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Windmill generators: See this page. Ethanol: See this page. 1.6-gallon toilets: Low-flow toilets cause a stink in SF. San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink. Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months. San Francisco's Crapper Control Goes Foul. This summer, as the San Francisco Giants were steaming toward winning the World Series, there was a noticeable stench surrounding their home field, AT&T Park. The Giant's ballyard hugs the San Francisco Bay. During low tide, as the bay water ebbs, and microscopic organisms in the mud are exposed to air and rapidly begin to decay, creating a rotten smell. During past baseball seasons, fans continually complained of the low-tide stink. However, the sulfur-like scent wasn't the result of the ways of the sea. It was caused by environmentalists having their way with Mr. Crapper's invention — the flush toilet. Losing the war on common sense. In an effort to save water, the city of San Francisco decided to switch to low-flow toilets. The city decided to pay people up to $200 to replace their toilets. Plumbers liked the program. It gave them work. The low-flow toilets save 5,200 gallons of water each year per family. It was a brilliant plan, except sewers rely on water to keep things, uh, flowing. The high price of saving water is catching up, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. California Hotels Go Green With Low-Flow Toilets, Solar Lights. Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming. Planet Parenthood. People on the leftward side of the political spectrum say they want to "keep government out of your bedroom," by which they usually mean they oppose restrictions on abortion. … But it's an oddity of today's politics that abortion proponents tend to be allied with environmentalists, and environmentalists want government in every room in your house, from the bathroom (mandatory low-flow toilets) to the kitchen (energy saving appliances) to the garage (fuel-economy standards) to — well, any room with artificial lighting (the bulbs had better be the compact fluorescent variety). Should Obama be the hospital hall monitor? In 1992, Congress got this hare-brained idea to limit the water in a toilet tank to 1.6 gallons per flush. The first President Bush signed this into law. It is as if Washington were run by a bunch of Tidy Bowl men rowing in the tank of my toilet. Congress passed the law to conserve water. But there is no shortage of water in Poca, W.Va. Unflushable: Not content to turn the bathrooms of the western world into chambers of low-flushing horrors, some environmentalists have a new target: toilets as such. They want to make sure they "save water" by preventing developing countries from installing any flush toilets at all. Rand Paul and the 19-Year Libertarian War on Low-Flow Toilets. [Scroll down] The low-flow (1.6 gallon) limit on toilets was instituted with the 1992 Energy Policy Act, signed into law by George H.W. Bush. Prior to that, toilets used anywhere from 3.5 to 5 gallons, according to major toilet manufacturer American Standard. In 1999, then-Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.) introduced a law to repeal the restriction, along with other efficiency standards for faucets, showerheads and urinals instituted in the 1992 bill. Somewhat related... Trying to Avoid Regulations? The Department of Energy is Not Amused. Last month, the Department of Energy issued a "Showerhead Enforcement Guidance" related to flow standards through consumer showerheads. You see, it turns out that "efficiency standards" tend to upset people, as it usually leads to products being outlawed that people really like. What happened was that certain showerhead manufacturers were taking a bit of creative license in interpreting the definition of a "showerhead," and selling showerheads that (by the DOE's standards) exceeded the maximum allowable 2.5 gallons per minute. Banning Toilet Paper: Going Back In Time. What sort of future are green groups pushing us toward? If they get their way, it will be one that won't look much different than the world our great-grandparents were born into. While some want to put an end to soft toilet paper, the Brits are moving toward a regime in which workers who discharge "more than their fair share of carbon emissions" will have their pay docked. Meanwhile, in California, regulators are hoping to ban big-screen TVs. Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper. There is a battle for America's behinds. It is a fight over toilet paper... The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods. The March Of The New Luddites: Global-warming alarmists now want to limit our use of toilet paper. What's next, one-room shacks with bamboo fences? Don't laugh. That's also on their list of recommendations. Live Green, Die Green. The media have been all over stories of eccentric families' toilet paperless lifestyles and their green weddings, but now CNN has pushed the peripheries of ecological awareness to the end of life by making the case for a green funeral. Biodiesel: Draft EPA report: Biofuels threaten habitat, water quality. A draft Environmental Protection Agency report concludes that expanded production of renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel carries an array of ecological risks in the U.S. and other nations, and calls for improved policies to mitigate these harms. The report is required under a 2007 energy law that vastly increased the national biofuels mandate but also called for new analysis of the ecological effects of expanded development. The Biofuels Scam. Since 2007 the price of food around the world has just about doubled. Bad harvests, inflation, or George Bush didn't cause this price increase. According to a secret report from the World Bank, reported in the UK's Guardian, 75% of the increase in price has one source: "Biofuels." This contrasts with US claims of only a 3% biofuels-caused increase. The World Bank also says that rising food prices have pushed 100 million people worldwide below the poverty line. Riots have been sparked from Bangladesh to Egypt. Where is the outrage? Where are the MSNBC stories on food riots? It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist…. [Here]'s what has been happening in the fuel tanks of trucks across Minnesota because of the biodiesel mandate that was put into effect last year. Over 60% of the diesel trucks in the state have had their fuel tanks and fuel filters gummed up by the soybean oil that the government forced into the fuel tanks. Biodiesel is now slightly cheaper than regular diesel. While soaring fuel costs are the bane of most businesses, Oregon makers of biodiesel are celebrating. Their product now is cheaper than the stuff that comes out of the ground. Orang-utans home destroyed for bio-diesel. The Orang-utans of Borneo are facing an unprecedented threat as their habitat is destroyed to satisfy increasing global demands for bio-fuel. As jungles are rapidly replaced by palm oil plantations, the great apes starve and are hunted, mutilated, burnt and snared by workers protecting their crops. At a rehabilitation centre run by the charity Borneo Orang-utan Survival, there are more than 600, mostly orphaned babies. Green Tech Defined: Remember the local news headline where the science teacher converted his '82 Volvo wagon to run on the grease from McDonald's? The press, fellow teachers, and students swooned at how green-conscious and forward-looking the teacher was. Not surprisingly, no student asked if there were enough burger joints to power a lot of cars and, if there were, whether or not the infrastructure (e.g., gas stations) to distribute French Fry Fuel exists. [This is an example of] technology that seems visionary but whose "Green" value is illusory because the real environmental or financial costs are concealed, or the widespread adoption of the technology is impossible, or because it is financially unavailable to most Americans. Biofuel: Bad for the Environment? Two new studies released Thursday [4/10/2008] call into question the global movement toward biofuel. According to these researchers, production of biofuel actually contributes to global warming, doing more harm than good. Biofuels may harm more than help. Biofuels, championed for reducing energy reliance, boosting farm revenues and helping fight climate change, may in fact hurt the environment and push up food prices, a study suggested on Tuesday [9/11/2007]. In a report on the impact of biofuels, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said biofuels may "offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal". A New 'Green' Body Count Begins. Biofuels have turned out to be a lose-lose-lose proposition. Once touted by the greens and the biofuel industry as being able to reduce the demand for oil and lower greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels have accomplished neither goal and have no prospect for accomplishing either in the foreseeable future. Chinese Demand Sends Christmas Tree Prices Soaring. Demand for Christmas trees is rising due to increasing exports and the growing number of single-person households. Meanwhile the supply of trees has decreased because several thousand hectares of tree plantations in Germany have been given over to more profitable uses, such as lucrative biofuel crops. Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a 'Clean' Fuel. After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant worker, hopped into his boat to follow it upstream to its source. It turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama's first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel. D1 Oils says US subsidies have forced it to shut UK refineries. The enormous damage being done by "splash-and-dash" imports of American biodiesel was highlighted yesterday when one of the UK's leading operators, D1 Oils, said it was closing down all its refining operations in Britain after running up a £46m annual loss. Biofuels under fire at International Energy Forum. Biofuels, once seen as a key factor in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, are behind the current global food crisis, major oil producers and consumers charged at an energy forum here on Monday [4/21/2008]. Rush to biofuels leaves a world of emptier plates. In early 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to a steep rise in the number of empty bellies in the world. How wrong they were. Soaring rates of hunger didn't take a generation. It took a year. Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuel. In an interview last year, Mr. Gore expressed his support for corn-based ethanol, but endorsed moving to what he called a "third generation" of so-called cellulosic ethanol production, which is still in laboratory research. "It doesn't compete with food crops, so it doesn't put pressure on food prices," the former vice president told Popular Mechanics magazine. Feeling blue over trying to be green: Two papers, in the journal Science, rocked the biofuels world by claiming that plant-based fuels cause more greenhouse-gas emissions than dirty, evil old oil. The reason is that it takes land to grow fuel. That inevitably leads to the destruction of forests and grasslands, the studies say. Repeal the MN Biodiesel Mandate — Do It for the (Frostbitten) Children!!. All schools in the Bloomington School District will be closed today after state-required biodiesel fuel clogged in school buses Thursday morning and left dozens of students stranded in frigid weather, the district said late Thursday. Rick Kaufman, the district's spokesman, said elements in the biodiesel fuel that turn into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 degrees clogged about a dozen district buses Thursday morning. Montana Biodiesel Producer Owes Farmers $1.2M For Last Year's Crop. A Montana biodiesel company, which has received more than $1.6 million in grants and loans from the state and a regional economic development corporation, owes farmers in Montana and North Dakota $1.2 million for crops grown last year. How Government Botches Biofuels. Biofuels were originally conceived as the fuel of choice for automobiles when the internal combustion engine was first developed. Biofuels later re-emerged as a possible alternative to petroleum for our liquid fuel needs. Proponents touted biofuels as carbon neutral, and possible to generate not only from crops like corn and sugar cane, but also from agricultural or industrial waste like wood chips and bagasse, leftover material from sugar-cane production in southern Gulf states like Louisiana. Medvedev slams biofuel producers at grain summit. