A measure to make California the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags. SB270 passed despite fierce opposition from plastic bag manufacturers and after initially failing an Assembly vote last week. Brown has until Sept. 30 to act on the bill.

Many cities and counties already have local bag ordinances, including San Francisco. The bill by Senate Democrats phases out the use of plastic bags, beginning at grocery stores and pharmacies in July 2015 and the following year at convenience stores and liquor stores.

“A throw-away society is not sustainable,” Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, one of the bill’s authors, said in a statement. “SB270 will greatly reduce the flow of billions of single-use plastic bags that are discarded throughout our state. This is good for California and reflects our values as a state that cares about the environment, sea life and wildlife.”

That’s from the San Francisco Chronicle. Note the Chron reporter’s POV is plain in the first sentence, which accepts the premise that they really are “single-use” bags.

British regulators dismiss theory driving state legislation

Now let’s go somewhere far from California to get a sober take on the plastic bag argument: the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency, which has a very liberal reputation on issues like global warming and water pollution. Here’s a short list of some of what it’s concluded over the years:

1. Any decision to ban traditional polyethylene plastic grocery bags in favor of bags made from alternative materials (compostable plastic or recycled paper) will be counterproductive and result in a significant increase in environmental impacts across a number of categories from global warming effects to the use of precious potable water resources.  … other mitigating circumstances …  may lead to even greater differentials between plastic grocery bags and those made from either paper or compostable plastics.  … the standard polyethylene grocery bag has significantly lower environmental impacts than a 30% recycled content paper bag and a compostable plastic bag.

2. A cotton bag has a greater [adverse environmental] impact than the conventional HDPE [plastic] bag in seven of the nine impact categories even when used 173 times … The impact was considerably larger in categories such as acidification and aquatic & terrestrial ecotoxicity due to the energy used to produce cotton yarn and the fertilisers used during the growth of the cotton.

3. Starch-polyester blend bags have a higher global warming potential and abiotic depletion than conventional polymer bags, due both to the increased weight of material in a bag and higher material production impacts.

Feel-good lawmaking devoid of evidence

So why is California on the bring of enacting a dumb law? Because it is the nature of the environmental movement to constantly look for ways to demonstrate its moral superiority. This is a prime opportunity — forcing people to change a minor part of their everyday life in service of the Green Cause.

They do so even though their main arguments have been debunked. Plastic bags are less than 1 percent of the municipal waste stream. And, no, those alleged plastic flotillas in the ocean don’t come from “single-use plastic bags.”

Says who? Says the scientists who work for the Obama administration at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Here’s the NOAA fact check page.

What’s particularly enlightening about the page is that it casually debunks another claim of anti-plastic bag crowd: Plastic debris’ ” impacts on marine life mostly remain a big unknown.”

Not to California greens. They know what their religion says is true. Whether or not it’s, yunno, true.

One would think with such importance that reporters and news organizations would have in place an incredibly large presence to cover the comings and goings of lawmakers and agencies in Sacramento. Yet, disconcertingly, the opposite is true.

In fact, the number of reporters covering state government is at a startling low. And a recent Pew study shows that number will likely continue to decline.

According to the study, national numbers of reporters covering state legislatures has dropped more than 35 percent since 2003, outpacing the overall drop in journalists from all fields. The Sacramento Bee, the newspaper of the capitol, has cut its state government reporting staff by almost half.  The same thing happened at the L.A. Times. Last December, Southern California Public Radio announced it would close its Sacramento news bureau and similarly, last August, ABC News announced the closing of its broadcast presence in the capitol.

The Pew study also exposed huge gaps in newspapers covering state capitols — only 30 percent of newspapers polled cover their state government at all.  Which means entire cities or regions read the news every day and see no significant legislative coverage. News stations are reducing the time the assigned reporters even spend on covering government. Only half of reporters assigned to cover state government do so full-time, and 15 percent of those assigned are student interns. If news organizations are not adequately reporting on how our state leaders are spending tax dollars and making decisions on our behalf, who will? 

What makes our situation in California worse is how we compare based on the length of our legislative sessions.  California is one of just five states with a 12-month legislative session.  Texas, the state with the most reporters, and full-time reporters, assigned to the state government, has an average legislative session length of under 5 months.  Among states with a year-long legislative calendar, California has a significantly higher percentage of part-time reporters.

It’s not as if the Legislature isn’t giving reporters plenty to keep an eye on.  In 2013, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to opening government, gave our state Legislature a “D” grade.  Important details about legislation, committee assignments and votes weren’t available anywhere on the state’s website.  The report showed it was nearly impossible to tell what was going on in our own government based on what they report themselves.

Despite ongoing scandals and ethics violations, a significant number of legislators in Sacramento have backed away from passing comprehensive ethics reform.  And the Legislature adjourned for recess earlier this year without touching the most pressing issue on its agenda: A reformed water bond agreement that has been awaiting approval since former Governor Schwarzenegger helped draft the legislation five years ago.  If there were more coverage of Sacramento, would legislators move faster on legislation like this? I’d like to think so.

Heading into the November election, we’re about to send a lot of new leaders to make decisions for us. And there are decisions of great consequence, from education funding, to insurance premiums, to drought preparedness, to business and regulatory policies, at stake. Citizens need to know what politicians and influencers are doing and saying in Sacramento to make informed decisions.  And a vibrant press corps is essential to providing such information.