Feel Good

The other day I was in a really good mood. It was because... A friend asked why -- I was thinking of going to Ecuador. I'm thinking about the project taking on a few of the stories inside of it, head on. Ecuador. I was a little gitty.
The problem with reporters is that sometimes you get like that -- excited by bad news.
My friend said, "good news doesn't do it?"
No. Some of it is adrenaline and excitement -- but there's a good side to that -- when you find a story that hasn't been covered -- break a piece of really bad news -- the potential for you to do good as a reporter is much, much higher. To draw light to -- understanding -- improvement.
Good news stories only make people feel good.

Sometimes you just want to feel good.


Photograph by Ralph Lee Hopkins
National Geographic

David Llewellyn, MP
Minister for Primary Industries and Water
Wednesday, 9 April 2008

Oil Spill Survivor Outlives Average Life Expectancy

A Little penguin rescued during the Iron Baron oil spill incident over a decade ago, has gone on to live for more than double the average life expectancy for the species, Primary Industries and Water Minister David Llewellyn said today.

Mr Llewellyn said although the Little penguin died earlier this year, its survival for almost 13 years after the major oil spill highlighted the value of the rehabilitation effort following the oil spill.

Mr Llewellyn said earlier this year local school students retrieved the band fitted to the penguin which enabled Department of Primary Industries and Water wildlife staff to trace the penguin’s history.

“It should be incredibly satisfying for everyone who played a part in the rehabilitation effort after the oil spill to know of the longevity of some of the species that they assisted,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“The details from the band and DPIW records show that this Little penguin was one that was covered in oil when it was brought in as an 800 gram adult male.

“Following cleaning and rehabilitation he was released on July 26 1995 at Low Head weighing 960 grams.

“In the following 12 and a half years he appears to have remained in the local area with his body being found only seven kilometres from where he was released,” Mr Llewellyn said.

DPIW Wildlife and Marine Conservation Section Head Rosemary Gales said the Little penguin was already an adult when it was rescued and so was certainly older than 13 when it died.

“On average in the wild Little penguins are estimated to live about 6.5 years, so this one has certainly far exceeded the average life expectancy for the species,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“It is an incredibly valuable record to get as it highlights that the massive wildlife rehabilitation efforts that are put in after oil spills can certainly be effective in reducing the impacts of a spill.”

Rehabilitation Manager at the oil spill site Mark Holdsworth said over 100 volunteers assisted the efforts to clean, feed and house around 2000 Little penguins at the time.

“The survival of this penguin for so long will be greeted with a sense of pride from our team of penguin carers,” Mr Holdsworth said.

“This also provides us with a sense of confidence that if an unfortunate accident like this were to occur again, we can do something positive to help restore an important part of the environment.”

Dr Gales said research undertaken, after the oil spill at the mouth of the Tamar River on July 10 1995, estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 penguins were killed as a result of the oil spill.

“Unless treated, even small amounts of oil on the plumage of seabirds can result in their death – either through drowning, hypothermia or acute toxicity,” Dr Gales said.

“Rehabilitation of oiled seabirds can reverse the immediate physical effects of oiling.

“However the discovery of this little penguin has highlighted the real value of these rehabilitation efforts by showing how long they can continue to survive if they are given the opportunity,” Dr Gales said.

Paint It Black

Last week, a famous British Columbian painter, Robert Bateman, posted a video on Youtube called "Not a Pretty Picture." Bateman has spent his life painting the landscape and wildlife of Northern Canada -- his paintings are in the Smithsonian, and without going too far into it I found one painting listed in an on-line auction for $90,000. They are lovely.



The purpose of the video is to try to prevent the passage of oil tankers through the region. In the video, the 78 year-old artists paints his own painting black.



According to an article in the Vancuver Sun last week,

"Fears over tanker traffic in B.C. waters have escalated since Enbridge Inc. last month rekindled plans for a $4-billion pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat.

If the pipeline is approved, the port would be expanded and crude oil shipped by tanker to overseas markets."

