[wmsiler]

>Folks would rather feel good and virtue signal than really solve the problem.

The idea that people are using reusable shopping bags because they want to virtue signal and not because of any actual desire to do good is a completely baseless and needlessly pessimistic viewpoint. A much more reasonable and likely explanation is that most people can't fully assess the environmental impact of their decisions, so they make the entirely reasonable assumption that if they can avoid throwing away a dozen plastic bags every week, then that's probably a good thing. That assumption may turn out to be incorrect, but that doesn't mean they have the harmful motivations you are accusing them of.

[waynecochran]

Did you even look at the graph? Reusable bags are fine, but this is pure silliness to think that this makes any real progress.

[SamBam]

The objection was to the idea that such people are "virtue signalling." It's such a silly and overused-term, generally used incorrectly, and used to snear at people doing good.

No, such people generally do think they are doing something worthwhile, and worthwhile things are right to do.

If, in fact, they are not doing anything worthwhile, which this graph suggests, then that is a mistake of the facts. It doesn't mean that they were just trying to "virtue signal."

[waynecochran]

But people are not, at least statistically, doing any measurable good. It is wrong to encourage non-solutions. Just be honest is all I am saying.

[SamBam]

From a climate-change only perspecitive, the original paper actually says that if you re-use a cotton bag just 53 times, you're already doing measurable good, and if you keep using it you keep doing more measurable good.

The higher number come from value judgements about other kids of impacts, and reasonable people can disagree over the relative values of those impacts vs climate change.