What does being a "Liberal" mean? (US)

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by glatt

DC started taxing the plastic bags. It's basically a commuter tax. It has worked. When I go into the shops around here to pick up one or two items, I just hold them or put them in my pockets now.

Witness unintended consequences: no bag means more trips, means more energy used.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Witness unintended consequences: no bag means more trips, means more energy used.

You need more pockets.

[glatt]

For me, it makes no real difference. I'm always on foot when I'm shopping in DC, so I'm only ever buying an item or two. A greeting card, or a book, or a toner cartridge, etc. I would always just take the bag because it was too much effort to talk to the clerk and tell them I didn't want one, and I really didn't care either way. But now that each bag costs 10 cents, or something like that, they always ask, and I always say no.

[Pico and ME]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Witness unintended consequences: no bag means more trips, means more energy used.

Aldis charges for their bags and I have noticed that a lot of shoppers there are starting to bring their own. If other stores did the same because of a tax, that would end up being the intended consequence.

[Undertoad]

I believed, at that time (although I never would have admitted to it in these terms, but the concept is unavoidable), that a legitimate use of the government would be to impose ideas on some people "for their own good" simply because the rest of us were so convinced that we had all the answers.

I don't believe that anymore.

I'm still a believer...

Originally Posted by Wegman's

Myth: Paper bags are a better environmental choice than plastic bags.
Fact: Paper takes more water and energy to produce than plastic and since paper is heaver, the environmental impact is greater to truck paper bags from the manufacturing facility to a warehouse and then to a store. Whatever your choice, paper or plastic, be sure to reuse or recycle them or use a reusable bag.

Believe on, you hippies. It will make you FEEL like you've done something, which is important to you.

Your choice of bag has less impact than the fuel used to start your car to go to the market, and plastic bags are just as easy to recycle as paper, and it takes a ton more manufacturing to make "reusable" bags, and to wash them properly requires hot water and detergent. So the question remains which is actually better... but whatever!

This is like the TSA, where the important thing is for people to FEEL safe, not for people to BE safe. You need to FEEL like you've done something, even if you haven't.

Now this is subtle: while Portland was burning calories telling people which bag to use, how many more meaningful, more important questions were left hanging?

[glatt]

Thing about plastic bags is that some people don't recycle or throw them away properly. They end up on the ground, and then get washed into the gutter and down the storm drain and into the local river, where they get tangled up on the shore and look like crap and also might kill some wildlife. If that happens with a paper bag, when it rains, it just gets all mushy and disintegrates in a few weeks.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Believe on, you hippies. It will make you FEEL like you've done something, which is important to you.

<snip>

Now this is subtle: while Portland was burning calories telling people which bag to use,
how many more meaningful, more important questions were left hanging?

Such as ? Let us know and we'll get right them.
.
.
.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Your choice of bag has less impact than the fuel used to start your car to go to the market, and plastic bags are just as easy to recycle as paper, and it takes a ton more manufacturing to make "reusable" bags, and to wash them properly requires hot water and detergent.

Wash them properly?

Watchoo talkin bout Willis? I only wash them if something spills, and even then I just toss them in the next load I'm doing anyway.

As for the disposable bags, when I run low on them I pay the 5 cents to DC, and use plastic ones as garbage can liners, and paper ones ('cause they stand up on their own) to store and transport my recycling.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Wash them properly?

Watchoo talkin bout Willis? I only wash them if something spills, and even then I just toss them in the next load I'm doing anyway.

Your bag is now contaminated with everything that can contaminate fruits and vegetables, which is more than we suspect. So, if you would wash that cantaloupe this afternoon, wash your bag more often, would be my advice.

[classicman]

Deforestation will always continue, but there are things you can do to help the environment.
Always remember the three "R"s:
Reduce the amount of plastic and waste products you have to use.
Reuse things like water bottles, foam trays, and plastic shopping bags as much as you can.
Recycle bottles, cans, newspaper, cardboard and other recyclables.

70% of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.

Forest soil is generally moist, but can quickly dry out without the protection of a forest canopy.This can also majorly effect the animals living in that particular climate.

Fewer forests means larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.

[Undertoad]

Deforestation is an important worldwide problem, but there is a reason that map stops at 1920: after that, the US was the model of RE-forestation, and today it would look more like 1850 than 1920.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

For the 300 years following the arrival of Europeans, land was cleared, mostly for agriculture, at a rate that matched the rate of population growth. For every person added to the population, one to two hectares of land was cultivated. This trend continued until the 1920s when the amount of crop land stabilized in spite of continued population growth. As abandoned farm land reverted to forest the amount of forest land increased from 1952 reaching a peak in 1963 of 3,080,000 km² (762 million acres). Since 1963 there has been a steady decrease of forest area with the exception of some gains from 1997. Gains in forest land have resulted from conversions from crop land and pastures at a higher rate than loss of forest to development. Because urban development is expected to continue, an estimated 93,000 km² (23 million acres) of forest land is projected be lost by 2050, a 3% reduction from 1997.

[classicman]

thanks UT. I didn't know that.

