Is Africa ahead of us on this one?

Another very revealing Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2060151420070820?src=082007_0830_DOUBLEFEATURE_experts_oppose_surge&pageNumber=1

It seems that African nations have discovered that plastic bags are tremendously harmful to the environment, something our nation apparently has yet to discover. It is amazing when there is this kind of evidence:
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Trashing-Oceans-Plastic4nov02.htm
that shows the huge deposits of plastic flotsam choking vast areas of our oceans that there is no outcry against the use of plastic bags to the tremendous extent that they are in this country and throughout the world.

Does Anyone Still Need Evidence?

This Reuters article really stuck out to me. :

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0736326820070807

I have always been a sort of amateur weather watcher, and the fact that I grew up pretty much most of my life in the same house in California helped me to notice trends even at a young age. I remember I think it was in high school or just after, in the 80's or 90's, thinking that things really seemed to be getting more varied from year to year weatherwise. Drought years and flood events seemed to alternate more regularly, and it seemed like our month of heaviest rainfall, which is very seasonal in California, would be later and later each year for several in a row. I started calling it the climate yo-yo. Anyways, I think that with our very mobile society most of us may not have the opportunity to notice the long term trends in particular localities as much as in the past, and with very few of us in agriculture or very weather dependent jobs we may just not notice as much, but the people who keep the records and statistics can show us the proof.