The ACT wants to ban plastic takeaway containers. Here's the problem

I think of the countless takeaway curries which I have eaten, often late at night, and wonder how that pleasure may continue.

There is to be consultation first. Of course, there is.

"The strategy will consider how we create and support new jobs, better manage problematic waste streams and design supply chains to stop waste streams from emerging in the first place," City Services Minister Chris Steel said.

Except, he can't have said that. The robotic prose was clearly - or rather, unclearly - written by a computer. Where is the "problematic waste stream"? And what is a "design supply chain"?

All the same, you get the drift. Plastic is bad, bad, bad and we, the puritan police, are coming after it - and after you if you are so morally dead as to use the evil stuff.

There is a section of the green movement which gives the impression that its aim is not actually to head off global warming by espousing concrete, detailed policies which involve hard thinking about economics and engineering.

The aim seems to be, rather, to impose its own miserabilist view on the world and its citizens. The eco-puritans seem to see virtue in being uncomfortable. Why drive when you should cycle? Why turn the heating on when you could just put on more layers?

And so the war on pleasure continues with this new front against takeaway containers, the containers on which countless ethnic restaurants in Canberra depend for their trade. Let me point out that plastic in its many forms is one of the great inventions of modern times. From polyethylene, polystyrene, to nylon, it enriches our lives. It makes life more affordable for people in poor countries.

It is waterproof and flexible - the word itself comes from the Greek "plastikos" which means "fit for molding, capable of being molded into various forms".

It has made our lives immensely better. And it has made the environment immensely better by providing insulation to buildings. Replacing metal in cars with plastic reduces the weight of the vehicle, and so the amount of carbon fuel needed to move the vehicle at any given speed.

Plastics make modern life possible because they are essential to phones, televisions, computers and every other electronic gizmo.

Because of the lightness of plastics, they protect food in transportation. Think of the immense carbon footprint of a bottle of wine made of glass. I do not hear anyone in the well-heeled green movement suggesting that lighter plastic flasks should be substituted to lower the weight and so the carbon cost of transportation.

Nobody argues that the plastic pipes which take our waste away should be replaced by old-fashioned copper.

Or that ivory should replace the plastics which make up most modern piano keyboards. Or that steel syringes should return to our hospitals.

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But in the less thoughtful corners of the green movement, plastic seems to have become a dirty word. There is some sort of mystical phobia about it, presumably because it is not "natural".

Of course, plastic should be recycled. Of course, single-use plastic should be discouraged, either by regulation or price.

But reducing a carbon footprint is not straightforward, despite what the sloganeers and virtue-signallers seem to think. Sometimes even plastic is virtuous.

You might argue that virtue-signalling hurts nobody, and if it draws attention to an important issue then it might do a little bit of good.

I disagree. The danger with virtuous but inconsequential gestures is that they give the illusion of action. They justify inaction in other important areas. We put out the recycling bin - and then jump in the four-wheel drive without a guilty thought.

Being miserable won't save the planet.