Save the plastic bag?

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on L.A. City Council efforts to ban plastic bags. They include a link to a plastic bag industry group that insists that plastic bags are a superior choice over paper bags. I have to admit, in the absence of any opposing argument to the points they make, they sound somewhat convincing. 

While it's true that paper bags have their own problems (depletion of natural resources, bulkiness in landfills, attracting cockroaches, plastic bags aren't much better. Neither one should end up in landfills to begin with, so maybe stepping up recycling is the answer. I like what we do in Korea where someone is charge 100 won (about ten cents) per bag; it creates an incentive to use fewer of them. Los Angeles is thinking of doing the same thing, but a heftier 25 cents. 

The plastic bag industry is up in arms about the planned user fee, but I think the fair thing to do would be to impose the same on paper bags, to address the problem of the consumer not bearing the true environmental cost of the bags. This may provide an incentive to invest in a sturdy canvas plastic bag that can be used hundreds of times, like they sell at Ikea. 

Photo above: Environmental disaster that makes children cry, or a hip seabird going for the Prince look, circa 1983?