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has urged countries to switch to non-food sources of biofuel to prevent the spread of hunger in a world where every sixth person is malnourished. "We are advocating production of biofuel from other, non-food sources," Mr Medvedev said in a speech inaugurating the launch of a global grain summit in his native Saint Petersburg. When scientific fraud kills millions. Scientific fraud often ends up killing people. ... The medical truth about the AIDS epidemic, that it was communicated by anal intercourse, especially among men, was suppressed for decades, causing thousands of more young men to die. And now it seems that the global warming fraud, just one aspect of broader EcoFraud, is killing people in the Third World. The proximate cause? A doubling of food prices. Why? Because of the diversion of food crops to biofuels. Hidden EU Analysis: Biofuels Can Produce More CO2 Emissions Than Fossil Fuels. Reuters reports that it used freedom of information laws to obtain a copy of text that was stripped from a December 2009 European Union study on biofuels. The hidden portion of the study found that biodiesel fuel made from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9 kilograms of CO2 per gigajoule — about four times larger than standard diesel from petroleum. Millions unaccounted for in biodiesel fraud case. A federal prosecutor said Thursday that the government has recovered only a third of the $9 million that authorities charge a Perry Hall businessman with taking from his customers in a massive biofuel fraud scheme. The businessman, Rodney R. Hailey, president of the now-shuttered Clean Green Fuel, appeared in U.S. District Court for what had been scheduled as an arraignment. But Hailey surprised prosecutors by not going through with a guilty plea that they said he had agreed to before the proceeding. Biofuel fraud case puts industry under scrutiny. On its website, Clean Green Fuel offered customers "a unique blend of biodiesel" made from vegetable oil that would produce less air pollution and help reduce the nation's dependence on petroleum. But according to federal charging documents, company owner Rodney R. Hailey didn't produce any biodiesel. Instead, prosecutors charge, he generated and sold more than $9 million worth of credits for nonexistent renewable fuel, using the proceeds to buy a five-bedroom house in Perry Hall, diamond jewelry and more than two dozen cars and trucks, including a Rolls Royce, a pair of Bentleys and a Lamborghini. More information filed under Ethanol is not such a great idea. Fluoride in the Public Water Supply: Fluoride: Friend or Foe? Fluoride is a known toxin, slightly less toxic than arsenic and more poisonous than lead. The industrial chemicals used to fluoridate over 90 percent of fluoridated water in the United States, (fluorosilicate acid and sodium silicofluoride), are by-products of the phosphate fertilizer industry and have never been tested for safety or effectiveness. The Fluoride Deception. In a society where asbestos, lead, silica, beryllium and many other carcinogens have found their way into the marketplace and then been recalled, one has to wonder why fluoride, so toxic it is used as a rat poison and pesticide, is embraced so thoroughly and so blindly. Citizens uniting against fluoride. A group of private citizens in San Diego County is planning to file a large-scale lawsuit in federal court against public water districts and challenge the constitutionality of using industrial-grade hydrofluosilicic acid to fluoridate drinking water. Fluoride: Miracle drug or toxic-waste killer? While few would argue that topical application of minute amounts of fluoride on teeth would reduce cavities, deliberately ingesting it — even in trace amounts — is risky. The fluoride added to public drinking water is actually fluorosilic acid. It is described by critics as an industrial waste product. Supporters prefer to call it an industry byproduct. Most of it has come from Florida's phosphate fertilizer industry. Fluoridation: Mind Control of the Masses. "At the end of the Second World War, the United States Government sent Charles Eliot Perkins, a research worker in chemistry, biochemistry, physiology and pathology, to take charge of the vast Farben chemical plants in Germany. "While there he was told by the German chemists of a scheme which had been worked out by them during the war and adopted by the German General Staff. "This was to control the population in any given area through mass medication of drinking water. In this scheme, sodium fluoride occupied a prominent place. "Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual's power to resist domination by slowly poisoning and narcotising a certain area of the brain and will thus make him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him. "Both the Germans and the Russians added sodium fluoride to the drinking water of prisoners of war to make them stupid and docile." Why I Changed My Mind About Water Fluoridation: Large-scale surveys from United States, from Missouri and Arizona, have since revealed the same picture: no real benefit to teeth from fluoride in drinking water. For example, Professor Steelink in Tucson, AZ, … found: "When we plotted the incidence of tooth decay versus fluoride content in a child's neighborhood drinking water, a positive correlation was revealed. In other words, the more fluoride a child drank, the more cavities appeared in the teeth". From other lands — Australia, Britain, Canada, Sri Lanka, Greece, Malta, Spain, Hungary, and India — a similar situation has been revealed: either little or no relation between water fluoride and tooth decay, or a positive one (more fluoride, more decay). Solar power / "Renewable" energy: See this page. Organic food: E.Coli in Organic Food Leads to 50 Dead in Germany. As everyone knows, Mother Nature not only knows best but means us no harm: and therefore, the less we mess around with her and her products, the better. Although many people may have remarked, more in sorrow than in anger, how small and shriveled organic vegetables often appear by comparison with those that have been treated with chemicals, it is obvious that they (the organic ones) must be better for us because they are nearer to what Mother Nature intended. This item of faith took something of a knock recently with the outbreak of Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli food poisoning in Germany. It was no small matter: more than 4000 people suffered from it and more than 50 died. Down On The Farm. Aren't organic fruits and vegetables superior to conventionally grown food? Shouldn't consumers always choose organic when given a choice? Not necessarily, says a Scientific American blogger. Irradiate the Manure in 'Organic' Farming. Where are the mass protests by "Greens" in Germany over the proven deadly "organic farming" industry? The answer, of course, is that Organic Farming — which relies upon animal fecal-matter as natural fertilizer — is a politically-correct enterprise akin to environmentalism and therefore ipso-facto above reproach by liberals and the mainstream press. But facts are facts, and the present practice of organic farming — wherein deadly-germs present in untreated manure can contaminate the food produce — is proven to be massively deleterious to human health. Food Is Much Safer Than You Think. It appears increasingly clear that the E. coli outbreak, which as of June 12 has killed 35 people and made another 3,250 or so extremely sick, originated with bean sprouts grown on an organic farm in the north of Germany. There has been a huge amount written about the outbreak, particularly about the government's feckless response. And yet — curiously — I haven't heard any of the critics calling for draconian regulations on organics, much less for the dismantling of this still small, and thus readily terminable, component of the food industry. The Organic Food Scam. Once, years ago, I was in a Midwestern State talking with a farmer. I raised the question of how much pesticide he used on his crop to ward off or kill insect predators or, in the case of weeds, how much herbicide. "Look, my family and I eat a part of what I grow," he said. "Do you think I am going to put anything on the crop that would endanger them?" Good answer. Nature's Toxic Tools: The Organic Myth of Pesticide-Free Farming. It is important to address the common misperception that organic farming is "pesticide-free." Organic farmers are allowed to use a number of toxic chemical pesticides, and many organic crops are routinely sprayed with pesticides. [PDF] Organic farming 'no better for the environment'. Organic food may be no better for the environment than conventional produce and in some cases is contributing more to global warming than intensive agriculture, according to a government report. The first comprehensive study of the environmental impact of food production found there was "insufficient evidence" to say organic produce has fewer ecological side-effects than other farming methods. Poison bug 'more likely to be found in organic chickens'. Organic chickens sold by leading supermarkets have been labelled a health threat by a damning investigation. Researchers claim they are more likely to carry the deadly food poisoning bug campylobacter than factory farmed chicken. As many as nine in ten of the organic chickens showed up positive for the bug. Reasons you should buy regular goods: Companies marketing organic products, and your local grocery chain, want you to think organic food is safer and healthier, because their profit margins are vastly higher on organic foods. The USDA Organic label does not mean that there is any difference between organic and regular food products. Organic farms simply employ different methods of food production. Activism Disguised As Science. A new study published in an alternative agriculture journal has gained widespread attention by claiming that organic farming not only could adequately feed the world, it might even yield more food and require less farmland. It is a truly sensational claim. In science, the more sensational the claim, the more robust the evidence needed to support it. This time, the evidence doesn't stack up. The Problem With Organic Food: Organic food has garnered an extraordinary amount of attention from the media and, along with "local" food, is a darling of foodies and environmentalists, who talk up its civic virtues and benefits to the environment. There's just one problem with this: agriculture has moved away from small-scale, local, and organic farming because these types of farms are land- and labor-intensive and don't do a very good job of feeding lots of people. In addition, they are not definitively better for the environment, and their growth would lead to higher food prices than most Americans are willing to pay. Organic Failure. Henry Waxman is at it again. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade-climate change bill, which has been called the largest tax bill in history because it would levy a national tax on energy use, narrowly passed the House in late June and is still pending in the Senate, but the California Democrat has already moved on to his next bad idea: trying to save the nation's populace by making farmlands sterile, so that only organic foods can be grown. Worse than global warming. Go on, eat organic food if you like, spend more than you would on ordinary food and dream that it somehow makes you healthier than you would be and the world more ecologically sound, but find time to pray that not too many others emulate you. It would be an incredible catastrophe if everyone went organic. ... Growing organic food is supposedly kinder to land than growing food by ordinary means, but it consumes enormously more land per unit produced. One reported estimate is that no forests would be left if you tried to supply total human food needs this way, and that, even then, many would starve. Organic food is just a tax on the gullible. A few years ago my wife decided we should have an entirely organic vegetable garden. To this end she refused all man-made fertilisers and ordered a truckload of pigeon droppings. What could be more natural? Neither was there anything unnatural in the germs I inhaled through the spores of our organic manure, thereby contracting psittacosis. This developed into "atypical" pneumonia, which was of course resistant to all standard antibiotics. Had a hospital doctor not guessed the cause and put me on a drip with the appropriate drugs — ooh, chemicals! — I could have become a fatal casualty of the organic movement. Obviously my wife might have ordered cow manure rather than pigeon poo; then I could have been felled by E coli instead. Wheat, Yes, Wheat! Dr. David Bragg, Ph.D., an extension entomologist, recently enumerated the insect pests that can be depended upon to attack wheat. They include the Russian Wheat Aphid, the Ladybird Beetle, the English Grain Aphid and Rosy Grass Aphid. Then there's the Haanchen Barley Mealybug and Wireworm Beetle Larvae, as well as the False Wireworm, the Cereal Leaf Beetle, Cutworms and Armyworms. By no means should we leave out the Wheat Stem Maggot, the Wheat Stem Saw Fly, and the Wheat Joint Worm. I want you to think about this army of insect predators the next time some environmental group is demanding that all pesticides be banned and that all grains and vegetables be grown "organically." Benefits of organic food a 'myth'. In a result that will provoke dismay and anger in the organics industry, the study's authors found that food grown without pesticides or herbicides should not be promoted as healthier because there was no evidence to show that it contained more nutrients than normal food. Recycling: Food sold in recycled cardboard packaging 'poses risk'. Leading food manufacturers are changing their packaging because of health concerns about boxes made from recycled cardboard, the BBC has learned. Researchers found toxic chemicals from recycled newspapers had contaminated food sold in many cardboard cartons. Too much green? Millions spent on recycling. Governments across the Washington region spend millions of dollars on recycling each year, but national recycling experts say a lot of that taxpayer cash is going to waste. Maryland, Virginia and the District [of Columbia] require residents and businesses to recycle, and localities pay millions of dollars to enforce those laws and hit recycling targets. Compost Conserved, Lifetime Wasted. A more intrusive regime for the simple act of discarding something could hardly be devised. There will be — count 'em — three color-coded bins into which garbage must be classified, as it is assessed for compostability and recyclability. ... This government-in-your-garbage ordinance is in response to a self-inflicted wound. It is deemed necessary in order