Austin’s Plastic Bag Ban Worse for Environment Than Bags It Outlaws

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CNSNews.com)-- In an effort to protect the environment, Austin,Texas passed an ordinance banning single-use plastic bags in 2013.

However, a recent review concludes that Austin’s bag ban has backfired, creating more negative effects on the environment than the plastic bags it outlawed.

“Beginning March 1, 2013, no person may provide single-use carryout bags at any City facility, City-sponsored event, or any event held on City property,” the ordinance reads. “Beginning March 1, 2013, a business establishment within the City limits may not provide single-use carryout bags to its customers or to any person.”

Two years after the bag ban was implemented, the city asked the Austin Resource Recovery group to investigate its effectiveness. Their June 10 report, written by Aaron Waters, states that while the ban was successful in lowering the amount of single-use plastic bags made from high-density polyethylene in city landfills, it was actually worse for the environment overall.

“The amount of single use plastic bags has been reduced, both in count and by weight,” Waters states. “However, in their place, the larger 4 mil [4/1,000ths of an inch] bags have replaced them as the go to standard when the reusable bag is left at home. This reusable plastic bag, along with the paper bag, has a very high carbon footprint compared to the single use bag.”

The 4 mil reusable bags are often made from non-recycled low-density polyethylene and require more resources to manufacture than the single-use bags, Waters explained. Many of the heavier gauge 4 mil bags are also shipped from overseas, which increases their carbon footprint compared to the single-use bags.

Via: CNS News

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[VIDEO] Industry on edge as EPA prepares to regulate airline emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon announce it plans to regulate airline emissions, asserting they contribute to global warming and endanger public health, according to industry and environmental groups. 

Those findings will prompt a regulatory process for the EPA to determine and enforce aircraft emissions limits, following a similar effort to limit emissions by cars, trucks and power plants. 

But conservatives say higher airplane efficiency standards will only force airlines to raise ticket prices or install more seats on already cramped flights. 

"Airlines already have a tremendous incentive to reduce fuel burn, and reduce CO2 emissions right now," said Sam Batkins, the director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum. "Airplanes themselves are already efficient and are already getting more efficient each year." 

Airlines are among the most efficiency-minded transportation industries. Normally tight-margin companies, the less fuel airlines burn, the more money they make.   

"There's not a market failure in airline efficiency," said Batkins. 

However, environmental groups contend airlines are failing to realize their full fuel-efficiency potential. 

"They can be doing things a lot more efficiently than they are now. And they've reached the peak of their incentive -- now they need a little push from the federal government to extract increased reductions," said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. "If the president is serious about hitting his climate target, which is reducing greenhouse gases by 28 percent in 2025, below 2005 levels, he can't ignore imposing additional greenhouse gas reductions on this uncontrolled industry." 

Becker said the industry could use lower-carbon fuels, idle engines less and further upgrade its systems. 

Via: Fox News

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The decline of Republican environmentalism

TWENTY-FIVE years ago tomorrow, from the sunny decks of an excursion boat touring Boston Harbor, George H.W. Bush, then the Republican candidate for president, launched a fierce attack on Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee. Bush said that Boston’s polluted waters — “the dirtiest harbor” in America — symbolized Dukakis’s failed leadership. He “will say that he will do for America what he’s done for Massachusetts,” Bush declared. “That’s why I fear for the country.” By delaying a major cleanup of the harbor, Bush said, Dukakis had cost taxpayers billions of dollars and allowed the pollution to continue, making “the most expensive public policy mistake in the history of New England.”

Bush’s attack on Dukakis stands out as perhaps the last time a prominent national Republican turned an environmental cause into a weapon against a Democratic opponent. And in that 25-year gap lies a lost path and a giant missed opportunity. Republicans no longer seriously contest the environmental vote; instead, they have run from it. Largely as a result, national environmental policy-making has become one-sided, polarized, and stuck. Republican politicians mostly deny the threat of climate disruption and block legislative solutions, while President Obama tries to go it alone with a shaky patchwork of executive actions. A middle ground on environmental policy remains a mirage.

