3 ms·
I think what's missing is a risk/benefit approach. No doubt concerning evidence it's harmful, but does the harm outway the benefits we've seen from plastics?
by starkd 6y ago
I think what's missing is a risk/benefit approach. No doubt concerning evidence it's harmful, but does the harm outway the benefits we've seen from plastics? And there have been benefits. Not just convenience, but the ability to scale packaging as well as better hygiene as a prevention from infectious diseases.
- dusted 6y agoI don't think one is needed. Plastics helped us to get here, now we're ready to look for the next step, or solutions to the current problem. Most of the technologies have had a more positive effect than negative, but that's no reason to ignore the new negative effects. Coal power definitely saved a lot of lives, and probably more than it killed, but it introduced new problems, not worse one, highly probably less-bad problems, but problems nevertheless, shouldn't mean that we ban coal tomorrow, but that we should (as we somewhat are) work toward fixing the new problems. The same goes for all technologies, they generally save a lot of people from A but then causes B which is a new, less efficient source of death. This is one of the situations where we should strive to have our cake and eat it too. Hell, asbestos probably helped save more lives than it took, we just found something less terrible to replace it with.
- starkd 6y agoOfcourse. Any new technology or product will have negative repercussions. Just a question of the extent. But don't assume newer is necessarily is better. There's also a perverse incentive among litigation enthusiasts just to find harm a product does and then amplify it out of proportion. It's kind of a cottage industry. Asbestos was an incredibly efficient insulation. I don't think anything has matched it. Just not when its mishandled.
- dusted 6y agoYes, that's the thing, a lot of people died of asbestos, but more people would likely have frozen or burned to death without it.. It's good that we're getting rid of it, because we now have the technology to replace almost all of its uses with sufficiently effective and less dangerous alternatives. It does not mean that its use was a mistake, but it's continued use would be, as we have an intrinsic responsibility to always seek safer alternatives when we discover the negative effects-