to comply with the city's self-imposed goal of 75% recycling by 2010, as a waypoint to zero waste by 2020. It would be much cheaper to just dig a hole. Mandatory Recycling Wastes Resources and Harms the Environment. "In mid-December 2003, the Seattle City Council decided to make curbside recycling mandatory. The measure, which goes into effect in January 2005, is a misguided step that will burden taxpayers, antagonize residents, and waste resources. As an economist who has been studying recycling for nearly 15 years, I long ago learned that the desire for curbside recycling is based mostly on misconceptions." Gang Green: Many studies have shown that the environmental benefits from household recycling are minimal or at least highly exaggerated (because it uses a lot of energy and those recycling trucks emit a lot of greenhouse gases). America is not in danger of ever running out of landfill to store our garbage. For example, a study by Daniel Benjamin, an economist at Clemson, finds that we could store all of America's garbage for the next century within the property of Ted Turner's ranch in Montana, with 50,000 acres undisturbed for the horse and bison. Eco-activists' Gross Distortions are Behind California's Crusade to Recycle TVs and PCs. Californians buying a TV, home computer, or laptop must now pay $6 to $10 to finance a costly program to collect and recycle all used machines throughout the state. Celebrate Earth Day by Ending Mandatory Recycling! Mandatory recycling wastes resources — it does not save resources. The belief that it does is one of our great superstitions. Anyone who has ever bothered to learn the facts knows this. Recycling — righteous or rubbish? The economics suggest a middle road. Careful cost-benefit analysis shows that recycling often isn't cost-effective: Many programs try too hard, in a sense, by recycling products that cost more to reprocess than is warranted by the associated environmental and economic benefits — essentially going too far in the cause of environmental protection. But economists also suggest that some level of recycling is entirely sensible from an economic standpoint. Recycling is 'Like Throwing Money Away'. Curbside recycling is one of the most wasteful endeavors practiced by local governments, concluded an investigation by an Orlando, Florida television news station. According to WFTV Channel 9, recycling programs typically fail to pay for themselves and can cost taxpayers tremendous amounts of money — while providing very negligible benefits. Eight Great Myths About Waste Disposal: Since the 1980s, many have claimed that the United States faces a landfill crisis. In fact, the United States today has more landfill capacity than ever before. In 2001, the nation's landfills could accommodate 18 years' worth of rubbish, an amount 25 percent greater than a decade before. Recycling: It's a bad idea in New York. New York is but the latest of a growing number of cities that have found the cost of recycling garbage is far, far greater than the costs of simply dumping it. Despite flowery promises and earnest intentions, mandatory municipal recycling programs across the United States have proven an expensive economic and environmental flop. Little sustains this odd brand of civic religion beyond the quasi-religious devotion of the Green faithful. It's OK to Throw it Away: Tell Your Kids. Rule number one, don't be intimidated by your kids. They have a misplaced sense of moral superiority on environmental issues. Polls show that most information adults get about the environment comes from their kids, who in turn get their views from school and children's television. One poll concluded that 63 percent of school children have lobbied their parents to recycle. Don't roll over. The kids, their teachers, and Captain Planet are wrong. A Consumer's Guide To Environmental Myths and Realities. MYTH #1: We are running out of landfill space. All of the garbage America produces in the next 1,000 years would fit in a landfill that occupies less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the continental United States. … MYTH #6: Recycling is always good. Recycling itself can cause environmental harm, e.g., more fuel consumption and more air pollution. As a result, the environmental costs of recycling may exceed any possible environmental benefits. … MYTH #8: Recycling paper saves trees. Since most of the trees used to make paper are grown explicitly for that purpose, if we use less paper, fewer trees will be planted and grown by commercial harvesters. Recycling paper doesn't save trees, it reduces incentives to plant them. Time to recycle recycling? What … Al Gore and many other environmentalists may not appreciate is that recycling paper is actually a carbon positive process. … Contrary to received wisdom, paper is one of the least recyclable materials in circulation. Rethinking Recycling: Doesn't it go without saying that businesses should recycle paper? No, answers Ken Braun, cofounder and chairman of Pepper's, a retail chain of natural-ingredient personal-care products, and an avid conservationist who has much to say — and do — about recycling. Braun's concerns once dictated buying only recycled paper for his company's office supplies. He's changed his mind. Not because recycled paper is more expensive than virgin (though it is) or less well finished (that, too), but because in talking to suppliers he determined that the chemicals employed in recovering old paper did more harm to the environment than chopping down new trees did. Markets are Better than Mandates at Determining Recycling Levels. As conditions become less favorable to the use of recycled materials, the cost of doing so rises, resulting in net social losses. For instance, under worst-case conditions, requiring 30 percent recycled content in all glass packaging can cost, on average, $119/ton more than using virgin material. Mandating 30 percent recycled content in all paper packaging can increase costs by an average of $80/ton. There is a clear reason why recycling participation is so low: Recycling makes no economic sense. If the value of recycled goods was as much as or more than the cost of collecting the goods, recyclers would pay people for them. The fact that recyclers don't pay for used goods tells us a government-financed program is an economic loser. Recycling: Your Time Can Be Better Spent! Many people believe recycling either pays for itself or is worth the cost. Both positions are wrong. Every community recycling program in America today costs more than the revenue it generates. The value of recycled materials on the open market has declined dramatically in recent years, and in many cases there is no market at all. Time for a New Look at Recycling. Recycling, originally sold as virtually a cure-all for solid waste problems and as an environmental feel-good to boot, has been greatly oversold. The Utter Waste of Recycling. Ask yourself about the utility of recycling. Glass is made from sand. The Earth is not running out of sand. Newspapers, when buried, stay intact for decades and, when burned, become mere ashes. Recycling plastic requires as much or more energy than to produce it. Its uses, however, are extraordinary, contributing to a healthier lifestyle for everyone. So, why recycle? Recycling is a Waste. Much of the impetus for mandatory recycling programs came from a 1980s Environmental Protection Agency study showing that the number of landfills was decreasing. While this was true, the landfills themselves were getting bigger, and the total capacity was increasing! Indeed, the U.S. currently has 18 years worth of landfill even if no new landfills are built. And at current rates of disposal, a single landfill just 100 yards deep and 35 miles square could contain all the garbage generated in the U.S. for the next 1,000 years. Recycling goes from boom to bust as economy stalls. Just months after riding an incredible high, the recycling market has tanked almost in lockstep with the global economic meltdown. As consumer demand for autos, appliances and new homes dropped, so did the steel and pulp mills' demand for scrap, paper and other recyclables. Our Widespread Faith In Recycling Is Misplaced. A decade ago a wandering garbage barge set off a political crisis: Where will we put our trash? The media inflamed people's fears of mounting piles of garbage. A variety of interest groups - particularly "public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations," according to journalist John Tierney - lobbied to line their pockets. Politicians seeking to win votes enacted a spate of laws and regulations to encourage and often mandate recycling. [To make the average German feel superior at a time when, objectively, his life was getting worse] recycling measures were introduced, ostensibly to push Germany along the road to economic self-sufficiency. This device, adopted in World War I, as well as World War II, certainly had no particular economic impact. Its real purpose was psychological: to create a sense of community of shared participation in the war effort. Even today, elderly Germans, some of whom stuff their cupboards with old string as they were told to do in the Third Reich, still remember warmly the recycling, fuel-saving, and housekeeping aspects of the Nazi era. It was one of the hidden links that subtly connected the regime with its citizens. Why The Trash You Sort Isn't Recycled: My neighbors are unhappy to learn that the trash they've carefully sorted for years into brown bottles, green bottles, cans, and paper is being dumped back into one pile at the local landfill. Except for aluminum cans, no one wants the sorted trash items. Is this bad for the environment? Probably not. Mountains of recycled rubbish spring up across UK. Experts estimate that up to 15 percent of all recycling is now being stored in warehouses and ports, waiting for a buyer. Some of the waste could be stuck there for a year. ... Prices have now fallen so far that the cost of making new plastic is cheaper than reusing the recycled material. UK's growing waste paper mountain as market collapses. Taxpayers are facing a multi-million-pound bill to store 100,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard as the British recycling industry plunges into crisis. Rubbish carefully sorted by householders is piling up in vast warehouses as the market for waste paper collapses, and experts have warned that the mountain of garbage could double in the next three months. Recycling Is Garbage. Recycling could be America's most wasteful activity. … The obvious temptation is to blame journalists, who did a remarkable job of creating the garbage crisis, often at considerable expense to their own employers. Newspaper and magazine publishers, whose products are a major component of municipal landfills, nobly led the crusade against trash, and they're paying for it now through regulations that force them to buy recycled paper - a costly handicap in their struggle against electronic rivals. Recycling program costs Austin $900K. The City of Austin said its new single stream recycling program is not a big "waste" despite a near $900,000 shortfall. The environmental group, Ecology Action of Texas, said the program caused the city to lose that amount after going into effect last fall. However… What to Do with Three Billion Abandoned Tires? Cement kiln recyclers put them to good use. Few things are more unsightly than a pile of discarded tires. Unfortunately, America has quite a few such piles. There are about 3 billion abandoned tires in the U.S., with another 200 million being added each year. New recycling bins with tracking chips coming to Alexandria. Alexandria residents soon will have to pay for larger home recycling bins featuring built-in monitoring devices. The City Council added a mandatory $9 charge to its residents' annual waste collection fee. That cash — roughly $180,000 collected from 19,000 residents — will pay for new larger recycling carts equipped with computer microchips, which will allow the city to keep tabs on its bins and track resident participation in the city's recycling program. Do they have to put RFID chips in everything? Hydrogen: Hydrogen produces only water when it burns. So naturally people would like to see automobiles use hydrogen as fuel. But unfortunately there just isn't enough energy available from a gallon of liquid hydrogen to justify the cost. And liquid hydrogen would require a highly specialized gas tank. Then there is the problem of hydrogen production. Hydrogen doesn't gush out of the ground in West Texas. You can make hydrogen at home with a 9-volt battery and a glass of water ... but not enough to start your car. Hydrogen Fuel Cells May Have Environmental Drawback: Researchers have issued a report saying that if hydrogen replaced fossil fuels, large amounts of hydrogen would drift into the stratosphere as a result of leakage and indirectly cause increased depletion of the ozone. Whatever happened to the hydrogen economy? Even in Iceland, whose grand ambitions for a renewable hydrogen economy once earned it the title Bahrain of the north, visible progress has been modest. After years of research, the country now boasts one hydrogen filling station, a handful of hydrogen cars, and one whale-watching boat with a fuel cell for auxiliary power. ... In California, where governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promised a "hydrogen highway" with 200 hydrogen filling stations by 2010, there are just five open to the public. The Realities of a Hydrogen Economy. Among other things, (1) It costs about $5 to produce enough hydrogen equivalent to the energy potential of one gallon of gasoline. (2) Hydrogen's low density would require 21 tanker trucks to haul the amount of energy delivered by