California has finally solved plastic bag waste.

The Golden State has banned all plastic bags from grocery stores because, as Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear said, “We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste.” Yes, literally choking the planet. Instead, you will be forced to use paper bags, whose production produces more carbon emissions and uses four times more energy than plastic bags and must be used multiple times to have a better environmental impact despite paper bags typically being too weak to use more than twice.

Problem solved? How could it not be? After all, California’s plastic bags are responsible for 20% of mismanaged global plastic waste.

If that sounds unbelievable to you, that’s because it is. It is actually China that accounts for 20% of that global plastic waste. The United States as a whole accounts for less than 1%, with California being just a fraction of that. This means that the only thing California has “solved” is how to make grocery shopping even more inconvenient and how to contribute to the spread of hepatitis A among the homeless. (Yes, health officials think banning plastic bags contributed to San Diego’s hepatitis A homeless outbreak. How is that for a knock-on policy effect?)

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It is the perfect California policy: push through a ban on something that is convenient for everyone based on hysterics, do nothing to solve the problem that it is supposed to, and contribute to even worse knock-on effects both on the problem that is supposedly being addressed and on seemingly unrelated problems. The only thing that could make this policy any more Californian is if it raised housing prices.

So, be grateful, Californians, that your Democratic single-party government has solved this problem. After all, there are no other matters the state must urgently fix, other than homelessness or poverty or …