"The administration should stop looking to foreign suppliers for help and focus on what can be done here at home to increase U.S. energy security and benefit American consumers."
Wait a second, I thought plastic bags were the problem!
New York Times (8/24/21) reports: "Recently, Venetia Berry, an artist in London, counted up the free cotton tote bags that she had accumulated in her closet. There were at least 25. So far, so earth-friendly? Not exactly. It turns out the wholehearted embrace of cotton totes may actually have created a new problem An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production, according to a 2018 study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That equates to daily use for 54 years — for just one bag. According to that metric, if all 25 of her totes were organic, Ms. Berry would have to live for more than a thousand years to offset her current arsenal...Buffy Reid, of the British knitwear label &Daughter, halted production of her cotton bags in April this year; she’s planning to implement an on-site feature where customers can opt into receiving one. Though Aesop isn’t halting production, the brand is converting the composition of their bags to a 60-40 blend of recycled and organic cotton. 'It will cost us 15 percent more,' said Ms. Santos, but 'it reduces water by 70 to 80 percent.'"
Good thing the US is energy independent. Ooops...I forgot.
Reuters (8/23/21) reports: "Russia, Iran and China will hold joint maritime exercises in the Persian Gulf around late 2021 or early 2022, Russia's ambassador to Tehran said, the RIA news agency reported on Monday."
Reuters (8/24/21) reports: "Saudi deputy minister of defense Khalid bin Salman said on Twitter on Tuesday that the kingdom and Russia signed an agreement aimed at developing areas of joint military cooperation between the two countries."
Looks like E.V. mandates are, as the kids say, "lit"
Forbes (8/22/21) column: "The puns about the recall of the Chevrolet Bolt EV almost write themselves. Last week’s announcement by General Motors that it was recalling some 73,000 Bolts at a cost of some $1 billion due to the possibility that the vehicles could catch on fire, is both embarrassing for the iconic automaker, and a warning that its plans to electrify all of the cars it sells by 2035 could, ahem, be going up in flames. The recall announced last Friday, comes about a month after an earlier recall of some 70,000 Bolts that were made between 2017 and 2019. GM put the cost of that recall at about $800 million. Thus, fixing all of the Bolts being recalled could, as Morningstar analyst David Whiston told the Detroit Free Press, cost GM some $1.8 billion. That’s a staggering amount for any company, but particularly for one that went bankrupt in 2009, and has said it will be spending $27 billion on EVs and autonomous vehicles over the next few years. But the significance of the recall by GM, the biggest U.S. automaker, goes far beyond Detroit. The costs of the EV push now underway are likely to be borne by all American taxpayers and ratepayers, not just EV buyers. "