a single gasoline truck today, and a hydrogen tanker traveling 500 kilometers would use an amount of hydrogen equaling 40 percent of its cargo. (3) At room temperature, hydrogen takes up 3,000 times more space as an energy-equivalent of amount gasoline, therefore, compressed or liquefied gas must be used in vehicle tanks; but tanks on today's hydrogen vehicles take up to eight times as much space as a normal gas tank to store an equivalent amount of fuel. The Great Hydrogen Myth: Hydrogen is held out as a clean-burning, virtually inexhaustible source of energy, but as a Washington Times editorial pointed out in November [2002], others "suggest it is a gaseous dream rising on the rhetoric of environmental windbags." If enough billions are spent, it seems reasonable to expect hydrogen to become an energy source, but like most environmental pipe dreams, this one has a silent agenda of eliminating petroleum as an energy source, nor can we reasonably expect a dramatic breakthrough. Hydrogen Cars Won't Make a Difference for 40 Years. President Bush, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the big automakers agree on this much: They love hydrogen-powered fuel cell technology and its promise of a zero-emission, petroleum-free future. Unfortunately, experts say it will be 40 years or more before hydrogen has any meaningful impact on gasoline consumption or global warming, and we can't afford to wait that long. In the meantime, fuel cells are diverting resources from more immediate solutions. Hydrogen cars and hot air: Would you buy a car that costs 10 times as much as a hybrid gasoline-electric one, like the Toyota Prius? What if I told you it had half the range of the hybrid? What if I told you most cities didn't have a single hydrogen fuelling station? Not interested yet? This should be the deal closer: what if I told you it wouldn't have lower greenhouse-gas emissions than the hybrid? … Nobody should get terribly excited when a car company rolls out its wildly impractical next-generation hydrogen car. LA gas station gets hydrogen fuel pump. The Shell station near Interstate 405, which was charging $4.59 per gallon of regular gas Thursday [6/26/2008], features one pump with a bright blue "Hydrogen" label above a video monitor that dispenses the fuel by the kilogram. Hydrogen is made and stored in a tank above the dispenser. For now, the fuel is available to roughly 100 hydrogen-powered vehicles on the road in California, all of them being used in demonstration programs by motor companies, said Roy Kim, a spokesman with the California Fuel Cell Partnership. Because all the cars are in those programs, drivers won't be charged for filling up at the station. The Editor says... Notice that hydrogen is dispensed by the kilogram, but there is no mention of the price per kilogram, if someone were to try to make a purchase. Notice also that hydrogen is considered safe in cars but not in blimps. US govt hydrogen highway runs out of road. The original hydrogen plan was announced by then President Bush in 2003 and, to date, the US government has spent around $500m (£328m/€367m) on the project. There's not much to show for it other than some Honda FCX Claritys and Chevrolet Equinoxes running around California, and 70-odd hydrogen filling stations nationwide. Not so much a case of hydrogen tech being put on the back burner but rather being wrapped in cling film and shoved to the rear of the freezer. DOE to slash fuel cell vehicle research. The Department of Energy's proposed budget boosts research on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources but makes cuts in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles because the technology is many years from being practical. The DOE published details of its $26.4 billion fiscal 2010 budget request on Thursday [5/7/2009], and Energy Secretary Steven Chu held a news briefing to cover the highlights. Hybrid / Electric Cars: See this page. Compact fluorescent light bulbs:  This entire subsection has moved to a page of its own. Banning Plastic Bags: Leftists are constantly making the erroneous claim that "we live in a democracy", yet they never put decisions like this on a ballot and let the voters decide. Notice, if you will, that small individual freedoms — the ability to choose simple things like "paper or plastic" — disappear first in the areas of our country where liberals predominate. Green Blue Laws. Montgomery County, Maryland is the latest locality to impose a 5-cent tax on shoppers or restaurant-goers who need a plastic bag to take their purchases home. Next door, Washington, D.C. imposed such a tax already; environmentalists are pushing localities everywhere to do the same. The tax is insignificant as a revenue-raiser — perhaps $1 million a year will be collected, and probably less. The tax is in fact designed not to be collected. Relative to the actual price of producing such a bag — not even 1 penny — the tax is outrageous, at a 400-percent rate. Few people will pay 5 cents for something they value at zero — they will go to significant extremes to avoid it, even if it adds "only" 25-50 cents' added costs per trip to the supermarket. Seattle's New Ban on Plastic Bags 'Pushes People to Less Environmentally Friendly Options'. A move by the Seattle City Council earlier this week to ban plastic bags and levy a five-cent tax on paper bags at retail outlets will push consumers to "more resource-intensive alternatives," and will actually harm the very environment the ban seeks to protect, a leading plastics manufacturer and a major conservative group say. Plastic bags banned in Seattle. The Seattle City Council passed a broad ban on plastic bags Monday, outlawing them not just in grocery stores, but in department stores, clothing stores, convenience stores, home-improvement stores, food trucks and farmers markets. The bill goes further than bans in other cities, which have largely banished plastic only groceries and sometimes drug stores. Customers in Seattle will still be able to get paper bags from retailers, but for a 5-cent fee. No Paper Or Plastic? An effort to allow only reusable bags at Los Angeles grocery stores may sound like a political long-shot, but one city councilman thinks the public will eventually warm up to the initiative. Ban Shopping Bags Says EU. The EU was under fire last night for seeking a ban on plastic shopping bags to fight pollution. Shops in Britain could be outlawed from stocking them, or alternatively there might be a new tax to dramatically reduce their use. But angry retailers say any move would hit sales, while doing nothing to save the environment. Bag the Plastic Ban. [Scroll down] Unfortunately, study after study has shown that most of the supposed "benefits" of these bans and taxes have a negligible effect on the environment at best, and can actually have unintended consequences that cause greater environmental harm. Take Ireland, for example. When the New York Times reported the 94 percent decrease, it neglected to specify that it was referring only to plastic grocery-bag use. Sales of non-grocery plastic bags (garbage bags, etc.) rose an astonishing 400 percent, amounting to a net increase of 10 percent in total plastic-bag consumption. Lead found in some reusable grocery bags. A U.S. consumer group says high levels of lead have been found in reusable grocery bags supplied by major retailers. The Center for Consumer Freedom says of the 44 organizations whose bags were tested, 16 are selling or distributing reusable bags containing lead in amounts greater than 100 parts per million, above the limit many states set for heavy metals in packaging, the CCF Web site reported Monday [1/24/2011]. Lead for Me But Not for Thee. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an environmental research and advocacy group that specializes in sounding the alarm over toxic substances. ... EWG won't stand for lead in cosmetics, but when it comes to one of its sacred cows, it's nothing a little soap and water can't solve? Can anyone else spot the inconsistencies? Tests show lead levels vary in reusable grocery bags. Grocery chain Winn-Dixie sells a reusable grocery bag with two sturdy handles, pictures of cute baby faces and enough toxic lead to alarm health experts. The bag contains enough lead that Hillsborough County could consider the bag hazardous if thrown out with household trash, according to independent laboratory tests commissioned by The Tampa Tribune. Reusable Grocery Bags Breed Bacteria. They are good for the environment, but reusable grocery bags are also a breeding ground for bacteria. Md., Va. lawmakers to propose 5-cent fee on disposable bags. Maryland and Virginia lawmakers say they will push for 5-cent fees on disposable paper and plastic bags at stores, after the District this month became the first major city in the nation to impose such a fee. 'If I had a nickel for every bag,' sez Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg wants to nickel and dime you at the grocery store -- taxing you an extra 5 cents for every plastic bag you take home. The controversial charge could raise at least $16 million for the cash-strapped city while keeping tons of plastic out of landfills, city officials said Thursday [11/6/2008] -- but some outraged shoppers aren't buying it. Nanny State, USA. This week San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban plastic grocery bags from city supermarkets and drug stores. San Francisco generates an estimated 180 million plastic bags each year, and the city counsel [sic] wants them gone. Grocery shoppers will have to find an alternative within six months. A series of blunders turned the plastic bag into a global villain. Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims. The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. Whole Foods to sack plastic bags by Earth Day. Natural and organic grocer Whole Foods Market announced today it will stop using disposable plastic grocery bags at supermarket checkouts and encourage reusable bags instead. Environmental Activist Failures Highlight Earth Day. [Scroll down] Earlier this year ... scientists reported that plastic bags are having virtually no impact on marine life or other animals. Although a single study several years ago found that 100,000 marine animal deaths occur each year from all forms of environmental plastic (most notably six-pack holders), scientists reported this year that the number of deaths attributable to plastic grocery bags is almost zero. San Francisco is the First City to Ban Plastic Shopping Bags. Supermarkets and chain pharmacies will have to use recyclable or compostable sacks. The city's Board of Supervisors approved groundbreaking legislation Tuesday [3/27/2007] to outlaw plastic checkout bags at large supermarkets in about six months and large chain pharmacies in about a year. Plastic bags may be banned in Boston. The Boston City Council wants to ban the use of plastic shopping bags at supermarkets, pharmacies, and convenience stores in the city, saying the ubiquitous bags are a hazard to the environment and a maddening blight of the landscape. Santa Barbara Takes a Step Toward Banning Plastic Bags. City leaders on Tuesday [5/15/2007] took a step toward banning Styrofoam containers used for prepared food and plastic bags used at grocery stores in their efforts to become more environmentally friendly. The Plastic Bag Ban is Full of Holes. Plastic bags cost about a penny each, paper costs about a nickel and compostable bags can run as high as 10 cents each. … Paper bags generate 70 percent more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This is because four times as much energy is required to produce paper bags and 85 times as much energy is needed to recycle them. San Francisco may charge for grocery bags. San Francisco may become the first city in the nation to charge shoppers for grocery bags. The city's Commission on the Environment is expected to ask the mayor and board of supervisors Tuesday [2/2/2005] to consider a 17–cent per bag charge on paper and plastic grocery bags. While the goal is reducing plastic bag pollution, paper was added so as not to discriminate. They went even further... Starting Tuesday, plastic bags illegal at big S.F. grocery stores. Starting Tuesday [11/20/2007], large grocery stores in the city can no longer use the traditional plastic bags that are a staple of the supermarket checkout line, as a city ordinance passed earlier this year to ban the bags takes effect. Ignore the greenwash... plastic is fantastic. What will happen if Edinburgh taxes plastic carrier bags? The answer came from the Scottish Parliament's Environment Committee after two years of hearings and expert evidence. If you don't have time to read thousands of words on their website, the conclusion comes in just six words — "the environment will be worse off". Surprised? Surely plastic bags are a danger to the environment. Wrong. Over two years, this claim was demolished by experts and science at an estimated cost of £2 million of Scottish taxpayers' money. I love plastic bags. Is the lack of intellectual rigour in the whole debate about plastic bag use annoying you? Of course, it is politically correct not to like them; to front at the shops with a handbag full of crisp green or red or yellow or purple bags to carry your purchases. And it's politically incorrect to argue what I'm about to do here: that perhaps plastic bags might not be the environmental bogie we claim. Plastic bags choke Garrett. Here we go again — another green crusade in which facts are invented to scare you into doing something dumb. This time our evangelical Environment Minister says he'll this year take away your plastic shopping bags — the ones that are so useful that we use more than 4 billion of them each year to cart