Intense sunshine this afternoon and a pleasant, comfortable wind — gorgeous!
One more for the Left Coast: California is the first to ban plastic bags at the state level.
Gov. Moonbeam Brown signed the law today — Lost Coast Outpost has the local angle.
And the major ingredient of those bags is oil — reportedly about eight to 10 percent of the US total oil supply goes to making plastic with about 12 million barrels of oil a year consumed in producing the plastic bags used in America. So your point: Another way of considering this is that the energy consumed by driving a car one kilometre (3,281 feet) is the equivalent of manufacturing 8.7 plastic bags.
In this day and age, pure ludicrous.
Even as our only-home planet freaks (see my post this morning), petroleum gushes forth!
(Illustration found here).
Though now not so included via those elastic carry-alls, oil is breaking out all over — the bag-ban does not go into effect until next July, then it’s just for grocery chains and pharmacies; the following July of 2016, convenience stores and liquor stores will be included. An action, which under any sane sense, should have taken place years and years ago. Oil, too, but civilization depends/is addicted to it.
Plastic bags should have been a no brainer — plastic garbage now defines the earth’s oceans, and will never be completely eradicated on dry land, not to any helpful degree.
Enough to offset climate change, anyway.
Oil, though, is the shit kicker.
And we’re all in the cow pen together. This morning for the first time in months, I put $20 worth of gas in my old Jeep Comanche, now at $3.89 a gallon for regular. The Jeep has been parked since May — a trivial matter of a starter, but circumstances formulated within my own personal, neurotic ambiance delayed the needed repair until yesterday. I’m fairly petrified of driving, anxiety-prone and nervous, but have to suppress that kind shit in order to lead a normal, modern life. (Un-emphasize the word, ‘normal‘).
And driving that all that nervous driving is petrol.
Despite all the horrid shit in many places where oil is found, we’re on the verge of an era — more-then enough fuel for the gas pumps.
The price at my local 76 station was still above the California statewide price of $3.71 a gallon for regular. Reports are some US spots might dip way low.
This afternoon, via USAToday:
Rising global oil production, ample inventories, slackening demand and a U.S. dollar trading at multiyear highs have wreaked havoc on the global oil markets in recent weeks.
Tuesday, benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude sank 3.6 percent to $91.16 a barrel, while Brent crude fell 2.4 percent to $94.83.
The crude oil sell-off — which pushed third-quarter crude prices down 13 percent — spilled over to wholesale gas markets Tuesday, pushing mid-October deliveries down 11 percent to $2.59 a gallon.
Behind the drop: rising global oil production, ample inventories, the strong U.S. dollar and growing expectations that demand will remain slack through 2015.
Also helping: a bumper corn crop that’s driven ethanol prices to their lowest levels since 2009.
While gasoline costs typically drop after Labor Day, the hit to crude oil could push gas prices down 30 cents from their current $3.33 national average, already a seven-month low.
And the source material itself, sucked out of the ground even as war wages (via Reuters):
OPEC’s oil supply jumped to its highest in almost two years in September, a Reuters survey found, due to further recovery in Libya and higher output from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers in the face of sub-$100 per barrel oil prices.
The lack of any cutbacks underlines the relaxed view of OPEC’s core Gulf members to oil’s slide from $115 in June to $97 on Tuesday — a level they can tolerate, but which puts budgets in producers such as Iran and non-member Russia under pressure.
…
Iraq, like Libya, has also managed to increase supplies despite fighting in the country.
Oil output rebounded due to higher exports from Iraq’s southern terminals and increased output from fields in Kurdistan.
An advance by Islamic State fighters into northern Iraq has not reduced southern exports, but violence has hit supply of Kirkuk crude from the north and shut down the Baiji refinery, keeping crude output below Iraq’s potential.
Oil and barbarism, hand in hand (via HuffPost):
U.S. intelligence officials revealed last week that they believe the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is reaping as much as $3 million a day in revenue, making it one of the wealthiest terrorist groups in history.
…
Oil appears to be the largest source of income for the Islamic State today.
…
Luay al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, told The New York Times that the Islamic State’s territory currently produces between 25,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil a day, which can bring in about $1.2 million on the black market.
What a horror for mankind, this thing called oil.