I'll look more into the exploration in BC another morning, but right now I am simply transfixed by this video in which the painter takes one of his own images of the magnificent water way -- filled with whales and birds -- and paints it black.

"We have to think about what can happen to thousands of organisms if there is an oil spill, and we know these can be treacherous waters, from what happened to the Queen of the North and the Exxon Valdez," Bateman said."

Okay -- it looses something -- well, a lot -- to find out the depicted "Orca Procession" a reproduction.

"The picture on the easel is a print, not the original, he admitted slightly reluctantly. It is, however, a digitally reproduced limited edition, probably worth a couple of thousand dollars."

But I love this.

For one thing, he paints beautifully, even as he tries to be ugly with it. His strokes are elegant and his work comes through even here. It's such a violent thing -- the covering over and the blanketing -- an allusion to the image of the landscape after the Valdez spill. Rocks coated, birds coated, a wildlife destroyed.

One of the comments on Youtube said, "oil is a natural substance. The Exxon Valdez disaster was one of the largest so called spills and as little of time as 19 years you have a full recovery. Why? because crude oil is a natural substance. If this substance bubbles up from the bottom of the ocean floor then what. I say lets burn and use as much as possible before it comes to the surface, including off the coast of BC."

But of course, this isn't true. The land and the lifestyle there was devastated and has never returned to what it was. I read somewhere the other day that Exxon is the single most profitable corporation in the history of the free market.

By the way, I looked into oil paint ingredients a few months ago -- vegetable oil; usually linseed, I believe.

Robert Bateman's site is at
http://www.robertbateman.ca/art/arttitlepage.html
The Youtube video is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKVRuelvJ-s

A Vast Spiderweb of Pipelines

Having tired a bit of the news lately, I've been looking at more industry sites. My newest find is OilOnline. "Your on-line source for the oil industry."

I don't know -- I guess I'd heard of off shore drilling plenty -- just never really thought about what this would mean.

"Strip away the water and sands from the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf, and you’ll find a vast spider’s web of pipelines – some 28,000 miles of pipe crisscrossing the Gulf from Texas to Alabama. Although deepwater pipelines currently account for a small fraction of the total, that’s where the industry’s focus has been for the past decade."


Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

In college, two of my best friends and I went camping on Corpus Christi. We camped right on the beach and listened to the waves and the sand. It's one of my favorite places in the world, I think -- though it was a very rough camping night. It was so windy we thought we were going to blow away until someone had he life-saving idea of putting the spare tire from the rental car in the tent. I remember warm Lone Star beer being part of the scenario too... That was 18 years ago, I guess. I went back on my camping trip with my dog a few years later. There was a seafood joint called Snoopy's there. I'm always a sucker for Snoopy. I wonder if it looks different now. If our tent would be sandwiched now between the rattlesnakes and an enormous oil rig.

In 2006 the National Geographic reported on "the successful discovery of oil at a staggering depth beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico."

"The well delves through 7,000 feet (2,134 meters) of seawater and more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) of seafloor to strike oil in the lower tertiary formation—a layer of rock laid down between 65 million and 24 million years ago."

I've been looking for about 20 minutes now and I can't seem to find any reports on the environmental effects of the drilling. The National Geographic doesn't mention it -- and I can't seem to find anyone else mentioning it either. This seems strange to me.

I did find a site called the Gulf Of Mexico Foundation -- that says it's purpose is to promote conservation in the Gulf of Mexico. See now, don't try this at home. It looked like a lovely site from the start -- with pictures of coral and clams and things. But when you look at the partners there are lots of big oil dollars attached -- and while the site reports on problems in the Gulf with fish and coral, it doesn't mention oil at all and offers up many negative stories about drug companies, wind farms, biofuels and why coastal residencies.

The ocean is being mined. I'm remembering again my friend Michael, the oilman and deep sea diver warning that we are killing the oceans. That we could reenter a time when the oceans cannot sustain life at all...

