Dear NY Times: Guilty Comforts
Editor, The New York Times
To the Editor:
Yesterday you devoted precious front-page space to a report on the environmental costs of soft toilet paper ("Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests," Feb. 26). While I have no reason to doubt that, compared with manufacturing less-fluffy toilet paper, manufacturing fluffy toilet paper requires more tree-cutting, I resent your puritanical presumption that we Americans should feel guilty about our taste for maximum comfort in the commode.
And keep in mind that if it's acceptable to criticize consumer demands that result in a volume of tree-cutting deemed by environmentalists to be "unnecessary," criticism of consumers for reading newsPAPERS (rather than getting their news from the likes of blogs and television) will soon follow. Your business might be wiped out.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
Don Boudreaux is the Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a Business & Media Institute adviser.
