conversion of forests to strip malls and parking lots. Therefore, by all means print this email and take satisfaction in knowing you are doing your part to help the environment and to save our American forests.”

Subscript for Business Emails

    For commercial emails I use the above paragraph, i.e. the same one as for personal emails. Then I add the following paragraph strictly for business.

   “Your company’s email contained a footnote admonishing me not to print it for the ersatz purpose of protecting the environment. By doing this you gratuitously injected contentious and argumentative politics into what should be purely a business relationship. Surely, you would not deign to tell customers how to vote; therefore, why do you assume it is acceptable to foist other political views? Politicizing a business relationship is bad business for many reasons:

  1. If your company doesn’t believe this to be a divisive political issue, it is ignorant.
  2. You are wrong; conserving trees grown for paper does not help the environment.
  3. Even if I agreed with your politics, I would deeply resent your presumptive and unwarranted intrusion into my personal life.
  4. Inasmuch as I both disagree with your politics and resent your intrusion – I will not do business with your company and hereby demand you remove my name from all lists.
  5. Injecting politics into business always is a losing proposition. Do your shareholders
  6. know about this and do they approve?”

  You have my permission to use or to modify the above language without attribution. If you disagree with the “do not print” warning or even if you are agnostic or supportive but don’t like people cramming their political views down your throat, then – by all means – fight back!

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