Vast spiderwebs of subterranean pipelines abound.


photo by Richard Ling
link

Be In Touch

There's an interesting article in the Times today -- it talks about how cowboys are looking out for the land all over the country --

''Look at this grass. If I don't take care of it, that's my livelihood,'' Nitschke said, kneeling as he examined foxtail shoots. ''We dress differently than the eco-folks, we probably vote differently, but in the end there's a lot of ways in which our core values are really close.''

Isn't it sweet -- the image of this cowboy bending down to touch a baby tree... The story says, usually, those who live off the land and those who seek to protect it are at odds...

Across the West, cattlemen and environmentalists have locked horns over grazing practices for decades. But increasingly, ranchers are buying into the idea that they have a role to play in protecting open space, be it through preserving private wildlands or promoting sustainable grazing techniques.

"Arizona state card."

Wealth does Arizona hold
In her mines and hearts of gold,
In her towering Canon Grand
Till she seems, 'The promised land'.
[1916]

Near Florida's Lake Okeechobee, the World Wildlife Fund has recruited ranchers to build ditches on their lands to improve wetlands habitat for threatened and endangered birds like the wood stork and crested caracara.

In Wyoming, the Audobon Society is trying to persuade oil and gas companies to pay ranchers to maintain sage brush expanses key to the survival of the sage grouse.

It's a strange sort of question -- what constitutes living off the land -- in harmony with -- in understanding of -- in cooperation with -- respecting...

In touch vs out of touch -- isn't it nice to think of skin involved in that interchange. In touch with one's surroundings. In touch with the earth. The people around us...

Keep Your Mouth Shut

I started out today reading about -- trying to figure out how to write about -- a rather discouraging court case.

Appeals Court Overturns EPA on Mercury Emissions By Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer Feb. 8--A federal appeals court ruled today that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrongly exempted power plants from curtailing mercury emissions, which means the agency must now develop new rules to fight mercury pollution.

According to the article, the EPA was set to impose some regulations, the exemptions within the new law were too great to allow. It seems that energy producing plants were exempt from the legislation. For one thing, when coal is refined, mercury is released as a vapor.

Mercury becomes airborne when coal is burned. Once it falls into waterways, it becomes methylmercury, which is more toxic and works its way through the food chain into fish. It can cause nervous-system damage in a developing fetus and young children.

...

"Ironically, with their aggressive litigation posture, the environmental community and their state allies have again caused uncertainty and delay in regulating mercury," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. The EPA "essentially must return to the drawing board in developing a new mercury rule," he said.

In college I wrote about the propaganda art of the Soviet Union -- how it communicated strength and power. Dictatorships need to communicate this way to keep order among the masses.



Keep your mouth shut!
N. Vatolina, N. Denisov, 1941

Strength and power and fear.
A few months ago I was tired of listening to myself talk. I think today I'm tired of listening to everyone else talk. The language of propaganda seems to attempt to elicit emotion -- but seems today to me to be more an imposer of powerlessness...

This from George Bush Sr. -- on my birthday in 1988:

Vice President Bush, campaigning in the Northwest, has been urging greater domestic oil production and arguing that it can be achieved without endangering the environment.

For the end of this post I wanted to find a quote where George Bush Jr. said something nice about the environment, but I couldn't find one.

Happy Birthday, Darwin

Today is Charles Darwin's 199th birthday. Thanks to Wired for this celebratory tid-bit.

Well, nearly two centuries later the Origin of Species is still in contention -- but not survival of the fittest...

''The Pacific walrus is an early victim of our failure to address global warming."
Said Shaye Wolf, a Biologist for the Center of Biological Diversiy which filed a petition last week to have the Pacific Walrus listed endangered. Read the Times article here.
''As the sea ice recedes, so does the future of the Pacific walrus.''








Uncredited NASA photo

Without ice the walrus are driven to land -- out of their usual habitat -- and into the habitat of others...

As many as 6,000 walruses in late summer and fall abandoned ice over deep water and congregated on Alaska's northwest shore. Herds were larger on the Russian side, one group reached up to 40,000 animals. Russian observers estimated 3,000 to 4,000 mostly young walruses died in stampedes when herds rushed into the water at the sight of a polar bear, hunter or low-flying aircraft.

