Yep, people forget that paper shopping bags were a huge environmental issue. Just like the anti-nuke activists, they created a much bigger problem than they solved.
This is very dubious. Unless paper bags are produced using timber from first-growth forests, growing and then cutting down the trees that were used to make them took carbon out of the atmosphere. When the paper bag decays or is burnt, they become roughly carbon neutral. But things that take carbon out of the atmosphere for a while as part of a cycle are generally good - by the time one particular paper bag has returned its carbon to the atmosphere, others have been made, and so there is some greenhouse gas reduction long term.
Paper bags are carbon-neutral. Plastic bags introduce new carbon into the environment.
Nuclear power is carbon-neutral (after the construction of the plant itself). Anti-nuke environmentalism in prior decades contributed to the continued and expanded use of coal, oil, and natural gas for power generation.
I don't really agree with the point about anti-nuke environmentalism. In the past many environmentalists were opposed to both nuclear energy (because of the risk of Chernobyl-style disasters or because of the implicit subsidy to nuclear weapons proliferation) and they were opposed to fossil fuel extraction and burning.
The people who were opposed to the environmentalist worldview were in favor of nuclear, but also in favor of fossil fuel generation and extraction (and CFCs, and leaded gasoline, and deforestation, and DDT, etc). They often very publicly argued that all these issues were bogus, that global warming could never happen, that we had nothing to worry about, that all these concerns were motivated by hatred of money or progress.
The environmentalists, on the other hand, tried hard to make a more abstract point - that we need to protect our environment and treat it as a precious good to be shared. This was obviously right.
Why should we cherry-pick one aspect of an environmentalist strategy from a very specific time and use it to blame them for "the continued and expanded use of coal, oil, and natural gas for power generation". Why aren't the numerous vocal cheerleaders of fossil fuels (who may have happened to be in favor of nuclear, but only because they generally argued that we should ignore all safety and resource depletion concerns) held to account here?
> The people who were opposed to the environmentalist worldview were in favor of nuclear, but also in favor of fossil fuel generation
Yes, I agree there were (and still are) people with that view. I said "contributed to" not "the sole cause of"
But I distinctly remember very organized activisim opposing nuclear power in the 1970s. I don't recall much if any opposing new coal plants. I'm sure there was some but they didn't make many headlines.
> I don't recall much if any opposing new coal plants.
I can't argue with your subjective recollections, but this is not by any means an accurate picture of environmentalism historically. Acid rain in West Germany (caused by burning coal) is pretty much ground zero of environmentalism as a politically organized force.
