I see a silver lining to Angela’s post about the ambiguous environmental benefits of banning plastic bags in China. The news story she references notes that:
“Beijing residents appeared to take the ban in stride, reflecting rising environmental consciousness…”
This “rising environmental consciousness” is a product of the increasing prosperity that Beijing enjoys. Nothing is worse for nature than poverty, because the poor have neither the time nor the energy to worry about pollution—they are too busy trying to survive. A society will turn its attention to the environment only after sufficient material comfort is attained for a critical mass of citizens. All too often, China’s incredible economic growth is often the scapegoat for environmental degradation. In fact, it is the solution.
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This may be an example of the environmental Kuznets curve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve
Up to a point, China’s runaway growth causes higher pollution, but eventually environmental harm starts to stabilize and then decline. This was seen during the 20th century in developed countries like the US.
Plastic bags are trivial on the grand scale of pollution, though, and China’s per-capita level of pollution will probably keep increasing overall as economic development spreads westward into poorer areas of the county.