Chennai choking on plastic

This goes along with what I've said in the past:  Plastic waste management is a THIRD WORLD PROBLEM.  NOT a first world problem like here in the USA.  Without proper disposal management, trash ends up in the environment.  I saw this first hand in Mexico. Outside the city of Monterrey trash was dumped onto a bank of a ravine and allowed to just flow down the bank.  This trash ends up in the ecosystem.

Banning plastic in third world countries will not solve their problem.

Chennai figures among the top 10 largest plastic waste producing cities in the country. Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar’s announcement in Parliament that Chennai is behind only Delhi as a generator of plastic waste is a wake up call for the state environment department.

Greens complain that the state government allots crores of rupees every year for awareness on dangers of using plastic but fails to arrive at any firm policy decision to ban plastic by a suitable law.

Quoting the study by the Central Pollution Control Board and Central Institute of Plastic Engineering and Technology for 60 cities in the country during 2010-11, Mr Javadekar said, “Ten cities - Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Surat, Kanpur and Pune - generate more plastic waste.” He said the ministry has notified the Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011 despite which waste generation was not regulated in the cities.

California Grocers Lobby for First State Plastic Bag Ban

Oh yeah!  They LOVE plastic bag bans.  They can MAKE MONEY off of those bags. So, since market forces are bypassed by idiotic plastic bag bans why not just throw the rest of market forces down the tubes and jump in with Fascism whole hog.  Let's ban grocery bags at ALL of our grocery stores and then the money will role in!

California grocers, who may realize as much as $1 billion in new revenue from a 10-cent fee on paper bags, are teaming up with environmentalists in a push to make their state the first to prohibit single-use plastic shopping bags.

The retail and grocery lobbies, which backed some of 13 failed California bills since 2007 to curb or ban the bags, are facing off against paper- and plastic-bag manufacturers who oppose the restrictions. Together, the two sides spent $366,000 to lobby California lawmakers in the first three months of this year, according to state filings.

Protect the environment?  What's that?  This really makes you start to wonder what was really behind the plastic bag ban in the first place.

California Sand Fire: Desalination Plants May Be State’s Only Solution Despite Environmental, Energy Concerns

I agree.  Sure, it's expensive.  But what are the alternatives?  I don't think "no water" is an alternative.  But environmentalists are fine with that.

"This [Carlsbad project] is going to be the pig that will try for years to find the right shade of lipstick," Marco Gonzalez, an attorney who sued on behalf of environmental groups that tried to halt construction, told the San Jose Mercury News last month. "This project will show that the water is just too expensive."

“As the cost of imported water is on the rise and technological advances are bringing down the cost of converting seawater into potable water, desalination has become the only truly drought-proof process to deliver a new source of clean, safe, high-quality water in a cost-effective and environmentally sound way,” Allan Zaremberg, president and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce, wrote in a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times recently.

I Played by the Rules on Immigration. Why Is the U.S. Making It So Hard for Me to Become a Doctor?

This is just sick.  A legal alien can't get in-state tuition...but an ILLEGAL alien can?

Even under the new law signed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott—which grants in-state tuition to students living illegally in the United States—I’m left paying out-of-state rates.<
br /> How can someone who is living in the United States illegally get a tuition break but I get penalized for doing things legally?

My father has been on a nonimmigrant NAFTA professional visa as part of his job for 15 years. He personifies a typical hard-working American citizen. He has paid his taxes in the United States and has worked feverishly as a computer consultant but could not be sponsored for a green card until recently, when he was hired as a full-time employee.

Are tax dollars for Texas businesses really going out of state?

I'm against taxpayers money used like this.  You would think the savings in Capital Gains taxes and income taxes would be enough of a draw you wouldn't need additional incentives such as these.

One company called Targazyme (formerly America Stem Cell) took 1.2 million from the fund back in 2009 to help build their biopharmaceutical business down in Floresville. But there’s one problem: according to reports, there’s nothing at the company’s Texas address but a weedy lot. The California address listed on their website looks more like an airport hangar than anything else, leaving a Switzerland location as the only other published address for the company. And making folks wonder where, exactly, the state’s money is going.

California's Climate-Change Denial

WSJ article on deluded, ignorant CA'ians.\
You may have to to a google search in order to read it.

State Sen. President Darrell Steinberg earlier this year floated the idea of paying Californians a "climate dividend" to offset higher gas prices, which he predicted could spike by 40 cents next year thanks to cap and trade. Sixteen Democratic Assembly members are leading a charge to delay cap and trade's application to transportation fuels. Three-quarters of Californians support the requirement—but that falls to 39% once they hear it could raise gas prices.

Whoa!  Dude!  You mean I have to pay for this?

EPA Admits to Senate that CO2 Regs Not About Pollution Control

Got this from Roy Spencer PhD website via freerepublic.com

On Wednesday, before the Senate EPW Committee, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy had this priceless quote regarding the EPA’s proposed carbon dioxide regulations (italics added):

“And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants…It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units.”

What liars.  Lower electric bills?  Are they serious?  And these people are in charge of our money?