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The plastics stuff is worrying but I am concerned it will divert attention away from global warming. One issue is "hmmmm. this isn't good" whilst the other is "

The plastics stuff is worrying but I am concerned it will divert attention away from global warming. One issue is "hmmmm. this isn't good" whilst the other is "hey people, we should probably start thinking about panic mode about now". Some people will argue that the solution to both is similar and linked but I'm not so sure.

Swenrekcah 7y ago
It seems to me that both issues are very frightening and deserve our attention. Climate change is fucking up the systems we humans and many other animals rely on, which will kill off many species although as a species we will likely survive. But plastics pollution seems to be literally poisoning every possible corner of the ecosystem, which might be a greater hazard to humans in the long run. Regarding plastics, it could be a solution to put a very hefty tax on plastic, that's partially refundable if you return it to recycling/proper disposal. This might reduce the incentives to produce single-use items out of plastic, but would not ban it (because for some use cases plastics is perhaps the only viable option, not just the cheapest).
- mrob 7y ago
  I think the biggest threat of plastics pollution is loss of our ability to use plastics as a long-term building/manufacturing material. Very few microbes can metabolize plastics now, but not zero, and the ability will only spread as plastics (and especially high surface-area to volume ratio microplastics) become more common in the wild. Microbes evolve fast, and they have access to horizontal gene transfer. Heavily fluorinated plastics might survive but I expect all cheap plastics will end up easily biodegradable. It's potentially a major inconvenience, but if we pretend it's as big a threat as CO2 pollution then civilization will have collapsed before it happens, so that's one way to avoid the problem.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater" - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0081RLFEY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0081RLFEY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect Science fiction from 1971. The main effect hypothesized was the disintegration of electrical insulation, which destroyed power distribution, communications, and electronics.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    But if the food web collapses it won’t matter how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere. Both are necessary. Ignoring one for the other is foolish or crazy or both.
fiblye 7y ago
Action was taken against asbestos and lead around the same general time. Problems don't need to be solved sequentially. It's probably best to work on these problems together while people are actually worried about the future of the planet. If we manage to address one and ignore the other, we'll have plenty of people thinking we've saved the world and anything else is needless alarmism. I mean, we already have that problem, and those 50% of people won't be convinced either way.
- zaroth 7y ago
  I would add CFCs to that list. But you needed adequate replacements and a much more clear and present danger for those things to happen. “Worms are 5% smaller in this study” is a shade better than a conspiracy theory, not something that will motivate massive changes in global manufacturing and packaging standards. We do know it can be done, because we’ve worked historically to make big changes. Unfortunately there’s been a lot of lost credibility in environmental science over the last few decades, and at the same time society seems to be significantly more divided over issues that at first blush might smell like a crusade. The rules are you need something that’s equally as good at perhaps a slightly higher initial cost (an adequate replacement) and a clear and present danger (e.g. there’s a massive hole in our ozone layer, we can measure it directly, we know exactly what’s causing it, and if it keeps getting bigger we can’t ever go outside again).
- hinkley 7y ago
  We can break things faster than we can fix them. If we don’t try to fix things in parallel then we are not going to be around for long. “We should fix X first” is rhetoric from people who don’t want to fix anything or are more interested in being in charge. Don’t contribute to the foot dragging.
ehnto 7y ago
They're both appearing to be significant threats to the biosphere, worth immediate attention. I doubt the solution to both is similar though no. We can probably work on both simultaneously though. Even in a perfectly aligned world we wouldn't be able to have everyone working on climate change.
anigbrowl 7y ago
I would definitely argue they're linked, given that plastics are primarily produced from oil and so intimately tied to fossil fuel extraction. There was another interesting article on HN yesterday about the depletion of soil minerals as a result of monocultural planting and a corresponding (and horrifyingly steep) drop in the mineral content of fruits and vegetables. This was news to me but not really surprising; I've felt for years that much American food is just not that great based simply on the experience of eating it. Ultimately these are all problems of the industrial model that developed countries in general and the UK/US in particular have exported very successfully (which is not to say that other countries and cultures haven't also catastrophic environmental decisions). While the reductionist approach of identifying, selecting for, and then maximizing particular quantities has yielded great dividends, it does so at the expense of the system as a whole; just like a diet consisting of abundant refined ingredients allows rapid growth but eventually leads to obesity and sclerosis. Adam Smith, revered by many as the father of modern capitalism, offered a famous example of a pin factory to show how the division of labor into multiple parallel tasks yielded far greater outputs than would be possible if one laborer had to serially perform all the different jobs involved in the manufacture of a pin, and generations of industrialists have applied his advice to great profit. But they have also ignored his caveat that an excess division of labor is both soul-destroying due to boredom, and weakens the laborer through overspecialization and a concomitant loss of flexibility and thus economic bargaining power by allowing the buyer of the labor to determine 'value' of the laborer's skills by limiting the opportunities for their development. The basic problem is the pursuit of maximal yield through endless division without regard to the structural integrity of the overall system; industrial economists' tendency to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator of fungibility through division and offloading of externalities is just as dangerous to the biosphere and the social body as a diet of high fructose corn syrup and vitamin pills would be to the individual animal. Those who insist on wealth maximization at the transactional and the blind operation of market forces as the distributive mechanism of wealth are in the grip of a cognitive addiction little different from an infant hooked on sugar, and responsible people must steel themselves to ignore the screams of dissatisfaction which will greet a transition to a more sustainable diet.

