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New York Becomes America's Third State To Ban Plastic Bags (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and fellow Democrats who control the Legislature have reached a deal to make New York the third state with a ban on single-use plastic grocery bags as they worked to finalize budget agreements, officials said Friday. The ban would prohibit grocery stores from providing plastic bags for most purchases, something California has been doing since a statewide ban was approved in 2016. Hawaii has an effective statewide ban, with all its counties imposing their own restrictions....
New York's ban wouldn't take effect until next March. The plan also calls for allowing local governments the option to impose a 5-cent fee on paper bags, with 3 cents going to the state's Environmental Protection Fund and 2 cents kept by local governments.
Meanwhile, Tennessee's state House and Senate have passed a different kind of bill -- one that bans local Tennessee governments from regulating plastic bags, according to local channel WMC.
One Memphis councilman had proposed allowing the use of plastic bags, but with a seven-cent tax to support clean water initiatives. "But that won't happen if the governor signs the bill to 'ban the bans.'"
New York's ban wouldn't take effect until next March. The plan also calls for allowing local governments the option to impose a 5-cent fee on paper bags, with 3 cents going to the state's Environmental Protection Fund and 2 cents kept by local governments.
Meanwhile, Tennessee's state House and Senate have passed a different kind of bill -- one that bans local Tennessee governments from regulating plastic bags, according to local channel WMC.
One Memphis councilman had proposed allowing the use of plastic bags, but with a seven-cent tax to support clean water initiatives. "But that won't happen if the governor signs the bill to 'ban the bans.'"
These days, it seems like all our governments are doing is solving artificial problems of their own creation. The government-paid garbage haulers cut down the number of people on garbage trucks down from two to one, and suddenly they litter more, and plastic bags start turning up in our streams. So how do they solve it? By properly staffing the garbage trucks? No. By fining the garbage haulers for not cleaning up after themselves? No. Instead of blaming the people who litter, they blame the litter itself, and ban the plastic bags.
So what happens as a result? Do people start bringing reusable bags? Maybe somebody does, but nearly every person I see in front of me at the grocery is buying bags, which suggests that we're really just using a LOT more oil for the same benefit. And although there are about half as many bags blowing around because of the heavier weight, the bags that are still blowing around are an order of magnitude thicker and take decades to photodegrade instead of disintegrating into tiny bits after a year, which means they create far more environmental contamination per bag.
So what's next? Obviously, they'll ban the reusable plastic bags and demand that everyone move to paper. And we'll be back to the 1970s, with bags tearing all the time, people complaining about cutting down too many trees for no reason, etc. And then they'll ban that, and folks will go back to the 1960s, and start getting things delivered to their houses. And when you add up how much oil gets consumed as a net result, well, to make a long story short, this is how the planet burns. All for want of a plastic bag.
No, these laws are just plain silly. They're a great example of environmentalism run amok, in which a bunch of people who don't have enough to do come up with hare-brained ideas and don't bother to do a proper cost-benefit analysis before ramming them down everybody's throats. Plastic bag bans are about as poorly thought out as laws can get. At least in theory, Tennessee has the right idea... but only if they also fix their garbage truck problem. I won't hold my breath on that last part.
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As George Carlin once said, "The Planet is fine, the people are fucked. We're going away folks, pack your shit."
The big lie of the Environmental movement is that they're saving "the planet". And that humanity is ruining "the planet". It's bullshit. The planet has survived for billions of years, been hit by mile wide asteroids, gone through at least 5 ice ages, created continents, destroyed continents, and has had much higher CO2 in the Jurasic period. You think some plastic bags are a real threat... to the planet?
The environmental movement better stop lying that they're saving "the planet". We're trying to save our environment, and we better start talking that way.