home our shopping. What must we use instead to carry home the fortnightly shopping: suitcases? Rolls of green bin liners? And how annoying not to have those plastic bags to reuse for everything from wrapping leftovers and wet clothes to picking up manure. Ban on bags can't carry weight. Plastic bags are under siege, pilloried globally as a menace to the environment and a symbol of man's conspicuous consumption, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Without plastic bags we would all buy less, goes the thinking. But, of course, we won't. Paper or plastic? Either bag would cost you 20 cents extra. To reduce trash, Mayor Greg Nickels wants Seattle shoppers to pay a fee on all disposable bags — paper and plastic — at grocery, convenience and drug stores. Customers would be charged a 20-cent "green fee" per bag used at the checkout line. If approved by the City Council, the fee would take effect Jan. 1. "The answer to the question 'Paper or plastic?' should be 'Neither,'" Nickels said at a news conference Wednesday morning [4/3/2008]. Bags are a tiny fraction of sea trash. I figured if anyone would jump for joy at Seattle's crusade against plastic bags, it would be the flotsam guy. … So when I asked him what he thought of Seattle's plan to crack down on disposable grocery bags, I was surprised when he sort of shrugged. "It's OK, but plastic bags are not the real problem," he said. "It's one little battle out of a million. Go look at what the ocean carries in on a given day. You'll see what I mean." Biodegradable bags may not be as green as they seem. As though the paper-or-plastic question weren't vexing enough, now some retailers are finding that the "biodegradable" plastic bags they'd hoped would please green shoppers might not be so Earth-friendly after all. Lunds and Byerly's recently replaced its plastic bags with a biodegradable bag made of low-density polyethylene that purportedly breaks down when exposed to sunlight, oxygen, soil, moisture and microbes. But biodegradable bags are still petroleum-based…. Loblaws bags a nickel starting tomorrow. It's like there's a scarlet letter burned across Jennifer Sutcliffe's forehead as she hastily piles eight bags of groceries into the cart — "P." For plastic. For polluter. "I have cats. I use them for the litter," she clarifies apologetically. Not good enough. Gazing down the line of nine open cashiers, Sutcliffe is the only one who didn't BYOB. The 40-year-old retreats from the Loblaws store, which as of tomorrow will begin a plastic fee of 5 cents per bag. A source said proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund. The Editor says... Dear Jennifer: Find yourself another place to buy groceries, and let the earth-worshiping hippies shop at Loblaws. Plastic Bag Fears Based on Misquoted Study. Shoppers the world over can breathe a collective sigh of relief now that leading scientists are stepping forward and defending the widespread use of plastic bags at supermarkets and other retail outlets. … The plastic bag scare, it turns out, is based on a 1987 Canadian study that investigated the harm to marine mammals and seabirds from discarded fish nets. For reasons not fully understood, Australian researchers, in a follow-up study conducted 15 years later, mistakenly attributed the death of 100,000 marine animals to plastic bags instead of the "plastic litter" cited in the Canadian research. Whole Foods Gets it Wrong. Whole Foods has banned plastic bags. The only free bags that it provides to customers at the checkout are paper bags. The company has eliminated consumer choice, pandering to political correctness. Whole Foods is leading people to believe that it is making a positive contribution to the environment by providing paper bags rather than a plastic bags. It is not. It is hurting the environment. Bags get sacked. So there's this guy at the Evanston Farmers Market, earthy type, grows organic arugula and bok choy and all manner of eco-friendly hippie chow. His stand is a favorite stop for greenish types and locavores and, well, people who get up early on Saturdays to buy stuff like fresh arugula and bok choy. But as wildly popular as Henry Brockman and his operation might be, there was one thing that drove the environmentally friendly farmer nuts. It was the plastic bags. LA bans plastic bags. The city of Los Angeles will ban plastic bags from retail stores from July 1, 2010, following similar regulations already enforced in San Francisco. Los Angeles, the second-largest US city behind New York, would ban plastic bagging in all supermarkets, grocery and retail stores, the Los Angeles City Council said. Save the Plastic Bag. We are a California-based coalition of businesses and citizens. We are concerned about the one-sided myths and false information circulating on anti-plastic bag websites and in the media about plastic bags. It's time to answer back with the facts. (When we refer to plastic bags, we mean plastic carryout bags that you get at the supermarket or grocery store checkout.) Plastic bag FAQ. Are plastic bags recyclable? Yes, absolutely. In California, large supermarkets are required by law to provide plastic bag recycling receptables for consumers to dispose of bags. Virtually all of the bags placed in these recycling bins are actually recycled into new products. Free grocery bags targeted for extinction in California. The plastic grocery bag is fighting for its crinkly life. From the city of San Francisco to Los Angeles County, more than a dozen local governments around the state have proposed or passed plastic-bag restrictions, ranging from recycling mandates to outright bans. In India, plastic bag use is a capital offence. The global battle against plastic has taken a draconian turn with officials in Delhi announcing that the penalty for carrying a polythene shopping bag would be five years in prison. Officials in India's capital have decided that the only way to stem the rising tide of rubbish is to outlaw the plastic shopping bag. Panel votes to ban plastic retail bags. A Senate committee Wednesday night voted 4-3 for a bill that would ban plastic bags in large retail stores within three years. Critics complained that the bill would drive consumers to paper bags, which cause their own set of environmental problems. But supporters said the idea was to get customers to use some sort of reusable bag. Plastic bags must go, Basnight says. State Senate leader Marc Basnight has one word for shoppers: plastics. And he wants them banned. Basnight, the Manteo Democrat and restaurateur who is one of the state's most powerful leaders, is pushing a bill that would ban plastic shopping bags in Outer Banks counties. It's a pilot program that, if successful, could be imposed statewide. Colorado Senate Bags Plastic Shopping Bag Ban. The Colorado Senate has rejected a bill that would have made Colorado the first state to ban plastic shopping bags. Proponents of the bill had argued plastic bags are not biodegradable and can harm wildlife. Opponents noted plastic bags are recyclable and studies show plastic bags have minimal negative impact on wildlife. In addition, opponents had noted a ban on plastic bags would increase use of paper bags, which take up more landfill space than plastic bags. Paper bags are also much bulkier and heavier than plastic bags, which means transporting paper bags requires the burning of more fossil fuels than the transport of plastic bags. Back to plastic? Reusable grocery bags may cause food poisoning. Get out your bleach and launder those reusable fabric grocery bags after each use. You're not clogging up landfill with plastic throw-aways, but your environmental conscientiousness could make you sick. The Editor says... Landfills do not get "clogged up" — they get deeper and wider. Landfill capacity is not threatened by plastic grocery bags. Obama: Not The First Head Of State To Design Cars. That's environmental paranoia in a nutshell for you. It isn't really about the environment, it's about control. You, too, are going to be forced to look as stupid as the guy pulling ten canvas bags out of his faux leather man-purse. If you dare show up at any grocery store in Toronto, Canada, without your own ratty, reused bags, you'll be charged five cents for each one — a tax on your audacity, collected by the City. U.N. environment chief urges global ban on plastic bags. Single-use plastic bags, a staple of American life, have got to go, the United Nations' top environmental official said Monday. ... [A total] ban is already being tested in China, where retailers giving out thin bags can be fined up to $1,464. ... In the United States, only San Francisco has completely banned plastic bags. The Editor says... Hmmm... Do the governments of San Francisco and China have a lot in common? Colorado Senate Bags Plastic Shopping Bag Ban. The Colorado Senate has rejected a bill that would have made Colorado the first state to ban plastic shopping bags. Proponents of the bill had argued plastic bags are not biodegradable and can harm wildlife. Opponents noted plastic bags are recyclable and studies show plastic bags have minimal negative impact on wildlife. In addition, opponents had noted a ban on plastic bags would increase use of paper bags, which take up more landfill space than plastic bags. Obamacare Or Logan's Run. I'd like to know where the environmental hypocrites are hiding, knowing that the health plan bill, H.R. 3200, is 1,000 pages long and has been distributed to all the members of the House and Senate. Shouldn't they be ranting about the poor trees that have been destroyed for this bill the same way they successfully demonized the supermarket brown bags? Those bags were replaced by plastic bags that shredded before shoppers reached the parking lots. Now these flimsy bags are being replaced by cloth bags made in China that will carry your precious, organic tasteless produce and the planet will be saved, thanks to you. Seattle Voters Reject 20-Cent Grocery Bag Fee. Seattle voters have rejected a 20-cent fee for every paper or plastic bag they get from supermarkets, drug stores and convenience stores. The city's incumbent mayor didn't fare much better than the fee, trailing two challengers in a bid for a third term. With about half the ballots counted in the all-mail vote, the bag fee was failing 58 percent to 42 percent in Tuesday's [8/18/2009] primary. Soiled, reusable shopping bags pose health risk: Study. The Environment and Plastics Industry Council stated Wednesday [5/20/2009] that a study it funded shows reusable bags "pose a public health risk" due to high counts of yeast, moulds and bacterias in dirty reusable bags. ... But B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said reusable bags do not pose a serious public health risk if consumers treat bags as they would cutting boards or food preparation surfaces, and wash them regularly and dry them well. The Editor says... This study was released in May, 2009, but it still pops up occasionally on days when the news business is slow Critics like to point out that the study was undertaken and funded by a plastics manufacturing group, and after all, what else would such a group conclude, but that plastic bags are better than reusable ones. Nevertheless, disposable bags are disposed of — along with any bacteria they may carry — while reusable bags accumulate bacteria until they are washed with hot soapy water. Of course the environmentalists are also opposed to hot soapy water, because it takes energy to heat the water and the soap may contain toxic chemicals. Low revenue from the bag tax in D.C. is good news. The District of Columbia is not collecting as much money as it thought it would from its tax on disposable bags. And that's good news. The reduced revenue is evidence that the newly enacted law is working exactly as hoped. People are using fewer plastic and paper bags, and that means less litter clogging area streets and waterways. Bias alert! It's the Washington Post, so what would you expect, but has anyone ever seen a street "clogged" with plastic bags? California moves to ban plastic bags. It could soon cost California shoppers at the checkout aisle if they forget to bring their own bags to the store under what would be the nation's first statewide plastic bag ban. Reusable shopping bags 'are a threat to public health'. Reusable shopping bags could be a threat to public health because they harbour potentially deadly food poisoning bugs, according to new research. Tests on shoppers' bags revealed half contained traces of E.coli, a lethal toxin which killed 26 people in Scotland in 1996 in one of the worlds worst food poisoning outbreaks. Scientists also found many were contaminated with salmonella. Plastic Bags: Untapped Tax Gold Mine? Only one US city — Washington, D.C. — has successful instituted a plastic bag tax, but at least 13 other states are considering one. In its first month, the 5-cent bag tax brought the city about $150,000. Revenues have increased each subsequent month, reaching $226,000 in May, and totaling $942,000 from January through May. The funds have all gone towards efforts to clean up the Anacostia River, which runs through Washington. See You Next Tyranny Day! [Scroll down] A new study from the University of Arizona reveals that reusable shopping bags, the enlightened replacement for plastic ones, are breeding grounds for E. Coli and other dangerous bacteria. Roughly 50 percent of the bags inspected were found to contain dangerous, potentially lethal, bacteria. ... There's always going to be a downside to even the best policies, because the experts don't know as much as they think they do. Sometimes, they don't even know they're not experts at all. In Defense of Plastic. In San Francisco, where the city government has already banned the use