California’s war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired. Lawmakers are trying again – the Los Angeles Times

Plastic Bags (by wastebusters CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

According to a report by the consumer advocacy group CALPIRG, 157,385 tons of plastic bag waste was discarded in California the year the law was passed. By 2022, however, the tonnage of discarded plastic bags had skyrocketed to 231,072 — a 47% jump…The problem, it turns out, was a section of the law that allowed grocery stores and large retailers to provide thicker, heavier-weight plastic bags to customers for the price of a dime….

Can Seawalls Save Us? – the New Yorker

Sea wall drains, Prachuap Bay, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand (by Troup Dresser CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Pacifica, California, just south of San Francisco, is the kind of beachfront community that longtime residents compare to Heaven…Pacifica embodies one of the central disagreements about rising seas. Fight or flight? Stay or go? Flight can seem unimaginable. But, if we try to fight the ocean with rock and concrete, it will cost us—and it may not work…