Alameda County, Calif., where I live, has banned stores from giving out plastic bags as of Jan. 1. It's great news that was a long time coming, considering the county is home to eco-minded cities Berkeley and Oakland.

The county suffers from its fair share of local plastic bag pollution. “Each year, the equivalent of 100,000 kitchen garbage bags worth of litter end up in our local waterways, including an estimated 1 million disposable plastic bags,” says Jim Scanlin, manager of Alameda County's Clean Water Program. And without a water treatment plant, all that plastic flows directly into local creeks and San Francisco Bay.

Most businesses have switched to paper bags. But because of a loophole in the law, they actually don't have to -- they can simply call a plastic bag "reusable," like this awesome one I got from my local liquor store the other day.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and North Atlantic Garbage Patch have some new competition from the south, where scientists have discovered evidence of a new floating garbage island off the coast of Chile.

Scientists at the 5 Gyres Institute -- which tracks plastic pollution in all five swirling subtropical gyres -- discovered this mass of plastic by looking at ocean currents. This patch has accumulated in the South Pacific subtropical gyre, right around Easter Island. It’s the first documentation of a trash patch in the Southern Hemisphere.

This video shows the projected spread of plastic pollution over the next 10 years:

"To create a solution to an ecosystem-wide problem we must understand the scope and magnitude of that problem," said 5 Gyres Executive Director Marcus Eriksen. "It's our mission to be on the frontlines of that understanding, and to continue monitoring the most remote regions of the world's oceans."

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner™©® was meant to be the company's cap-featherer, a "super-efficient airplane" that hauls hundreds of people for thousands of miles using 20 percent less fuel than older planes of the same size. The company touted its solar-powered factory that produced zero waste, promising to recycle planes once they'd been retired. The plane's fuselage even eliminates the use of over 40,000 rivets, reducing waste and resource use.

Sometimes, Dreamliners©™ don't come true. After five incidents in the past two weeks, Europe, Japan, and the United States have grounded all fifty 787s currently in use. While one flight reported problems with its brakes and another had a leaky fuel valve, the problems have centered around the planes' lithium-ion batteries. Wired explains the importance of those batteries -- including how they make the planes less fuel-intensive:

The 787 was first announced ten years ago this month, and has cost Boeing more than $30 billion to develop according to the Seattle Times. Much of that cost lies in the many innovative new technologies the company used to create the most fuel efficient airliner flying today.

Hailed as the airliner of the future, the 787 is mostly built from composite materials and uses an unprecedented amount of electricity to power many of the systems on board the airplane. The Dreamliner is often referred to as the first composite airliner, but it could just as easily called the most electric airliner ever. …

Do you know where the largest desert in the world is? Go ahead, Google it. I'll wait. The correct answer: the Antarctic. Even though it is cold and covered with snow, it receives very, very small amounts of precipitation. The more you know, etc.

I bring this up to demonstrate that appearances can be deceiving. Right now, for example, it is winter. And despite that, and despite the fact that the United States saw a decent amount of precipitation last week, much of the country is still under drought conditions -- nearly 59 percent of the lower 48 states, in fact.

And that is likely to continue. From Climate Central:

Enbridge -- the Canadian company responsible for the worst onshore oil spill in American history when a pipe near Kalamazoo, Mich., ruptured in 2010 --  is suffering from oil companies' newfound fondness for rail.

From Bloomberg:

Enbridge Inc.’s North Dakota pipeline system has been underused for the past three months as railroads move more oil out of the Bakken shale play, a refining company told U.S. regulators. …

Railways have emerged as a competitor to pipelines as production from shale fields has grown faster than pipeline space. While rail is typically more expensive than pipelines, railcars can reach markets that pipelines don’t, yielding higher prices for producers.

As predicted, almost half of the new power-generating capacity installed in the United States last year was renewable.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently released its December update on the nation's energy infrastructure [PDF]. When we last checked on the data, it suggested that some 46 percent of new capacity -- January through October -- was renewable. Well, that ratio improved over the last two months of the year. Ultimately, 49.1 percent of new capacity was renewable.

