Pathetic cowards

Jeff Stier and Henry I. Miller at NRO provide us with the latest example of large, successful organizations ostensibly run by rational grownups indulging the madness that is rotting our civilization:

oth of the nation’s retail hardware behemoths, Home Depot and Lowe’s, recently sold out to activists in ways that are the corporate equivalent of a dog’s putting his tail between his legs and slinking away from a bully. Home Depot announced that by the end of this year it will stop selling vinyl flooring that contains a class of chemicals called phthalates. It described the move as an effort to “continually challenge our suppliers to develop new, innovative options for our customers.” Baloney. What the company did was abandon both science and its customers under pressure from the activist group Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, which sponsors the “Mind the Store” campaign that has been strong-arming retailers to remove safe, useful, and affordable products from shelves.

Determined not to lag in the Stupid-Strategy Sweepstakes, Lowe’s announced not only that it will follow Home Depot’s lead on phthalates, but also that it will phase out the sale of products that contain neonicotinoid pesticides — which are widely used on turf and ornamental products as well as on corn and soybean seeds — supposedly because of their adverse effects on pollinators. “Lowe’s will include greater organic and non-neonic product selections, work with growers to eliminate the use of neonic pesticides on bee-attractive plants it sells and educate customers and employees through in-store and online resources,” the company said. 

But you see, the honeybee population is not imperiled:

Contrary to oft-repeated claims, honeybee populations are not declining. According to U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization statistics, the world’s honeybee population rose to 80 million colonies in 2011 from 50 million in 1960. In the U.S. and Europe, honeybee populations have been stable (or even rising slightly over the past couple of years) during the two decades since neonics were introduced, according to U.N. and USDA data. Statistics Canada reports an increase to 672,000 honeybee colonies in Canada, up from 501,000, over the same two decades.

Stier and Miller go on to make the key point that "green" alternatives to the products these companies are 86ing already exist.  They cost a bit more, but that's always a factor in the decisions consumers make.

But those alternatives aren't some kind of glorious replacement for the normal-people products that customers were perfectly happy buying:

The “Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families” bullies have a track record of spreading misleading information about the safety profile of chemicals in products that benefit consumers. Their baseless fear-mongering plays to the psychological phenomenon of “loss aversion,” in which people perceive the pain of loss more than they do the pleasure of gain. Their junk science has targeted a wide range of chemicals, including those found in cleaning supplies, furniture, children’s toys, food packaging, water bottles, and even commonly used food ingredients. 

This of course all got started, as is the case with so much else, during the flowering of the counterculture some half-century ago.  In a rush to be exotic and to make a clean break with thousands of years of Western advancement precisely because it was square and our of it, the communal / tribal types eschewed the very approaches that had made for a safe, convenient modern world.

It was madness, but it sure had appeal.  Now the square old managements of Home Depot and Lowe's are on board.

But it was not the appeal of the veracity of what the sprout-munchers were preaching.  It was an understanding that those sprout-munchers, those Prius drivers sporting "coexist" bumper stickers, are actually goose-stepping jackboots in prairie dresses and faded jeans with the power to ruin your business if you don't buy into their lies.