It is our generation to stop the pollution and start using cotton bags as the solution. With global warming going out of hand from gas exhaustion, we don’t need any more problems especially plastic bags that are harmful when broken down naturally. These broken down elements cause sickness and destruction to the air, soil and water system.

Use cotton bags starting today as a way to stop the plastic pollution that is becoming a major threat to the environment. Our lives are threatened ever more from the growing usage of plastic bags. It is time you bring a cotton bag to shopping the next time you go to a supermarket.

Yes, the policy makers of the west are not enlightened beings and I didn’t say anything one way or the other, but all that is irrelevant, as is your “Just because US bans something….” comment.

“Would you like to guess how much leaded gasoline would have been bought if a tax of say $5 a gallon were imposed on leaded gasoline to internalize the negative externality of lead in gasoline?”

Have you actually talked to an owner of a gas station to see whether he’d be OK with offering $5/gallon leaded gas and all the costs associated with ordering and carrying it, or would you make that decision for him because that’s what your theory says? Your statement about $5/gallon leaded gas is good in theory, but there’s also reality/practice, though I can understand why you take that approach of being consistent. And my comment wasn’t to make a statement that banning is OK, but just to give a counter-example that worked just fine.

Unless you want to write a post and illustrate the wrongs, the negatives and the ill-effects of banning leaded gasoline.

BTW, good to see you mention “negative externality” in your comments – you should do that more often.

On the matter of banning: the policy makers of western countries are not enlightened beings. They too do stupid things fairly regularly. But they do get more of their policies right than do the policymakers of the developing countries. Indeed, there is a causal relationship between the right policies and how developed the country is. A poor economy is proof that its policies are on the whole more defective than effective.

Just because the US bans something does not make it right. In the case of leaded gasoline, a tax would have been better than a ban. Would you like to guess how much leaded gasoline would have been bought if a tax of say $5 a gallon were imposed on leaded gasoline to internalize the negative externality of lead in gasoline?

Most western countries (including US) have banned leaded petrol/gasoline, instead of offering different options (leaded and unleaded) and letting the consumers and free market decide, and that (banning) is the saner/wiser policy. So, it depends.

“The police will use the ban as a baton to beat the shopkeepers with to extract even more than they already do.”