I know this is my umpteenth post on the issue of plastic bag levies, however I’ve never been one to resist a catchy headline.

Straight from the land of $7 Dollar coffee, voters in Seattle have just struck-down a city imposed tax of 20 cents per plastic bag. The city council had ordered the tax to begin in January, however the plastics industry bankrolled a lobbyist effort to have the issue put before the voters in a citywide referendum. Well played sir.

The outcome of the vote will probably be attributed to the frugality of recession, however it also says a lot on how people regard environmental issues. In voter opinion polls the environment is often ranked last on the list of concerns.

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The US Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, spoke recently to press the importance of forest conservation and stressed his agency’s commitment to its future in the United States. His comments sought to point out that forests are crucial in supplying clean water, sheltering wildlife, and mitigating the effects of climate change. He went on to say that the sky might in fact be blue.

Vilsack is perhaps best known for his strong support of biofuels and while serving as governor was a strong supporter of Ethanol additives. I’m still not sure how I feel about biofuels as it seems a little shortsighted to take two things as vital as energy and food and combine them into one item of such importance.

Back to the issue at hand. Key among Vilsack’s policies is reversing former president Bush’s forest planning rule of 2008 and also seeking to reinstate former president Bill Clinton’s ‘Roadless Rule’ which had imposed halts on road construction, among other development, on 58 million acres of national forests.

I firmly believe that deforestation is one of the largest threats facing the world today. And it’s great to see a member of the presidential cabinet taking such a strong stance. Smokey would be proud.

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Obesity has been in the headlines a lot recently, with health care dominating discussions in Washington most of the focus has been on the health considerations and how it seems to be permeating American culture. There was even some controversy when President Obama named Dr Regina Benjamin, a clinically obese woman, to be the nation’s Surgeon General.

And while the health considerations are important, especially if the US adopts some sort of single-payer health care system, I’m here to talk about the environmental impact of an obese population.

A report out of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (man I wish I had a more prestigious sounding source) claims that a lean population such as that of Vietnam would consume 20% less food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a country with a 40% rate of obesity. The report went on to say that if taken into account, the lessened energy costs of transporting thin people as opposed to overweight individuals could save 1 gross ton per person in annual carbon emissions.

The news that a heavy person has a larger carbon footprint than a normal person has made a few waves in the media, leaving some to question whether we should really be ‘trying to make them feel even guiltier than they already do’. I will make sure to use that excuse the next time I fire up the G4.

Michael Moore should make a documentary about this. Oh that’s right.

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A report released by 1E, an IT energy consultant, says half of US workers don’t power down their PC’s at night resulting in energy wastes upwards of $2.8 billion US Dollars. The figures are equally disturbing in some of the other countries polled with wastes in Germany alone at over one-billion Dollars.

It would seem that many people don’t want to wait the three minutes in the morning it takes for their PC to start up. Or maybe some still think it’s bad for the computer or somehow energy inefficient to power down at night. While that may have been true in the early era of personal computing, it hasn’t been the case for the last fifteen years.

If you personally turn off your computer when you leave the office but are concerned about your coworkers habits, you should try to petition your company to install some type of energy reduction software on the computer network.

But before we get ahead of ourselves here, while it seems like a win-win to just turn off the computers at night therefore saving money and reducing carbon emissions, that would clearly be a shortsighted solution as it fails to take into account the three minutes of the American worker’s time which, unlike our environment, can’t be replaced.

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The Indian minister of the environment recently rejected scientific claims that the country’s Himalayan glaciers are melting saying things like ’science’ and ‘facts’ couldn’t replace the knowledge gained by local experience. The scientific community however is maintaining its stance asserting that a large number of the glaciers may disappear entirely by the year 2035 [1]. To stress the importance of the issue, in total the Himalayan glaciers feed rivers that supply water to about 40% of the world’s population.

This comes as the developed world continues to push for more action from developing nations to curb emissions. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, recently appealed to India to embrace a low carbon future and not repeat the mistakes of the developed world in seeking fast industrialization. India has so far rejected the first world’s overtures, joining Brazil and China in refusing to agree to any cuts or curbs to the growth of future emissions.

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