[Undertoad]

Yeah I was first amazed by a pamphlet on New Hampshire forests, which said that NH was something like 98% forest in 1700, 20% forest 100 years ago, and 95% forest today. I can't remember the exact figures but it was on that level, enough to be sort of shocking.

(Someone tell the local food movement that they are encouraging American deforestation!)

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Yeah I was first amazed by a pamphlet on New Hampshire forests, which said that NH was something like 98% forest in 1700, 20% forest 100 years ago, and 95% forest today. I can't remember the exact figures but it was on that level, enough to be sort of shocking.

I took an ecology course in college and one of the books we read was Changes in the Land. I loved that book, it spends a lot of time talking about just this. There was a series of photographs in there taken from a hillside in Connecticut, I believe. It showed a forested valley, and then rolling farmland and fields, and then a forested valley again. Anyone who has hiked through the woods and seen stone walls should hopefully be aware at how much the land has changed.

[classicman]

In doing a little reading on this. (I'm avoiding sanding the drywall)
I found this site. Some good points. I have no idea how valid they are though.
For those who don't go to links ...

Where it comes from: Paper.

Paper comes from trees, and the pulpwood tree industry is large. It begins with logging, where select trees are found, marked, and felled. After they're cut, roads are built into the forest on which the large machinery, used to load and transport the timber, can be moved. This process creates a tremendous scar in the forests natural habitat(s), for both plant and animal. It can take over a century for nature to recover from even a small logging operation. Addedly, if the small operation clears only 10 acres, many hundreds of acres surrounding are affected due to the extreme interplay/interdependency in nature.

Let it be added further that a large amount of heavy machinery is used, all having its own story on how it came to be, all needing its own upkeep, and all needing its own fossil fuel, to operate. On top of this, there is the human element. Logging is dangerous. Extreme fatigue, long term physical handicaps, and numerous accidents plague the less-than-wealthy loggers.

Logs are moved from the forest to a mill. Whence they reach a mill, there is a three year wait before they can be used, allowing proper drying. When the time comes, the logs are stripped of bark, and chipped into inch-wide squares. They are stored until needed, and then cooked with tremendous heat and pressure. After this, they are are "digested" with a limestone and sulphurous acid for eight hours. The steam and moisture is vented into the outside atmosphere, and the original wood becomes pulp. For every ton of pulp made it takes over three tons of wood, initally.

The pulp is washed and bleached, both stages requiring thousands of gallons of clean water. After this, coloring is added to more water, and is then combined in a ratio of 1 part pulp to 400 parts water to finally make paper. The pulp/water "brew" is dumped onto a web of bronze wires, the water showers through, leaving the pulp, which, in turn, is rolled into finished paper.

It must be noted that this is the paper making process. All cutting, printing, packaging, and shipping, requires additional time, labor, and energy, on top of the already exorbant amounts of capital, electricity, chemicals, and fossil fuels used.

Where it comes from: Plastic.

Plastic comes from oil, and the oil industry is no small operation. In many places around the world, and in the U.S., sites exist where the geologic conditions are such that a gas and oil concentration has been trapped. Upon location of these traps, a hole is drilled and a pipe rammed into the oil deposit. The oil is pushed to the surface due to pressure in its chamber, and also from the weight of earth above. The oil drilling operation, itself, has become a rather small and sterile undertaking. An oil drilling/pumping rig is roughly the size of a house, and very little oil is spilled, anymore. Literally, you could 'mine' oil in your backyard.

At the drilling site, a storage drum is filled, and, when full, the content oil is loaded into trucks, but sometimes piped, to a refining facility. This is where plastic is made.

Plastic comes as a by-product of oil refining, and uses only 4% of the total worlds oil production. It is a 'biogeochemical' manipulation of certain properties of oil, into polymers, that behave 'plastically.' Plastic polymers are manufactured into 5 main types, of which, plastic bags are made of the type known as Polyethylene. Raw Polyethylene comes from oil refineries as resin pellets, usually 3-5 mm diameter, by 2-3 mm tall. The raw material, as it is called, since it is plastic, can be manipulated into any shape, form, size, or color. It is water tight, and can be made UV resistant. Anything can be printed on it, and it can be reused.

Since plastic is so maliable, there are numerous process used to turn plastic into finished goods. To make bags, a machine heats the Polyethylene to about 340 F and extrudes, or pulls out from it, a long, very thin, tube of cooling plastic. This tube has a hot bar dropped on it at intervals however long the desired bag is to be, melting a line . Each melt line becomes the bottom of one bag, and the top of another. The sections, then, are mearely cut out, and a hole that is to be used as the bags' handle is stamped in each piece. Further finishing may be done such as, screen printing, however, for the majority of bags, it's off to the stores, etc., where they will be used.

With the exception of large, fuel burning, heavy machinery, used in the aquisition of oil, the entire plastic bag making process uses only electricity. The electricity used from start to resin/raw material is mostly nuclear. The power used in the bag manufacturing, for the most part, comes from coal fire power plants. One interesting note is that approximately 50% of the electricity generated from coal burning power plants is not from coal at all, it is, in fact, wrought from the burning of old tires, they being made of rubber, which is plastic.