WENDY MAEDA/GLOBE STAFF/FILE

George H.W. Bush visited Boston Harbor during his campaign on Sept. 6, 1988.

Bush’s presidency initially promised a different path. Bush’s feelings about the environment ran long and deep. Heading a House Republican task force in 1970, he called the “interrelationship between population growth and natural resources . . . the most critical problem facing the world.” He shared the environmental movement’s goals of improving the nation’s air and water. One of Bush’s signature achievements, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, instituted a cap-and-trade system to cut power plant pollution and reduce acid rain. The New York Times described the law as a “model for updating in the 1990s the other 1970s-era statutes that form the foundation of the nation’s environmental program.”

But then Bush abandoned the Republican environmental resurgence he had begun to build. By the end of his presidency, he was pitting economic growth against environmental regulation. Bush mocked 1992 vice presidential nominee Al Gore as “Ozone Man,” declaring that Gore was “so far out in the environmental extreme we’ll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American.”

What explains the switch? Despite significant environmental gains during his presidency, Bush’s leadership faltered as the issues grew more complex, abstract, and international. The raw sewage pouring into Boston Harbor had created a local constituency for change and a clear solution. By contrast, largely invisible and computer-modeled threats like climate change affected everyone, but far in the future. Negotiating international agreements to limit greenhouse gas emissions thus provoked fierce ideological debates over scientific knowledge, economic regulation, and national sovereignty.

Via: The Boston Globe

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The EPA’s Planned Destruction of the U.S. Economy

If there was no other reason to defeat President Obama in November, it would be the planned destruction of what is left of the U.S. economy by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2012” the minority staff (Republican) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has issued a chilling review of a massive rise in the costs of living for all Americans, massive layoffs in all sectors of the economy, and the destruction of the nation’s energy and manufacturing sectors.

The report provides a nightmarish look at the regulations that EPA plans to initiate, having put them under cover prior to Election Day in order to hide President Obama’s agenda of attacking the energy sector and businesses large and small.
Here’s a list of the regulations:

• Greenhouse gas regulation via the Clean Air Act
• An Ozone rule
• Hydraulic Fracturing
• Florida’s Numeric Nutrient Criteria
• EPA’s water guidance under the Clean Water Act
• Stormwater regulation
• Tier II Gas regulations
• Boiler MACT rule
• Cement MACT rule
• 316(b) Cooling Tower rule
• Coal ash
• Farm dust regulation
• Spill prevention control and Countermeasure rule

These proposed regulations in aggregate, if enacted—that is to say if not stopped by congressional action based on Republican control of both the House and Senate—would prove disastrous, starting in 2013.

For example, the utterly bogus greenhouse gas regulations are based on the debunked global warming theory that says too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to heat when, in fact, the Earth has been cooling since 1998 and there is zero evidence that CO2 has any impact on the temperature of the planet.

Via: Canada Free Press

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20,000 Private Construction Jobs and Obama says "No"?, "Maybe"?, "Yes"?

Recently President Obama decided he was going to delay his decision to approve the XL Pipeline until after the election in 2012 much to the surprise to all the parties involved. His reasoning was the project needed additional environmental studies to determine the viability and safety of the project. After almost 3 ½ years of exhaustive review, review and more review he was still not sure if it was safe enough to build.  Let’s also note that the extensive approval process for a project of this magnitude has never happened before.

The regulatory hurdle that has blocked the approval of this much needed pipeline will not stop Canada from building the pipeline.  It would be naïve to think that Trans-Canada is sitting on their hands waiting for a decision from Obama.  They will continue with their plans to produce upwards to a million barrels of much needed oil from the Tar Sands Pipeline and instead of the United States being the beneficiary the oil will probably go to oil starved China.  The proposed pipeline would run from Alberta, Canada to Texas and pass through six states.