Recycling and the prospect of alien invasion

My sources (by which I mean the little voices) have informed me that the aliens are at it again. That's right, folks. Once again we face annihilation as a species. This case is peculiar, however. Previous means used by the alien horde have been comparatively subtle. This one is blatantly obvious. I wonder why I failed to notice it before. Recycling is evil. Follow carefully.

We begin with what recycling actually is: conversion of existing material into another usable form. This means that less production is necessary. Which means less production actually occurs. Thus the industry of Man becomes conversion of one substance into another, of McDonald's wrappers into newspapers, of plastic bottles into Tupperware. The impact of this is that Man eventually loses the ability to produce, to strip mine coal or pump oil or turn trees into houses or turn raw materials into massive directed energy weapons to engage the alien forces. We won WWII through sheer economic might and unrivaled production. The aliens will not allow us this strategy a second time. (That's right, a second time. No human has a mustache like Hitler's or Mussolini's.)

The effects of recycling reach beyond eliminating our ability to build directed-energy weapons. Even if recycling fails to completely supplant production the aliens are in excellent shape. Even a decline in production involves a decrease in the number of jobs available. Recycling jobs are all well and good, but most of them have already been claimed by robots and members of the Earth Liberation Front (often the two are hard to distinguish, but usually the robots are easier to reason with). The result, once recycling really comes into its own, is widespread unemployment. President Obama will respond by Creating Jobs and buying up the Legacy Assets (I kid you not, that's what he's calling toxic assets) because, as a lefty, that's essentially what he does. The ensuing economic instability will cause shortages and riots. Eventually America's (and soon the world's) population will be split into two factions: the robots and the Earth Liberation Front members (everyone else having emigrated offworld to escape the Congressional Hearings about how This Is Everyone Else's Fault and We Are Going to Frown Importantly Down at You and Watch Our Approval Rating Meters Climb Because of the People Who Are Grateful Not to Be the Targets of Our Multiple Chin-Quivering Wrath). The Earth Liberation Front will launch a savage attack on the recycling robots using eco-friendly weapons like sticks and dirt. Oddly enough, this will have exactly no effect. The robots will then begin converting ELFers into newspapers, Tupperware, and directed energy weapons. The aliens just have to do some quick reprogramming and they will have gained another planet. Not to mention a free, Energy Star-approved army of robots.

Is there a solution? Yes. Start suing your local environmentalist group for destroying the planet and/or conspiring to hand it over the alien forces. You'll be amazed at how seriously the courts take you.