Delingpole: Now Corona Masks Are Polluting Beaches and Coral Reefs. Will They be Banned?

A BBC film crew has recorded heartbreaking footage of a once-beautiful coral reef in the Philippines choked with floating PPE equipment and discarded surgical masks.

Clearly this is a serious and growing problem.

According to the BBC report:

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is washing up on coral reefs close to the Philippine capital, Manila. According to an estimate by the Asian Development Bank, during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak, the city could have been generating up to 280 tonnes of extra medical waste per day.

Environmental groups are warning that the plastic inside face masks is breaking down and being consumed by marine wildlife. They’re urging the Philippine government to improve its handling of medical waste, to prevent further pollution of the seas.

Perhaps one day, we will hear whispery-voiced, gorilla-hugging Malthusian Sir David Attenborough talking wistfully about this threat to the marine environment on one of his politicised nature documentaries…

…but I’m not holding my breath.

That’s because I can’t help noticing a distinct correlation between eco-fascism and mask-fascism. That is, those individuals and institutions — such as the BBC — which have been pushing for the most draconian responses to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic (masks, lockdowns, quarantines, etc) also happen to those which have been pushing hardest for an extreme environmentalist agenda.

Attenborough’s 2017  Blue Planet II series successfully generated much public hysteria about the plastic crisis facing the world’s oceans. The then UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove pronounced himself ‘haunted’ by shocking footage, including a dead whale allegedly killed by plastic. The documentary prompted a global moral panic about the use of plastic.

In May 2019, surfing the wave of that Attenborough-generated anti-plastics moral panic, Gove pushed forward frivolous, virtue-signalling legislation banning plastic drinking straws, plastic drinks stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds.

I’d love to see Gove’s environmental conscience being similarly stirred by that horrifying mask-pollution footage from the Philippines. A ban on masks — all masks — forever. What a blessed relief that would be!