No Plastic, People

Today, California became the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags. Watch for other coastline states to follow, starting in the West. Why? California alone spends $25 million a year to collect and landfill the 14 billion plastic bags we use. A paltry 5% is recycled; it’s not energy-efficient and it encourages more plastic use. Plastic bags make up 2% of the overall waste in California, but they are the predominate form of marine debris. The ultimate destination for much of the plastic waste here is… (wait for it…) the North Pacific Central Gyre, where researchers say more than 300,000 plastic particles are found per square mile.

Parched West in Crusty Crisis

The millennium year 2000 didn’t wreak havoc over Earth as expected, but in the 14 years since, western states including California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming are the driest they’ve been all century.

The extreme drought plaguing western America has become so severe it is causing the Earth’s crust to rise, leading to an half inch rise in some places, most dramatically beneath California’s mountains, where snow packs atop are already melting.

The weight of ground water keeps the Earth’s crust where it is, but about 63 trillion gallons of water have been lost since last year, according to GPS measurements by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Evaporation and use by people have played a big part, exacerbated by lack of rain. The amount lost would be enough to cover the entire United States west of the Rocky Mountains with a layer of water four inches deep.

There has been an average rise of one-sixth of an inch across the western region.