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No, biodegradable is carbon-neutral. Plastic itself is carbon-neutral although it's a byproduct of carbon-polluting oil. We'd have to make plastic out of atmosp
by homonculus1 7y ago
No, biodegradable is carbon-neutral. Plastic itself is carbon-neutral although it's a byproduct of carbon-polluting oil. We'd have to make plastic out of atmospheric carbon for it to have any sequestering effect.
- NegativeLatency 7y agoOnly if you don’t count the supply chain
- losteric 7y ago* Biodegradable is just, ya know, degradable by organisms within a relatively short timeframe * The process of refining plastics and manufacturing products is generally NOT carbon-neutral
- crimsonalucard 7y agoIf biodegrade-able products are from carbon based life, and carbon based life contains carbon, and biology breaks down biodegrade-able products, wouldn't breaking down something that contains carbon be releasing carbon into the air? And wouldn't that be NOT carbon neutral.
- homonculus1 7y agoCarbon neutral means the carbon that gets released at the end was initially taken out of the atmosphere, not the ground. If you burn a piece of paper it's carbon neutral because the tree absorbed that carbon from the air. If you burn a piece of plastic you're adding carbon that used to be sequestered below the surface.
- parsnips 7y agoHow long must an item be buried before burning it loses its carbon neutrality?
- lopmotr 7y agoIf you first ask why CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem, then you'll find the answer. It's the same time scale at which the change in atmospheric CO2 is a problem. It's only a problem because it's changing rapidly. It would be OK if it happened slowly enough for species to adapt or at least for human activity to adapt without too much disruption to our daily lives. Ultimately, it's rapid disruption to our daily lives we don't want. We don't want to have to move somewhere else, have less spending power of our wages, get a different job, or change our eating habits. But if it happens gradually generation by generation, so we hardly notice it, then it'll be OK.
- garmaine 7y agoThis is very much not true. Look at Venus, which was (we believe) subject to a runaway greenhouse event. Also, the Permian period ("Snowball Earth"). Climate change can be catastrophic whether it occurs fast or slowly.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoBut he has a point. The real answer is more complicated. Slow change gives natural selection several generations to evolve a complex solution to the problem and our minds the time to come up with a technological solution. Life exists within the boundaries of available sunlight and liquid water. Changes that occur slowly within these boundaries don't necessarily have to be catastrophic. However if the changes exceed these boundaries whether fast or slow then yes the change will indeed be catastrophic. Venus possibly has no liquid water and snowball earth doesn't have much water either, hence the catastrophe.
- garmaine 7y agoVenus had oceans at the time. They boiled off. The Permian Earth had oceans too, just ice capped ones. Microbial life and the simplest algae-like life survived, but that’s it. I just don’t think it’s all that correct or useful to say the equivalent of “life will adapt” when life has never adapted to changes this fast, and we are hurtling towards changes so extreme as to wipe out complex life entirely.
- sp332 7y agoPlastic does degrade over time. It might take a long time, but then, there's a lot of plastic.