of plastic bags, one resident wrote, "I remember when it began to rain last year while I was carrying my groceries home in a paper bag. As I chased my cans down the street, I cursed our idiot mayor and whoever among his stooges had decided to ban rainproof plastic bags in San Francisco. Paper is certainly biodegradable, for the process started even as I was carrying the bag home." Where was her freedom of choice? Disturbing Trends in Eco-Bags: Big-government bureaucrats are already facing an uphill battle trying to convince cost-conscious consumers to give up their plastic bags or pay extra taxes. Now two studies reveal why America's green bag revolution may have some unintended consequences. Car pooling and mass transit: See this page. "Green" jobs: This subsection has moved to this page. "Green" buildings: Children 'falling asleep in stuffy eco-classrooms'. Children are falling asleep in class because new eco-friendly schools have appalling ventilation, experts warned today. Builders have created air-tight classrooms which are intended to reduce heat loss but also stop carbon dioxide escaping. Higher CO2 levels in newly-built schools are leaving children drowsy and less able to concentrate, researchers from University College London and Reading University found. Climate Change department keep air-conditioning rather than open windows. Plans to switch off the air-conditioning and instead open windows at the Department for Energy and Climate Change have been scrapped after staff complained about the noise. ... The trial was abandoned after three days because staff at the department complained about noise from construction works, "the wrong kind of breeze" and the potential security risk. Green Math Is Bad Math. [Scroll down] The entire renovation costs $133 million. The plants are only one component, but the G.S.A. admits that the renovation is being undertaken for the purpose of making the building "green." Done as a project of the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, the renovation is Oregon's largest federal stimulus project. Chicago officials say pebbles broke windows. Chicago officials say white pebbles spread on rooftops to reflect sunlight are to blame for some broken high-rise windows in last week's violent storms. Nancy Pelosi's taxpayer-funded, exorbitantly expensive, eco-friendly office space. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently moved into a new district office, located in the San Francisco Federal Building. All sorts of reasons were cited for the move — she'd been in the old office for twenty years; the new office's location is more accessible for her constituents; she needed more space; the new office is in a "green" building. These explanations seem reasonable, until you find out how much she's paying for them. ... Speaker Pelosi is paying $18,736 a month for her lovely new workspace. How I (Almost) Saved the Earth. When I started researching the field of green building, as part of the planning for our own home, I learned that, in many cases, you can't get there from here. Allow me to share some of the things we learned. It's California-centric, but I think you can generalize from my experience. As a rule, the greener the home, the uglier it will be. Earth day: The True and Ugly Story of Earth Day. While Christians across the world marked Easter and Jews marked Passover, liberals marked their annual ode to neo-paganism with hippy-dippy exercises in green self-righteousness. Of course, they neglected to mention that Gaia herself was a Greek hussy who mythologically created the oceans and the depths by an incestuous relationship with her son, Uranus. They also neglected to mention that one original co-founder of Earth Day was a murderer, that its first backers were tie-dyed socialists who hated capitalism, and that Earth Day itself was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin. Earth Day Denigrates Capitalism — and Humans. On this date in 1970, a trio of radical dreamers established Earth Day, an annual event designed to assault capitalism, free markets, and mankind. The initial concept was conceived by then-Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D.-Wis.). Nelson was Congress' leading environmentalist, a sort of pre-incarnate Sen. Barbara Boxer in drag. He was also the mastermind behind those ridiculous teach-ins that were vogue in the '60s and early '70s. During the teach-ins, mutinous school instructors would scrap the day's assigned curriculum, pressure their students to sit cross-legged on the floor, and "rap" about how America was an imperialist nation, and converse about why communism really wasn't such a bad form of government — it just needed to be implemented properly. Earth Day instead of Easter? Some Catholics are concerned with what they see as an attempt by environmentalists to hijack Easter for their own Earth Day purposes. In a letter dated April 1 to churches across the country, the environmentalist group Earth Day Network encourages priests to remember Earth Day Sunday, even though Easter is that same Sunday. "This year we again invite you to celebrate Earth Day Sunday and share with your parishioners a story of creation care that will impart to them the importance of protecting a nurturing the planet that was provided to us," the letter reads. Earth Day — a national establishment of religion. Friday, April 22, is the 41st anniversary of Earth Day. The theme this year is "A Billion Acts of Green" and we're asked, like recovering sinners, to reform our ways: take our baths with less water, turn off the lights, spend less time on the computer, watch less TV, reduce our toilet paper consumption, and make a donation. Getting an early start, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) observed Earth Day this past weekend (April 16-17) on the National Mall, with 40 exhibits. As all this suggests, environmentalism has become our newest religion. The hippie holiday. Earth Day has become inextricably linked with global-warming mania. Al Gore — a man with one of the largest carbon footprints in the world — recently likened the struggle to reduce emissions to the civil-rights movement. This is in keeping with the sanctimonious tone that usually accompanies Earth Day proclamations. To the radical greens, it's a day for humanity to engage in self-abasement, bow before the altar of Gaia and apologize for the offense against nature of simply being alive. It's a day to conjure fears, preach limits and condemn the capitalist system that created a country wealthy enough to indulge these shiftless hippies in the first place. Progressives Against Progress. [Scroll down] If one were to pick a point at which liberalism's extraordinary reversal began, it might be the celebration of the first Earth Day, in April 1970. Some 20 million Americans at 2,000 college campuses and 10,000 elementary and secondary schools took part in what was the largest nationwide demonstration ever held in the United States. The event brought together disparate conservationist, antinuclear, and back-to-the-land groups into what became the church of environmentalism, complete with warnings of hellfire and damnation. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, the founder of Earth Day, invoked "responsible scientists" to warn that "accelerating rates of air pollution could become so serious by the 1980s that many people may be forced on the worst days to wear breathing helmets to survive outdoors. The Annual Green Orgy: Earth Day. On Earth Day we will have been engulfed by the avalanche of "Green" propaganda that preceded it, fills the day, and then continues relentlessly thereafter. When I say "propaganda", I am being polite. Much of the foundation of the environmental movement is pure lies, mind boggling distortions of questionable "science", and a thin veneer for the entire purpose of environmentalism, the imposing of a one-world agenda for the enrichment of a few who dream of a monopolistic control of the world's resources and its human work force. Environmentalism: Freedom's Foe. At the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, some young people, intimidated by the pace and complexity of modern life, were looking either to rebel or to retreat -- to tear down "the System," or to withdraw to nature for a "Colorado Rocky Mountain high." ... [T]hey preached the inherent goodness of untouched nature and undisciplined emotion; the corrupting influence of reason, culture, and civilization; economic egalitarianism and small-scale participatory democracy; the mystical infallibility of the collective will and the sacrifice of the individual to the group. And they were united in their hatred of a common enemy: modern American, capitalistic society. Earth Day Is a Holiday For Liars. I have followed the apocalyptic claims and the legislated mandates of the environmental movement since the 1970s and their single unifying factor has been the lies told to achieve various elements the Green agenda. … By blocking access to energy such as the ban on oil extraction in ANWR or off the coasts of the United States, by lobbying against the building of coal-fired and nuclear electricity generation plants, by arguing for inefficient, highly subsidized solar and wind alternatives, Greens are creating a national energy crisis. The Earth Day before yesterday: "Earth Day" [was founded] by former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. It's also V.I. Lenin's birthday — which is no coincidence. Nelson modeled his anti-capitalist protests after anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of that era. Today, the so-called "environmental movement" he helped spawn has devolved from a gaggle of unwashed adolescent peaceniks into a slick cadre of leftists, lobbyists and lawyers. The Naked Communism of Earth Day. It is no accident that April 22, Earth Day, is also the birth date of Vladimir Lenin, an acolyte of Karl Marx, the lunatic who invented communism as an alternative to capitalism. Earth Day is naked communism. To begin, it substitutes a worship of the Earth, Gaia, for the worship of God, creator of the universe and the instructor of moral behavior for mankind. The Earth does not demand a moral code of personal behavior. Indeed, the lesson it teaches is "the survival of the fittest" and an indifference to suffering. Earth Day: A Pro-Nature Movement or An Anti-Industrial Religion? It's been 40 years since the first Earth Day protestors donned their bell bottoms and took over the streets to protest airplane exhaust, traffic, pollution, and litter. These rallies on April 22, 1970 kicked off the modern environmental movement. But, when did this quest to lend a hand to mother nature turn into a crusade against modern industry? Dump Doomsday Dogma. Earth Day turns 40 today, April 22, a good time for scientists, politicians, journalists and the public to dump climate-change orthodoxy. Too many facts are interfering with the familiar story line. The earth is getting warmer and the cause is modern industry. Unless we curtail industry, and much other human activity, disaster is at hand in the form of catastrophic storms, sea-level rise, and global chaos. This all comes billed as a matter of settled science, and alarmists have been comparing skeptics to Holocaust deniers. But as the recent "Climategate" scandal revealed, the alarmists have problems of their own. Earth hour: Al Gore's seawater swindle. [Scroll down] According to the Montreal Gazette, power usage in Edmonton, Canada, actually increased by 1.01 percent during Earth Hour. Power usage did drop in Calgary, but as a power company spokesman explained, the drop "was so minuscule that it couldn't even be attributed to that particular event." As more of the cataclysmic predictions of the global-warming charlatans fail to pan out, these feel-good stunts will become more and more irrelevant. That's good news because Earth Hour is about hating automobiles and electricity, two of mankind's most important technological developments. Sitting in the Dark. Forget the World's Fair, we now have a new way to celebrate human accomplishment. Instead of going to see a vision of the future, we turn off the lights and sit in the dark for an hour. Earth Hour shows how far we have come from celebrating human accomplishment to celebrating the lack of accomplishment. For all its pretentious activism, environmentalism is a movement that promotes inaction. Don't build, don't create and don't do — are its commandments. Hour of no power increases emissions. When asked to extinguish electricity, people turn to candlelight. Candles seem natural, but are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you're essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you'll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production. Global warming worriers feel heat of hypocrisy. It's Earth Hour tomorrow [3/28/2009], warming worriers — your chance to prove how much you don't care. For a start, you'll prove how much you don't care about being a hypocrite. Let's sit in the dark and freeze to death. On Sunday, lefties will celebrate Earth Hour by shutting off the lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. A whole bunch of cities and corporations will also turn down the lights to show their political correctness. Besides, it is Sunday night and none of these businesses and government offices are open anyway. We had plenty of Earth Hours in Western Europe from 500 AD to 1000 AD. We called it the Dark Ages, a time when the Western World regressed and abandoned all the cultural and scientific achievements of the Roman Empire. No Drop in Electricity Usage in NY and CA at Earth Hour. The Greenies did not convince the average liberal New Yorkers and Californians to turn off their lights at the appointed Earth Hour of 