One day before the petition was filed, during a lag in ruling on the listing of the Polar Bear in the arctic, The Shell Corp. was the high bidder on oil exploration leases on some 2.76 million arctic acres. They bid $18,497 an acre, according to the article in the Times.

Shell’s vice president for exploration for the Americas, Annell Bay, said the lease sale was an opportunity to move into an undeveloped region that could help meet an increasing demand for energy. “There’s not many areas like this in the United States,” Ms. Bay said.

There are not many areas like this in the world.

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." -- Charles Darwin

Spicy Tuna

Yesterday, a headline in the Times read, "Warnings Don't Deter Lovers Of Sushi."

For me, the only deterrent that ever veers me away from eating raw tuna is price and the fact that my kids don't like it -- occasionally cold, but that's never much a little warm Saki won't fix... I hadn't read the "warning" article from Wednesday, but felt alarmed enough to do so. It was reported in the food and wine section of the paper -- those sections are funny -- sometimes I wonder if they are trying to lure or bury with the placement of some stories...

"High Mercury Levels Found In Tuna Sushi." Apparently, reporters from the Times went all over Manhattan buying tuna sushi and testing it for mercury. Mercury is not regularly tested for by any government department.

Sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market.

I've written about this before, but sometimes a topic warrants coming back to. It was the undeterred that intrigued me today...

Coal mining, coal burning, oil refining and oil pollution are all main causes of mercury poison. Last month an article from the Chicago Tribune looked at one plant's excretions into Lake Michigan.

The U.S. Steel mill in Gary and the BP refinery in nearby Whiting rank among the nation's worst factories on health threats to neighbors from water pollution, according to a Tribune analysis of new federal research.

Mercury, lead and other pollutants poured into the Lake Michigan basin by the two industrial giants account for the high health-risk scores tabulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The findings are based on the amount of pollution released by each facility, the toxicity of each chemical released and estimates of the number of people who eat fish caught in nearby waters.

Here's a funny fact I found -- the mercury that spills out of your old thermometer -- you can swallow it and it won't hurt you (if you are in good health to begin with). That form and amount of the metal is hard to absorb, and easy to get rid of. But fish eat fish after fish after fish, and the levels of mercury become concentrated inside of them, permeating their flesh.

People are exposed to methylmercury almost entirely by eating contaminated fish and wildlife that are at the top of aquatic foodchains. The National Research Council, in its 2000 report on the toxicological effects of methylmercury, pointed out that the population at highest risk is the offspring of women who consume large amounts of fish and seafood. The report went on to estimate that more than 60,000 children are born each year at risk for adverse neurodevelopmental effects due to in utero exposure to methylmercury. In its 1997 Mercury Study Report to Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that mercury also may pose a risk to some adults and wildlife populations that consume large amounts of fish that is contaminated by mercury.

That's from the US Geological website. This from an article in Discover Magazine:

Infants born to mothers contaminated by mercury in Japan’s Minamata Bay in 1956 had profound neurological disabilities including deafness, blindness, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. In adults, mercury poisoning can cause numbness, stumbling, dementia, and death. “It’s no secret that mercury exposure is highly toxic,” says toxicologist Alan Stern, a contributor to a 2000 National Research Council report on mercury toxicity. But high-level exposures like those at Minamata cannot help scientists determine whether six silver fillings and a weekly tuna-salad sandwich will poison you or an unborn child. “The question is, what are the effects at low levels of exposure?” he says.

Data now suggest effects might occur at levels lower than anyone suspected. Some studies show that children who were exposed to tiny amounts of mercury in utero have slower reflexes, language deficits, and shortened attention spans. In adults, recent studies show a possible link between heart disease and mercury ingested from eating fish. Other groups claim mercury exposure is responsible for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and the escalating rate of autism.

Fillings??!! Really, it seems like a bunch of the disconnect stems from the fact that we don't really know yet what the effects are. But isn't it one of those things you look around and think -- autism, attention span, cancer, Alzheimer's -- we know these to be growing exponentially...

Why do we do things that are so clearly bad for us? What exactly do we need proved?

