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"Not 'believed.' Known. And not a problem, but many problems. the River aspect is just the most public. Simply reducing waste is a perfectly laudable goal."

I agree. As I have said, I don't really have a problem with the bag tax. My objects were largely intellectual. It has proven to be at most a minor inconvenience, and there are other benefits. But this is irrelevant to whether it has accomplished its stated goals.

I really, really, don't understand why people who claim to care about the environment, have no interest in analyzing, empirically, what effect this legislation has had. Legislation that was specifically sold as solving a particular problem, and is in fact called the Anacostia River Cleanup Act. Having nothing to do with how great it is to keep 200 million bags out of landfills or whatever, there's still that issue of what we set out to do: clean up the river.

Likewise, I still don't see why people think you can call something a "success" if they don't believe in the necessity to measure the results in any way, or apparently, even have any possible scenarios in which it could be considered a failure.

If a measure can only succeed, then it can neither succeed nor fail. And there appears to have been only one possible outcome under the criteria that some folks here are using. So at best we can say "we passed a law and the expected, legally mandated behavior is now happening."

But that was true two years ago.

by Jamie on Feb 29, 2012 10:10 am • link • report