8:30 PM local time. By looking at real time data in New York and California, there was no drop in electric usage. Does lighting candles for Earth Hour defeat the purpose? During Earth Hour, what will most participants use for illumination? Candles. ... All these burning wicks raise the question: Are the emissions from these candles worse for the climate than simply leaving the lights on? After all, candles emit carbon dioxide too. The Stupidity, Futility, and Fantasy of "Earth Hour": Let us forget, for a moment, that "Earth Hour" is a pointless exercise serving only to make environmentalists feel better about themselves by marginally reducing electrical demand for 0.01% of the year. Let us disregard, for a moment, that the basic reason for having an "Earth Hour" in the first place is fatuous, because global warming alarmism has as much to do with actual science as alchemy does. ... Indeed, a sober analysis suggests that "Earth Hour" doesn't do anything to save a planet that doesn't need saving and that it may in fact rather increase air pollution instead of reducing it. Earth Hour: Verging on the Occult. If previous Earth Hours are any indication, this Saturday's annual ritual will possess a curious blend of contradictory properties. Switching off the lights for an hour will have little effect on climate change, practical or symbolic, yet it will likely follow the established trend of growing participation each year. All good contradictions deserve an explanation, but the most likely ones in this case don't bode well for our Western liberal Enlightenment tradition. Inconvenient questions: With the fourth global Earth Hour put to bed last night, today let's ask some inconvenient questions of the global warmists. First, does the real-world failure of virtually all of your ideas ever give you a moment's pause? From the fiasco in Copenhagen, to the collapse of the UN's Kyoto accord, with its absurd, unrealistic, centrally-mandated, carbon dioxide-reduction diktats, mindful of the old Soviet Union? Does it never occur to you you've barked up the wrong tree rings? What about the humiliation of Climategate? Reality of ooga-booga Earth Hour. Switch off your lights ... and you've saved the planet. Have a dance, and you've made poverty history. Walk over a bridge, and you've ended Aboriginal suffering. Or, you can do all three at once — dance on a dark bridge — and usher in Paradise itself. The "smart" power grid: Do President Obama and his fellow Democrats seriously believe that "government should not intrude on private family matters?" Let us count the ways! Obama's Government vs. Your Family: [Scroll down] If you have a large family, or one with a lot of computers and other electronic equipment, you probably use more electricity than your neighbors, and are willing to pay for it. But in many communities, there is a sliding scale for usage, so that if you consume, say, 20% more electricity than your neighbors, you pay a 40% higher bill. This is because liberals believe it is their business how we live, and how much power we consume. Household Electricity Bills Skyrocket. Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity. Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. Smart Meter Removal Has Begun. California's Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) has quietly begun replacing Smart Meters with analog meters for citizens reporting adverse health effects. Consumer rights and other groups demanded immediately that their wireless devices be removed from their homes. Joshua Hart of stopsmartmeters.org reported the good news just as PG&E deploys the last phase of its smart meters in California. The Department of Energy's promise that the smart grid and smart meters will lower electricity costs has proven incorrect; on the contrary, the utility costs have skyrocketed. Beware the Smart Electric Meter — It's Coming for YOU! Many electric companies have installed "Smart Meters" on homes all over the country, and they plan to do the same with every house in America, including yours. These nifty little electronic wonders track when you turn something on or off, and how many watts your appliances pull. ... The data they collect shows the electric company a variety of things like when you're at home, sleeping, on vacation, or have visitors. They can see when you turn on your computer, have a cake in the oven, or if you may be running a business out of your home. In short, it gets inside your home and monitors your living patterns. The Non-Energy Generating Department of Energy and the Smart Grid. Smart Meters are digital electricity consumption readers that are installed under the guise that the old ones are either cracked or not reading properly. Most people acquiesce, without realizing that they have just allowed the installation of a personal surveillance device. This device will tell a distant data server to whom they do not have access, how many watts they consume, when they turn off and on every lamp in their home, how many computers they have, electric gadgets, when they sleep, when they are on vacation, when they are not home, their living pattern in general, basically a search of their life and home without a warrant. Smart Meters: Big Brother Has Arrived. I've heard of these Marxist monitoring devices and was wondering when they'd begin arriving in my town. So, I stepped outside last night to take a look. I was quite surprised at what I found attached to the side of my home. First thing in the morning I was shooting video of what I found. I suggest you take a look around your home as well. The "Smart" Meters Cometh. The last thing I really want is someone, sitting in a remote room somewhere, deciding if and when I have used too much. While some would chalk up such fear on my part to paranoia, I would like to remind those foolish enough to do so that over the past century many, many things people feared government and their agents might indeed do to strip us of our liberties have indeed come to pass. Not all, but many. I would really like to keep my current, "dumb" meter if you do not mind. Smart Grid: The Second Biggest Rip-Off in Contemporary Energy Policy. Ask anyone what a "smart grid" is, and you'll get a different answer every time. In Boulder, it's a fiber optical network. In Baltimore, it's a "ZigBee" local area network. In Oklahoma City, it's GE Smart Meters. They all were spawned of the stimulus, which showered more than $3 billion to utilities across the country to subsidize any boondoggle that called itself "smart grid." This is the sort of social policy that makes regulated utilities salivate. It's ill-defined and capital intensive. Smart meters are a dumb idea. Homeowners from coast to coast are growing upset over the "smart meter" devices that utilities are foisting on them by the millions, with the full backing of the administration. ... Smart meters also give the highly regulated utilities the ability to adjust and restrict the flow of electricity to customers. Some residents are wary that the ability to measure their energy consumption could be used to create a profile of their activities. Patterns of garage door opening, for example, could indicate when a home is empty and unprotected from burglary. In California and Texas, other consumers have seen their electric bills rise rather than fall after smart meter installation, belying the promise of savings. Washington Set to Control Your Light Switch. Smart Grid sounds harmless and modern, but it will be incredibly intrusive. Appliances in the future will have microchips installed; when you plug them in, they will handshake with the grid, and a central authority will determine whether that appliance deserves to get power or not. If a bureaucrat in Washington decides that it's not hot enough for you to put on the air conditioner, your air conditioner will not work. If the Fed decides that Margaritas lead to too much trouble on Cinco de Mayo, all blenders can be disabled for the day. They can also turn off radios, televisions and computers. In the era of electronic information, restricting the freedom of the press is as easy as turning off the light. The idea is to conserve power, but a Smart Government will be able to use the technology to retain power as well. What's so smart about 'smart meters?' Maybe it's just me, but there is something unsettling about having a smart meter tracking my power consumption. Will there come a day when excessive power usage will be treated as a crime? Who will determine what is excessive? ... Finding ways for more and more people to use less energy doesn't seem very smart to me. Why not expand our energy production to meet our growing needs[?] Nashville Residents' Energy Bills Could Rise Soon. Older meters are getting replaced one by one with newer digital meters. NES said the digital ones are more efficient, but some customers who already have the new meter say it isn't as efficient for their bottom line. Smart-grid hackers could cause blackouts. Deployments of smart grids should be slowed until security vulnerabilities are addressed, according to some cybersecurity experts, citing tests showing that a hacker can cause a major blackout after breaking into a smart-grid system. "Smart Grids" & Monitoring Your Power Use. [Scroll down] The "Smart Grid" is, for the most part, not about getting power to consumers, but about monitoring and controlling that power once it reaches its destination. ... Whereas present electric meters simply measure the total power consumption of a home or business, "smart" meters will collect far more specific information on power usage. As Bob Sullivan at the Red Tape Chronicles observed regarding the "Smart Grid," the tale your new electric meter will be able to tell about your life and habits may be of interest to criminals and other people with an inclination to snoop on you. What will talking power meters say about you? Would you sign up for a discount with your power company in exchange for surrendering control of your thermostat? What if it means that, one day, your auto insurance company will know that you regularly arrive home on weekends at 2:15 a.m., just after the bars close? Welcome to the complex world of the Smart Grid, which may very well pit environmental concerns against thorny privacy issues. Obama energy official has ties to firms that stand to benefit. A top Obama administration official who's helping lead a campaign for energy conservation has a major financial interest in two companies that are poised to benefit from the government's spending. Cathy Zoi, the assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, owns between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stock in Landis+Gyr, a Swiss-based manufacturer of special electric meters that are used to create an efficient "smart" grid of electricity use. Related material: Time-Of-Day Electricity Pricing: Most consumers don't know it, but the overnight price for electricity at wholesale can be practically zero. Utilities and other power producers are sometimes actually forced to pay industrial consumers to use electricity in the early-morning hours -- because it's too expensive to shut down power plants at night. With time-of-day pricing, consumers would be encouraged to alter their habits -- running the dishwasher at night, for example -- and pounce on such bargains, while evening out demand. Dallas may be among the first cities to get "smart" electric meters. Broadband over power lines plan is dead in Dallas. An ambitious plan for using power lines to deliver fast Internet service to 2 million Dallas-area homes collapsed Thursday [5/8/2008], when Oncor agreed to buy the system. Current Communications said it will sell its so-called smart grid of networking equipment to the utility for $90 million. … Here in Dallas, residents should still be among the first in the nation to see how much smart grids can improve power networks. Power to the People. Using taxpayer-subsidized solar power panels as a backdrop, President Obama recently announced another $3.4B in taxpayer subsidies to help upgrade the nation's electrical power grid. The spending includes "smart meters" that theoretically could be used by bribable government officials to throttle back power to the homes of unsupportive constituents. Not that they actually would engage in such despicable extortion, of course... Okay, maybe in Chicago. And Detroit. Meters prove not so smart. They promised smart would be cheap, but so far it's proving more expensive. Most Toronto Hydro customers who've been on smart meters and time-of-use (TOU) pricing the longest have actually seen an increase of up to $3 per month. The cost of the meter itself also adds an extra $3-$4 a month to local utility bills. National Smart Grid To Transition To More Green Energy Use. The National Broadband Plan, recently published by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would lay the groundwork for the federal government to establish a nationwide "smart" electrical grid that would change how Americans use and pay for electricity, affecting such things as homes and transportation with battery-powered cars. PG&E details technical problems with SmartMeters. After months of denying any technical problems with its SmartMeter program, PG&E publicly detailed a range of glitches Monday [4/26/2010] affecting tens of thousands of the digital meters. But the San Francisco-based utility said it had found just eight meters that inaccurately reported a customer's energy use, despite thousands of complaints from customers who say the new meters have overcharged them. Myths Associated with the 'Smart' Electrical Grid. There is no national "grid." And a "smart" grid will not "vastly improve" electric power generation or efficiency. The Smart Grid Trojan Horse. [Scroll down] In