But also, where do we go -- what do we eat...

Who what where when why
do we spend our time and is safety really what we are looking for?

White on Washington

Sometimes, it's very hard to get the straight story.

This from the International Herald Tribune:

The directors of two Interior Department agencies said Thursday they're confident oil and gas exploration in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska can proceed without threatening polar bears that depend on the sea ice.

The officials appeared before a House special committee on global warming that is examining why the department is postponing a decision on whether to further protect the bear, at the same time it is proceeding with oil lease sales in the Alaska sea.

Just to repeat; a house committee hearing examining why the department is postponing a decision on whether or not to deem the polar bear endangered. It's kind of amazing -- a whole hearing on Capitol Hill examining delay...

The reason for the timing question is that the oil lease is up for market February 6. One would have to imagine that if the polar bear is deemed endangered, you have to be really careful not to kill them. This would be an important thing to avoid if you were going to drill for oil up in Alaska... if drilling for oil endangers polar bears...

A bunch of protesters went to the meeting dressed in polar bear suits.


image from a video clip on MNBC.

I want a polar bear suit!
I always wanted a polar bear suit -- I really wanted to be like Nastassia Kinsky in Hotel New Hampshire, when she walks around in a bear suit all the time. In fact, there's a really big writers meeting in New York in two weeks -- I'm feeling a little nauseous about the whole thing, and would feel MUCH better surrounding in white fur...

Sorry, I was talking about the polar bears --
I wrote about this before -- a week or so ago. But now it's a different thing -- I'm intrigued by the pressure of this.

An editorial in the San Jose Mercury news says:

Conveniently for the oil-centric Bush administration, the postponement allowed just enough time to go ahead with the Feb. 6 sale of oil leases in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska, a prime polar bear habitat. But oil drilling could put further stress on a polar bear population whose future is already in doubt.

The reason there is this strange house committee meeting -- the reason I'm thinking about all of this today -- it has to do with communication. Who stays silent when and why are of enormous importance to how things get done.

The issues of oil are so thick and crude in Washington it is impossible to believe that any decision could get made to change our direction...

For The Birds

A new study is looking at long-term effects of oil spills, as monitored through birds.

"Seagull blood shows promise for monitoring pollutants from oil spills," according to a new study from the American Chemical Society. Following seagulls months and years after oil spills, a group of scientists is marking the rise in pollutants in the birds' blood. Among other things, these pollutants (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are known to cause cancer and damage DNA. I dont' think I knew DNA could be damaged...

While oil spills quickly kill large numbers of seabirds and other animals, scientists do not fully understand the non-lethal biological effects of these spills, the Spanish researchers say.

The article in the ACM journal opened with that canary in a coal mine metaphor, again. Since I first wrote about that phrase last fall, I've seen it come up over and over again. Language travels through society like birds -- flocking and gathering and crying through the air.

This new study is crucial, of course. We look at things in such a short term perspective, we forget to look out, into the future and the past for understanding.

At the same time, while I think this will certainly prove an important study, there seems something so off with the way we look at and talk about these things. The birds -- the birds are not dying to show us when we are killing ourselves... we are killing the birds!


Photo from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

When the Cosco Busa cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of oil off San Francisco bay two months ago, within a week over 1,500 birds were dead or dying from the effects. While I have been familiar with photos of oil covered birds for decades, I didn't really know what the actual effects were -- I guess I thought the birds would then suffocate. I still imagine that's part of it -- but more. They lose their waterproofing. (Another irony...) They become incapable of faring cold and water. Listen to rescue workers discuss the scene on NPR here.

It is an overwhelming disconnect -- this one between us and the life -- the earth life -- we are part of. The overwhelming disconnect. As ever, when I feel that drowning in the person-ness we live in, I turn to poems.


Eagle Poem

by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadly growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright �© 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
From the Poetry Foundation Website.

White on White

I always wanted a Siberian Husky. There's something about an animal covered in enormous white fluff that seems to bring some bit of serenity into the otherwise colorful chaos of daily life. Come to think of it, my favorite painting is "White on White," by Malevich -- the 1918 painting which is simply one white square juxtaposed on another. Respite, quiet, escape.

