3 ms·

Your last paragraph is very interesting. Yet, I’m much more positive regarding that scenario. I think it’s helps to look at wood as an analogy. Dead wood could

Your last paragraph is very interesting. Yet, I’m much more positive regarding that scenario. I think it’s helps to look at wood as an analogy. Dead wood could not be broken down for a long time. That’s why we ended up with dead trees turned into coal and oil. Then bacteria arrived which could break these materials down. But still today we have a lot durable things built out of wood. I think similarly we will find ways to protect our important plastics.

partomniscient 5y ago
I thought it interesting to think about too. Because we measure everything using short-term values, we don't understand what we do to the long-term future. We could, but we don't seem to readily learn from past similar situations. Ideally the container would serve its purpose for as long as needed and breaks down accordingly - there's a high level of variance though, and our ability to refrigerate extends that. So because the expected 'lifetime' of a perishable good transported in plastic is highly variable, its not a simple time-matching problem. Who knows - maybe our dumped plastics become compressed into the future equivalent of diamonds...? But yeah, humanity generally has a way of finding workarounds / treatments etc. etc. For some reason I was recently reading wikipedia about how "Anodizing was first used on an industrial scale in 1923 to protect Duralumin seaplane parts from corrosion" and now its commonplace, extending durability everywhere.
- sigspec 5y ago
  Because we measure everything using short-term values Generational thinking is something most of us are bad at but it's something we need to strongly emphasize going forward.
le-mark 5y ago
It’s a riff on this concept with “natural” nano technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo Cellulose metababolism is unusually hard given all the plants around.

partomniscient 5y ago

I thought it interesting to think about too. Because we measure everything using short-term values, we don't understand what we do to the long-term future. We could, but we don't seem to readily learn from past similar situations. Ideally the container would serve its purpose for as long as needed and breaks down accordingly - there's a high level of variance though, and our ability to refrigerate extends that. So because the expected 'lifetime' of a perishable good transported in plastic is highly variable, its not a simple time-matching problem. Who knows - maybe our dumped plastics become compressed into the future equivalent of diamonds...? But yeah, humanity generally has a way of finding workarounds / treatments etc. etc. For some reason I was recently reading wikipedia about how "Anodizing was first used on an industrial scale in 1923 to protect Duralumin seaplane parts from corrosion" and now its commonplace, extending durability everywhere.

sigspec 5y ago
Because we measure everything using short-term values Generational thinking is something most of us are bad at but it's something we need to strongly emphasize going forward.

le-mark 5y ago

It’s a riff on this concept with “natural” nano technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo Cellulose metababolism is unusually hard given all the plants around.