5 ms·

Who said anything about waste? The plastics will be there in the landfill, ready for future mining and cracking once it becomes cost effective to do it.

mirimir 8y ago
OK, fair enough. But why wait?
- quotemstr 8y ago
  Because, right now, it's cheaper to get hydrocarbons out of the ground than to break down old plastics, and the price signal is an excellent pointer toward the best application of our scarce resources.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Price signals tend to ignore externalities. I'm not arguing that there's a huge issue re cracking or burning plastic waste vs landfilling it and using more oil. You'd need to compare ecological and climate impacts of the alternatives, and that's more than I want to do here. And not to be boring, but ignoring externalities is why humanity will get seriously screwed through global climate change. There isn't any workable mechanism to price that, as far as I know. Carbon credits are a joke. So it bugs me when people go on about price signals. When there's substantial time lag, the price signal is too late to be useful.
    - quotemstr 8y ago
      Why are carbon credits a joke? Carbon pricing is an obvious Pigovian approach to reducing emissions and it's what we'll eventually end up using, in conjunction with CCS. What's the problem?
      - mirimir 8y ago
        The problem is that they'll be effective, if ever, two or three decades too late.
        lozenge 8y ago
        That depends on the price theye are set at. It is not surprising that the politicians who have the environment near the bottom of their priority list (ie all of them) have created credit systems riddled with loopholes.
        mirimir 8y ago
        I don't see how it depends on price. If it's too late, it's too late. And OK, maybe if you're talking about serious scale CO2 removal. Or (dog forbid) stratospheric sulfate injection. But where would the energy for that come from? Where would our food come from?

mirimir 8y ago

OK, fair enough. But why wait?

quotemstr 8y ago
Because, right now, it's cheaper to get hydrocarbons out of the ground than to break down old plastics, and the price signal is an excellent pointer toward the best application of our scarce resources.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Price signals tend to ignore externalities. I'm not arguing that there's a huge issue re cracking or burning plastic waste vs landfilling it and using more oil. You'd need to compare ecological and climate impacts of the alternatives, and that's more than I want to do here. And not to be boring, but ignoring externalities is why humanity will get seriously screwed through global climate change. There isn't any workable mechanism to price that, as far as I know. Carbon credits are a joke. So it bugs me when people go on about price signals. When there's substantial time lag, the price signal is too late to be useful.
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    Why are carbon credits a joke? Carbon pricing is an obvious Pigovian approach to reducing emissions and it's what we'll eventually end up using, in conjunction with CCS. What's the problem?
    - mirimir 8y ago
      The problem is that they'll be effective, if ever, two or three decades too late.
      - lozenge 8y ago
        That depends on the price theye are set at. It is not surprising that the politicians who have the environment near the bottom of their priority list (ie all of them) have created credit systems riddled with loopholes.
        mirimir 8y ago
        I don't see how it depends on price. If it's too late, it's too late. And OK, maybe if you're talking about serious scale CO2 removal. Or (dog forbid) stratospheric sulfate injection. But where would the energy for that come from? Where would our food come from?