I love government coverups, especially when the purpose of the coverup is to keep government bureaucrats from being embarrassed. This time, British government bureaucrats are so embarrassed that they've gone on the "diaper defensive":

A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a "defensive" stance towards its conclusions.

The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.

To reduce the impact of cloth nappies on climate change parents would have to hang wet nappies out to dry all year round, keep them for years for use on younger children, and make sure the water in their washing machines does not exceed 60C.

The conclusions will upset proponents of real nappies who have claimed they can help save the planet.

I'm not surprised in the least. The environmentalists' relentless crusade against anything "disposable" has always struck me as more emotional and moralistic than rational or logical. There's this idea that anything made of or resembling plastic is evil, and old fashioned things are more "natural" and therefore better for "the environment" (whatever that is). It's like, cultivating and harvesting plants, then extracting their fibers and weaving them into cloth for diapers, or chopping up sapling trees for pulp then making them into brown paper bags, is somehow morally superior to making plastic from petroleum. Never mind that all of these raw materials come from "the environment." The former is "natural," while the latter is "artificial." Logic has very little to do with it.

I also suspect there's a ferocious streak of neo-Puritan work ethic involved. Something about making ordinary people wash diapers -- by hand if possible, followed by hanging them up to dry -- appeals to those who manufacture morality.

Little wonder the British government is embarrassed. If there's one thing lefties can't stand, it's being laughed at:

Restricted Whitehall documents, seen by The Sunday Times, show that the government is so concerned by the "negative laundry options" outlined in the report, it has told its media managers not to give its conclusions any publicity.

The report found that while disposable nappies used over 2½ years would have a global warming , impact of 550kg of CO2 reusable nappies produced 570kg of CO2 on average. But if parents used tumble dryers and washed the reusable nappies at 90C, the impact could spiral to . 993kg of CO2 A Defra spokesman said the government was shelving plans for future research on nappies.

Take the recycling fad. (Please.) It costs cities more money to recycle than it would simply to haul everything to a landfill:

Recycling costs about twice as much as dumping the material at a landfill, says Bucknell University environmental economist Thomas Kinnaman.

He says recycling doesn't make much economic or environmental sense, but it's so popular with some consumers that it's understandable why cities do it.

"Recycling is more like entertainment," says Kinnaman, who recycles. "People enjoy it because it makes them feel less guilty about their effect on the environment."

In politically correct places like San Francisco where there are battles between activists with competing or contradictory goals, things can go from being merely embarrassing to utterly ridiculous. As if it's not enough that the city loses money on recycling, they had to implement severe legal sanctions against scofflaws who don't recycle, now the City of San Francisco is talking about tough new laws to crack down on independent recyclers!

That's because there's a "recycling war." On the streets of San Francisco:

A recycling war is breaking out on the Bay Area's curbsides.

Those ubiquitous, colorful recycling bins people set out each week for pickup stand squarely on a battle line between growing numbers of organized crews who snag cans and bottles and the official waste haulers who say "poachers" are increasingly hostile and dangerous.

It seems organized crews have been going out into the pre-dawn light to raid San Francisco residents' recycling bins. They then sell the glass, plastic and aluminum to recycling centers. The regular garbage collectors say the crews can be hostile and dangerous. Residents have filed thousands of complaints.

I see people picking through my recycling bins all the time. I never thought it was a problem. Little did I know that recycling theft is illegal, and that the city is losing lots of money to these scavengers.

But, if I have to choose, I'll side with the scavengers. It's obvious the people picking through the garbage need that money. Badly.

Are we putting profit before people, or are we putting the environment before people?

It's very confusing.

As I keep saying, newly manufactured "morality" can get incredibly complicated.