What I'm going to say here is heresy to the environmentalists out there, but like it or not, it's all true...

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Recycling paper is bad for trees. How can that be? Well, US law requires that for every ten trees a logging company cuts down, they have to plant around twelve more. There are more trees today in the US than there were in 1890, and the number is going steadily up, not down. If you want more trees, use more paper and cardboard, which means more trees logged, which means even more trees planted. It sounds insane, but it's true.

Are you recycling glass and plastic? You're hurting the economy and making us more dependent on foreign oil. Turns out that most landfills have a methane-collection program now: As the foodstuffs in your garbage decompose, they filter up into collectors, where that methane is burned to power electric generators. The glass and plastic are needed in the garbage for proper filtration. So garbage = electricity. Recycling = no electricity.

What about stuff made from recycled plastic and glass? Turns out that that's hurting the economy: It costs more --- nearly double to reuse glass and plastic than it does to just make new stuff. And what pays for the added cost of that recycling effort? Your tax dollars, which could be better spent on, oh, I dunno, maybe healthcare, stimulating the economy, making cars go 300 miles on a gallon of gas (cars like that really do exist!)...

Worried about landfills taking over the world? Try again. If you put all the landfills in the US together, you'd have a square landfill that was ten miles on each side. If you double that on both sides, you'll have enough landfill capacity to serve the US for the next 500 years, and yet it's still so tiny that you couldn't even see it from a low orbit in space. Of course, landfills are actually good, because their methane produces electricity; but even if you don't want to live next to one, it would take a lot more garbage than the the entire world could produce to smother even one small US state in the stuff. Wall-E is a cute story --- not a fortune reading.

What about the recycling jobs? Yep, there's nothing quite like getting paid minimum wage to stand in a line and sort dirty plastic bottles on a conveyor belt all day every day, knowing that your work is hurting the environment and the economy too. But, hey, if you want your tax dollars paying for the world's most meaningless and low-paid jobs instead of, say, a cure for cancer, more power to you.

What about electric cars? This one I love, because it sounds soooo cool to have a car that uses no gas and has no emissions! But... where's that electricity come from? Guess what: There's no such thing as a free lunch. Electricity comes from power plants, and most in the US still burn coal and natural gas. All you're doing is moving the emissions from the butt of your car to the top of the power plant --- and because of energy loss during distribution, it requires more emissions at the power plant than your car would've produced to provide you with the same quantity of energy. That's right --- your electric car will pollute more than your gas one does! Not only that, has anybody noticed the brownouts in the American West in recent years? We don't have the electricity for our current needs, we're not building new power plants because the environmentalists are scared of their pollution, and now you want to add gigawatts of new demand? Brilliant, people.

What about ethanol? It's renewable! That's easy. We're now putting the corn into our gas tanks instead of putting it into our food supply (feeding cows and pigs, for example), and that means food prices are going up all over the globe. It's also made gasoline more expensive because ethanol is still presently harder to manufacture than gasoline. Good job, enviros: Your new little pet law starved a million people to death, caused riots worldwide, and raised the price of gas to boot.

What about dependence on big oil? Guess what, folks, most of the "big oil companies" are big energy companies now. If we stopped buying oil and gas and started buying, say, hydrogen fuel cells, or hell, even magic beans, the big "oil" companies would just start selling magic beans and hydrogen fuel cells --- in fact, a lot of them are investing heavily in researching exactly that (the fuel cells, I mean; there's just no research support for magic beans these days). If you want to not be dependent on big companies, go live in a cave with nothing, because that's the only way you'll ever do it.

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I am all in favor of supporting our environment, in favor of those things which are genuinely good (like recycling aluminum cans, which is significantly cheaper and easier than mining new aluminum; and researching more fuel-efficient cars). But I'm dead-set against environmentalists, because most of them haven't a word of science to back up anything they say, and nearly everything they've proposed in the last thirty years will hurt the country far more than it'll help. There's no such thing as a free lunch: If you want a better environment and a better economy, you have to work hard to get them. Putting a soda bottle into a recycle bin might make you feel good, but that's all it's good for.

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So you want to support the environment for real? Try these:

• Go buy a newspaper, read it, and then throw it away. You've just become a more informed citizen, planted a tree, and produced a little electricity to boot.
  
• Buy a hybrid car. It's a little more expensive than a regular car, but that (A) puts more money into the economy, and (B) saves lots on gas, and (C) produces fewer emissions. And stop driving those damned SUVs and minivans and trucks that get ten miles to the gallon.
  
• Stop driving like a maniac. You can waste up to 20% of your gasoline at speeds over 60 MPH. Slow down and save a life --- and save gasoline too. Want to do more? Wash your car --- a clean car has less wind resistance and uses less gas. Don't hit the gas hard when you're leaving a stoplight or stop sign; you can waste up to 7% of your gasoline on quick starts --- and if you're flooring it at every stoplight, you should be shot.
  
• Carpool or save up your errands. If you carpool, or save your errands and only do them all in a group once a week, you're burning a lot less gasoline on zillions of random trips.
  
• Ride a bicycle. It saves lots on gas, produces almost no emissions (a little carbon dioxide, but that's it), and it's good for that spare tire you call a stomach, too.
  
• Use compact fluorescent bulbs in your lights. Yes, they're weird-looking, but they save electricity, which saves on coal burning and natural gas burning, which produces less pollution. Saves you money on your electric bill too.
  
• Turn stuff off when you're not using it. Lights, computers, TVs, stereos... they all add up, and they all pollute at the power plant and raise your electric bill.
  
• Recycle aluminum cans. They pump money into the economy, cut down on aluminum mining, and create jobs. They're the only form of recycling that's actually worth the effort.

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Update: What about references? What about proof? I left links out originally to keep the article short, but there's no shortage of people griping that recycling especially is being attacked here. So here are some links to nudge you in the right direction; this is by no means a comprehensive reference:

• Penn & Teller's Recycling episode is a great place to begin, and you can find a copy of it here:
  Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t: "Recycling"
  
  
• Daniel K. Benjamin, Professor of Economics and Clemson University, published a landmark paper on the subject of recycling:
  Eight Great Myths about Recycling
  
  
• The New York Times had a famous article in 1996 about the dismal failure of recycling; a copy is reproduced here by Williams College:
  "Recycling is Garbage
  
  
• As for the electric-car bit, Israel is about to make an ambitious attempt to switch their entire country to electric cars, and their project is being heavily watched by all sides. They've put billions of dollars into it, and their success or failure could determine the future of the electric car in ways that simple debating never will:
  News broadcast about Israel's "Project Better Place"

Those will point you in the right direction, and many contain suitable references to other sources. I would recommend only one additional thing, though: Don't believe anything written by the EPA on the subject before about the last ten years, and don't believe anything written by widely-discredited former EPA employee J. Winston Porter.