This morning I watched quite a lovely little video (at 5 a.m.) of a polar bear eating a seal. Blood, blubber, howling -- unfortunately I was hungry when it started -- now breakfast will have to wait a little longer.

What struck me immediately was how practical all of that white fluff is... not only warmth but camouflage. Seeing it in stark contrast to the red blood and the dark seal made this apparent -- I had never thought about it before.

By John M. Broder and Andrew C. Revkin

Published: September 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday.

The report goes on to say that polar bears will likely disappear from Alaska entirely -- Alaska is currently home to about a fifth of the world's polar bear population. It appears that the government is currently working to determine whether or not Polar Bears should be put on the endangered species list.

Today, the times ran an op-ed piece by the Alaskan governor saying that this was unnecessary at this time.

Today the AP reported:

The federal Minerals Management Service gave final approval to oil and natural gas development off Alaska’s northwest shore, drawing condemnation from environmental groups. The agency said it would hold a lease sale Feb. 6 in Anchorage for bidding on nearly 46,000 square miles of outer continental shelf lands in the Chukchi Sea.

Of course, because of the nature of the news and the newspapers, these articles run in entirely different sections, with different weight and focus. It is impossible to connect them in any sort of a daily way. Connection. Disconnection. Concealing.


National Geographic

The land up for lease connects Alaska and Russia. Global -- as in the globe that I used to have in my room -- as in the globe that my children have in their room. I used to put my hand on the raised maps -- as if I could touch the world.

And this morning I wonder, if before they are gone, polar bears will adapt and begin to exhibit black spots on their fur to help them better fit in with their changing landscape.

What Doesn't Breathe

Fact of the day:
In this country we go through an estimated 100 billion plastic bags a year.

It takes about 12 million barrels of oil to make those bags.

Less than 1-5% are recycled each year.
It can cost $150 for a city worker to get a bag out of a tree.
Antarctica is littered with plastic bags.
The bags are virtually non-biodegradable -- and when they do break down, they leach toxins into the soil.
An estimated 100,000 sea creatures die each year eating them or getting tangled up in them.


http://www.alternet.org/environment/61607/

25 children still die each year in the US at the hand of plastic bags.

All of this has to do with plastic -- the properties of plastic. That it does not breathe. That we are making a society -- for animals for soil for air for children -- that blocks breath.

Randy Cohen, the writer of the "Ethicist" column in the New York Times, was in this great little film on the oil drum this weekend. I tried to post it but it was locked in place. (Good for them.) http://www.theoildrum.com/

He said that left to our own devices we are bound to act lazily and for personal interest. (He wasn't talking about bags here, so I'm paraphrasing. He was talking about traffic). But he went on to say that it was in all of our best interests to be required to do the right thing. A very democratic, paternalistic view of politics, it must be said.

But it can't really be argued these days that saving the environment is not in the public interest.

Here's another number -- retailers spend about $4 billion a year on those plastic bags. They are not free; consumers do pay for them. The reliance on the plastic bag fuels the reliance on foreign oil. Perhaps here in lies an argument for the free marketeers out there.

San Francisco banned plastic bags in stores, and in another 6 months the ban will go into effect in chain stores as well. This ban is expected to remove about 800,000 bags from the system in a year.

This is one area of greenery where California cannot claim to be the global leader. In Taiwan and Ireland, you pay for plastic bags. They have been banned already in Rwanda, Bhutan, Bangladesh (where they cause flooding by blocking drains), South Africa (where distributing them can land you in jail) and Mumbai. Paris will join the list at the end of this year, the rest of France in 2010.
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8929506

I will take the reusable bags off the banister in the hall and use them.
I will take the reusable bags off the banister in the hall and use them.
I will take the reusable bags off the banister in the hall and use them.
And I will
go back to the car to get them when I get to the front of the line.

These numbers seem to be fairly widely reported. Number for this entry came from reports in the Times, The Globe and The Economist, among others. No one seemed to cite sources.