Compare that to 2011, when less than 40 percent was renewable.

You'd think that by now John Mackey would have learned to shut up.

The Whole Foods CEO and cofounder would no doubt be incensed at my saying so, of course, since -- in classic hyper-entitled, superfluously wealthy, privileged white-man style -- he considers suggestions that he do something other than what he wants a threat to the American constitutional experiment. Or, as he puts it: He's a libertarian.

Earlier this week, Mackey revisited a theme from 2009, insisting that the Affordable Care Act isn't socialism -- it's fascism. As he told NPR:

Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it -- and that's what's happening with our health care programs and these reforms.

He has (of course) since apologized for the remarks. There's some irony to the claim; in 2007, conservative writer Jonah Goldberg isolated Whole Foods as an example of what he deemed "liberal fascism." So many fascists!

Mackey began his response to NPR with a telling two-word phrase: "technically speaking." "Technically speaking," he said to NPR's Steve Inskeep, Obamacare is fascism. Why is that phrase telling? Because Mackey is trying to (incorrectly) explain basic political science to one of NPR's most capable reporters. The phrase gets to the core of what Mackey's doing every time he opens his mouth: He's telling you that you're wrong and he's right.

In 2009, New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority proudly announced the reopening of the South Ferry subway station following an extensive, $530 million remodel. The station is right at Manhattan Island's tip, under the terminal from which the Staten Island Ferry docks and departs. And when Sandy hit, South Ferry became an aquarium.

This is what the station looked like immediately after the storm.

And this is what it looked like yesterday.

That's from a gallery of photos taken by Benjamin Kabak, who runs Second Avenue Sagas, a blog focused on New York transit. He took a tour of South Ferry station yesterday, and marveled about how little progress has been made. Here's how he described the tour:

On Sunday, Jan. 20, in accordance with the Constitution, Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second term as president. But Sundays aren't great for parties. So on Monday he'll do it again, this time in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands on the west front of the Capitol. It's a massive logistical orchestration, one that doesn't come cheap. Therefore, like any modern American enterprise, it's open for sponsorship. And like anything else in Washington these days, it's another opportunity for lobbying.

This morning, ExxonMobil announced that it is contributing $250,000 to this "important and historic event." That sum is one-200th of the total cost of the event -- and one-eighth of what the company spent trying to elect Republicans to Congress last year. Nonetheless, it's greatly appreciated, I'm sure, and America will keep a special ember of affection burning in our hearts for ExxonMobil's commitment to our republic. (Maybe not an ember. An oil barrel.)

Even though the inauguration is only a few days away, Exxon still got in on the ground floor. The inaugural committee didn’t announce that it would allow corporate sponsors until recently (it didn't in 2009), and as of Monday, only eight corporations had signed on to sponsor. (One is an affiliate of Southern Energy.) The full, unformatted, hard-to-read list of "benefactors" is available online; if you see anything interesting on it, let us know.

"High-speed rail is well on its way, and it is not turning back," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a train-happy crowd at this week's Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (#TRBAM for all you plannerds who want to follow along on Twitter).

LaHood is right, and not just because of hefty federal funding earmarked for building infrastructure and boosting speeds.

Today, Amtrak announced it is teaming up with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to find trains that would run at up to 220 mph along both the West Coast and East Coast corridors. By combining their buying power, they could both save serious resources as they look to purchase about 60 trains over the next 10 years -- and the partnership could make California's high-speed rail look a little less pie-in-the-sky. From the Associated Press:

The high-speed rail efforts in California have come under increased scrutiny by members of Congress who say it has become too expensive to build and operate. The more ties it has with Amtrak, the better its future prospects might be, but officials said the announcement was not designed to bolster high-speed rail in California.

"It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to go out and have a different set of standards for California or any other high-speed train," said Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman. "So, no, it's about doing the right thing for the United States."