Swenrekcah 7y ago

It seems to me that both issues are very frightening and deserve our attention. Climate change is fucking up the systems we humans and many other animals rely on, which will kill off many species although as a species we will likely survive. But plastics pollution seems to be literally poisoning every possible corner of the ecosystem, which might be a greater hazard to humans in the long run. Regarding plastics, it could be a solution to put a very hefty tax on plastic, that's partially refundable if you return it to recycling/proper disposal. This might reduce the incentives to produce single-use items out of plastic, but would not ban it (because for some use cases plastics is perhaps the only viable option, not just the cheapest).

mrob 7y ago
I think the biggest threat of plastics pollution is loss of our ability to use plastics as a long-term building/manufacturing material. Very few microbes can metabolize plastics now, but not zero, and the ability will only spread as plastics (and especially high surface-area to volume ratio microplastics) become more common in the wild. Microbes evolve fast, and they have access to horizontal gene transfer. Heavily fluorinated plastics might survive but I expect all cheap plastics will end up easily biodegradable. It's potentially a major inconvenience, but if we pretend it's as big a threat as CO2 pollution then civilization will have collapsed before it happens, so that's one way to avoid the problem.
- Merrill 7y ago
  "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater" - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0081RLFEY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0081RLFEY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect Science fiction from 1971. The main effect hypothesized was the disintegration of electrical insulation, which destroyed power distribution, communications, and electronics.
- hinkley 7y ago
  But if the food web collapses it won’t matter how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere. Both are necessary. Ignoring one for the other is foolish or crazy or both.

fiblye 7y ago

Action was taken against asbestos and lead around the same general time. Problems don't need to be solved sequentially. It's probably best to work on these problems together while people are actually worried about the future of the planet. If we manage to address one and ignore the other, we'll have plenty of people thinking we've saved the world and anything else is needless alarmism. I mean, we already have that problem, and those 50% of people won't be convinced either way.

zaroth 7y ago
I would add CFCs to that list. But you needed adequate replacements and a much more clear and present danger for those things to happen. “Worms are 5% smaller in this study” is a shade better than a conspiracy theory, not something that will motivate massive changes in global manufacturing and packaging standards. We do know it can be done, because we’ve worked historically to make big changes. Unfortunately there’s been a lot of lost credibility in environmental science over the last few decades, and at the same time society seems to be significantly more divided over issues that at first blush might smell like a crusade. The rules are you need something that’s equally as good at perhaps a slightly higher initial cost (an adequate replacement) and a clear and present danger (e.g. there’s a massive hole in our ozone layer, we can measure it directly, we know exactly what’s causing it, and if it keeps getting bigger we can’t ever go outside again).
hinkley 7y ago
We can break things faster than we can fix them. If we don’t try to fix things in parallel then we are not going to be around for long. “We should fix X first” is rhetoric from people who don’t want to fix anything or are more interested in being in charge. Don’t contribute to the foot dragging.

ehnto 7y ago

They're both appearing to be significant threats to the biosphere, worth immediate attention. I doubt the solution to both is similar though no. We can probably work on both simultaneously though. Even in a perfectly aligned world we wouldn't be able to have everyone working on climate change.

anigbrowl 7y ago

I would definitely argue they're linked, given that plastics are primarily produced from oil and so intimately tied to fossil fuel extraction. There was another interesting article on HN yesterday about the depletion of soil minerals as a result of monocultural planting and a corresponding (and horrifyingly steep) drop in the mineral content of fruits and vegetables. This was news to me but not really surprising; I've felt for years that much American food is just not that great based simply on the experience of eating it. Ultimately these are all problems of the industrial model that developed countries in general and the UK/US in particular have exported very successfully (which is not to say that other countries and cultures haven't also catastrophic environmental decisions). While the reductionist approach of identifying, selecting for, and then maximizing particular quantities has yielded great dividends, it does so at the expense of the system as a whole; just like a diet consisting of abundant refined ingredients allows rapid growth but eventually leads to obesity and sclerosis. Adam Smith, revered by many as the father of modern capitalism, offered a famous example of a pin factory to show how the division of labor into multiple parallel tasks yielded far greater outputs than would be possible if one laborer had to serially perform all the different jobs involved in the manufacture of a pin, and generations of industrialists have applied his advice to great profit. But they have also ignored his caveat that an excess division of labor is both soul-destroying due to boredom, and weakens the laborer through overspecialization and a concomitant loss of flexibility and thus economic bargaining power by allowing the buyer of the labor to determine 'value' of the laborer's skills by limiting the opportunities for their development. The basic problem is the pursuit of maximal yield through endless division without regard to the structural integrity of the overall system; industrial economists' tendency to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator of fungibility through division and offloading of externalities is just as dangerous to the biosphere and the social body as a diet of high fructose corn syrup and vitamin pills would be to the individual animal. Those who insist on wealth maximization at the transactional and the blind operation of market forces as the distributive mechanism of wealth are in the grip of a cognitive addiction little different from an infant hooked on sugar, and responsible people must steel themselves to ignore the screams of dissatisfaction which will greet a transition to a more sustainable diet.