truth, the [Smart Grid] initiative is but a collection of programs captured in the form of federal standards that separately and jointly advance the Green agenda without raising many eyebrows. The first effort involves replacing conventional electric meters with Smart Meters. Smart Meters are key, because they can be programmed to total your energy consumption by time-of-day (among other sophisticated capabilities). This feature facilitates the application of Time-of-Use (TOU) billing tariffs, euphemistically called "dynamic pricing" in marketing circles. SmartGridCity pilot project in Boulder won't be repeated or expanded. SmartGridCity — the $45 million Boulder-based smart-grid experiment — will not be repeated or expanded, David Eves, chief executive of Xcel Energy's Public Service Co. of Colorado, said Monday [8/23/2010]. In the past two years, the projected cost of SmartGridCity, a pilot program designed to better manage electricity distribution and give consumers detailed information about their usage, nearly tripled to $44.8 million. Probes Find Energy Meters Accurate, Service Lacking. A four-month investigation spurred by a surge in energy-bill complaints found new smart meters installed in Northern California by PG&E Corp. are accurately measuring energy use. But the probe found that some utilities are falling down in the way they handle customer complaints and monitor data transmitted by the new digital meters. Marin County Votes to Ban Smart Meters. Smart meters allow electric companies to monitor electricity use remotely on an hour-by-hour basis. This allows the electric company to more efficiently match production with real-time demand and set electricity prices that respond to demand patterns. Power companies and some environmental groups have long been intrigued by the potential for smart meters to induce people to use less power during peak demand hours. Miscellaneous: Feds Pull Plug on Wave Power Project. The federal government has cancelled permits for a wave power project on the California coast. Renewable power advocates had hailed the project as an alternative to conventional energy sources. No benefit in drinking eight glasses of water a day, scientists say. The idea that drinking eight glasses of water a day is good for your health has been dismissed as a myth. Scientists say there is no evidence drinking large amounts of water is beneficial for the average healthy person, and do not even know how this widely held belief came about. Treehuggers Against Trees: When the pioneers first entered the great forests of America, they found that the Native Americans had managed the forests for centuries. Their woodlands contained very few big trees — maybe fifty such trees per acre. Apparently the Indians had set regular, low intensity fires which burned away accumulations of undergrowth, deadwood, dying trees and particularly small trees growing between the big trees. The larger trees were unharmed, because of their thick fire-resistant bark. These fires kept the forest healthy by providing a barrier to disease. Save The Earth — Hug A Logger. As environmental alarmists entertain themselves by turning off lights, their efforts sometimes lead to unintended consequences. A new study, for example, shows they may be warming the earth by saving trees. How Green Is a Fake Christmas Tree? Although some fakes are crafted from recyclable material, about 85 percent of artificial trees are made in China from the petroleum-based plastics polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride, commonly known as PVC or vinyl. The natural-tree industry says PVC could contain lead and is potentially harmful to workers manufacturing it. And any plastic tree will someday end up in a landfill, where it could take millions of years to disintegrate. From a consumer perspective, PVC trees are only dangerous if they catch fire, producing the toxic, highly acidic gas hydrogen chloride. Carbon Nanotubes: The New Asbestos? Nanotechnology experts are calling for prompt government action to ensure that carbon nanotubes are properly regulated, after researchers discovered that some carbon nanotubes can cause precancerous growths in the same way that asbestos does. Environmentalists always say, "If only we could learn from the dolphins..." Baby Dolphin Murders Blamed on US Military. These aquatic mammals where literally beaten to death with multiple internal injuries, lacerations, contusions and the like. Back in 1997 the whole C.S.I. treatment was given these animals and guess who these scientists first blamed? You guessed it, the United States Military. It turns out, however, that scientists have now realized that it is the "smartest" fishie on earth that is responsible. Yes, they were surprised to discover that dolphins are outright murderers. Vitamin pills 'increase risk of early death'. Popular vitamin supplements taken by millions of people in the hope of improving their health may do no good and could increase the risk of a premature death, researchers report today. They warn healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 percent. Drano Used in Processing Soybeans. We've been duped into believing soy is a health-giving product because the Asiatic people use soy and are sooooo healthy. What we weren't told is that the Asiatics ferment the beans in order to eliminate the health hazards. … [Scroll down] The next step is that the refined oil is mixed with sodium hydroxide — NaOH — which most of us know as Drano, at a temperature of 167°F. That's right — the exact same corrosive lye you pour down your drain when it's clogged. Sugar-free gum poses a health hazard. Chewing too much "sugar-free" gum can lead to severe weight loss and bowel problems, doctors are warning. Many "sugar-free" products such as chewing gum and sweets contain a sweetener called sorbitol. It is a sugar alcohol with around a third fewer calories than sucrose, or table sugar. However, the substance can have laxative effects if taken in large enough amounts — a fact that many people are unaware of because potential side-effects are usually listed in small print on the packaging, say the researchers. Energy Saving Day flopped, say organisers. Energy Saving Day was a flop, its organiser admitted last night after the National Grid confirmed that across Britain energy use went up by just over one percent. … The E Day website encouraged participants to turn off as many appliances as possible and to leave them unused for as long as possible. But by mid afternoon it was clear from the meters on the Day's website that consumption was about 600 megawatt hours across the country, higher than what the National Grid estimated was used on a normal February day. Garden Biohazard: Man Killed By Compost. A man has died after inhaling lethal spores which grew on rotting compost in his garden. The 47-year-old fell ill less than 24 hours after being engulfed by "clouds of dust" while working with rotting tree and plant mulch. At first medics thought the previously healthy welder had pneumonia when he was admitted with severe breathing problems. But when antibiotics failed to help, tests showed evidence of Aspergillosis, a reaction to Aspergillus spores. Did thick brush, environmental concerns worsen Martin Fire? State officials attempted to clear brush two years ago on the piece of land where a fire now raging in Santa Cruz County began, but much of the work was delayed and ultimately not finished because of opposition from two local environmental groups. … The reserve, an ancient seabed famed for its rare plants and trees, has not had a significant fire since 1948. As a result, dead trees and brush were piled high. Kicking the Tires of T. Boone's Natural-Gas Car. Automakers have been trying to get the public to buy natural gas vehicles since the 1970s. Yet, despite millions in tax subsidies, today there is only one — count them: one — -compressed-natural-gas (CNG) product in America's showrooms. It's the Honda Civic GX and it ain't exactly flying off the shelves. Vegetarians warned that 'superfood' tofu may harm your memory. Eating high levels of some soy products, including tofu and other so-called 'superfoods,' may increase memory loss, scientists say. Experts funded by the Alzheimer's Research Trust found a 20 percent lower level of brain functioning compared with those eating very little of the product. Vegan diet increases the risk of birth defects, scientists warn. Women who are strict vegetarians or vegans may be a greater risk of having a child with birth defects because they are likely to be deficient in vitamin B12, researchers warned. Research carried out in Ireland has found that women with low levels of B12, found in meat, eggs and milk, when they conceive are at greater risk of having a child with neural tube defects. Superfood rice bran contains arsenic. Rice bran — a so-called "superfood" — might contain dangerous amounts of a natural poison. A new study suggests that rice bran, the shavings left over after brown rice is polished to produce white rice grains, contains "inappropriate" levels of arsenic. Why not raw milk? For those of you who don't know what raw milk is, let me enlighten you. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized. That's right! Straight from the udder to you! … Do [the proponents of raw milk] not realize that without pasteurization the safety of consuming that milk is seriously questionable? That cow lives on a farm, not in a sterile facility! Where has that udder been; what has it touched; what kinds of bacteria has that milk been exposed to that are not removed because it's not been pasteurized? States pay a price for bottle deposit laws. Michigan would have at least $10 million a year more for environmental cleanup if not for people redeeming containers that were bought in other states. Chicago's 'green' promise fades. Mayor Richard Daley promised long ago that his administration would start fighting global warming by buying 20 percent of its electricity from wind farms and other sources of green energy. But more than two years after the deadline he set, the city continues to get nearly all of its power from coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, according to records obtained by the Tribune. Spokane residents smuggle in real suds over useless "green" brands. The quest for squeaky-clean dishes has turned some law-abiding people in Spokane into dishwater-detergent smugglers. They are bringing Cascade or Electrasol in from out of state because the eco-friendly varieties required under Washington state law don't work as well. ... It's not easy to get sparkling dishes when you go green. Commentary from Greenie Watch: The phosphate in regular dishwashing detergents also happens to be a basic fertilizer. Most people who know farms will have heard of superphosphate. Plants love phosphates. Just like they love CO2. Horrors! say the Greenies. It helps nasty plants to grow too. Helping farmers to trap fertilizer runoff from their farms would make more sense if there is any real problem with it. Nuclear only safe option. Majestic dams set in pristine, forested water catchments become tourist attractions in their own right and their names are bywords in feats of engineering: Hoover, Aswan, Boulder, Three Gorges, Hume. But they are the deadliest form of power generation known to man. Hydroelectricity kills thousands each year and claims many more lives than other forms of energy generation — natural gas, LPG, oil and even coal, the mining of which can be perilous. Dams regularly fail, sometimes catastrophically. Just three days ago a dam burst in Jakarta killing 77, with 100 people missing. The Fine Print: What's Really in a Lot of 'Healthy' Foods. The yogurt aisle is dizzy these days with products that promise to reduce your cholesterol, control your blood pressure, protect your digestive health or boost your immune system. In many cases, it's a single ingredient that provides the benefit, and you can find much more of it in other sources. Hydroelectric, Tidal, and Geo-thermal energy sources. [Scroll down] Some of the Greens already hate hydroelectric and for certain they would hate geothermal if they knew the type of facilities that it would entail. But even with the more radical characters aside hydroelectric and geothermal are very site specific. One cannot generate new mountains laden with running water nor can a geothermal anomaly with prolific hot water or steam reservoirs can be made to order. There is absolutely nothing wrong with either hydroelectric or geothermal but they happen where they happen and cannot be manufactured anywhere else. Regarding tidal energy, this has been just talk for at least forty years, an academic exercise with little relation to implementation reality. The Problems with Al Gore: [Scroll down slowly] Gore then made the stunning assertion that geothermal resources in the US alone are so enormous that they could meet our entire energy needs for 35,000 years. Is it not remarkable that we ignore such a vast, unexploited source of energy? Is it not astonishing that generations of scientists and engineers have failed to recognize the potential for withdrawing virtually limitless amounts of free energy from the Earth? If the promise of geothermal energy sounds too good to be true, the reason is that it's not true. The United States gets less than one percent of its energy from geothermal sources. The collapse of the green-energy bubble. The parallel-energy universe known as renewables, a place where dollars and economic theory know no bounds and make no sense, looks increasingly like a bubble set to collapse. Back to the Environmental Issues Page Jump to Environmentalists Oppose Every Practical Source of Energy Back to the Home page 
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