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Yeah - even where I am there has been a pull back on stuff. We've got a ban on plastic straws (ie, you can't use one then throw it in the trash in the resterau

Yeah - even where I am there has been a pull back on stuff. We've got a ban on plastic straws (ie, you can't use one then throw it in the trash in the resteraunt) to help save nature. But you go outside and the amount of trash just blowing into the water from various encampments near the water is just nuts. Their are claims of concerns about carbon emissions, but absolute opposition to any work around nuclear. If carbon emissions was the or a very important issue, you'd be going full out on lots of ideas. I followed the attempted development of a solar install closely in a rich / white area (hard left otherwise). It was fought tooth and nail. the erosion underneath, the shading of a creek, this and that. Really - they didn't want to look at it. Full stop. So yes, even my early passion for some things have moderated a bit. It seems to be the left telling other people how to live. Heaven forbid folks live in smaller houses in the US, instead we are on china for their emissions (likely half per capita of US?) I'd love to see more problem solving from the left, rather than the sort of in your face bans on things. Can't we tax plastic straws 1 cent per straw or do a carbon tax or something that's a bit less nanny state style or so random and arbitrary?

erhk 5y ago
Trash from encampments is negligible when you realize how many plastics are just dumped into the ocean
- slownews45 5y ago
  Not where I live. The trash from encampments is pulled up and down the shoreline (tons of bird and other life) with every tide. It's noticeable. Tons of plastic in ocean for sure, but less noticeable unless you are in asia where the rivers and coastal areas are crushed with trash at times. It's just weird our focus is on a plastic straw being disposed of in a restaurant. I mean, the amount of plastic bags in the shipping boxes I see on my street each trash day - mindboggling (airbags amazon and others use).
  - emn13 5y ago
    Apparently the type of plastic is quite relevant; but whether straws are worse than air-bags for shipping... who knows. But perhaps more relevantly, however unsightly this whole plastic soup is, I kind of doubt the impact is anywhere near that of climate change, and I'm concerned these kind of issues serve as a kind of feel-good distraction. Maybe that's too pessimistic; maybe the world can deal with plastic soup and climate change and forever chemicals and animal welfare and whatever at once. I'm just not very confident of that.
- lumost 5y ago
  If you consider how much refuse you generate per day per household member - and then consider that an encampment has next to no sanitization infrastructure, It becomes obvious that the encampment will generate orders of magnitude more waste in the ocean per capita vs. ordinary households. I wouldn't be surprised if the litter ratio was 10,000:1 or more.
  - alexilliamson 5y ago
    What? People in houses are probably using more plastic than people who don't have money for a house. They have more money to spend, and a large % will go to plastic, on average.
matttproud 5y ago
The performative stuff has to stop. On the one vacation I am doing since this pandemic began, I saw a place in Northern Italy give out paper straws enclosed in plastic wrapping. You have to be kidding me. It’s missing the point and greenwashing at its finest (unrelated to climate). You’ll meet plenty on the left, especially scientists, who are in favor of nuclear. Where I live (Switzerland[0]), the biggest NIMBY against nuclear are the provincial nationalists who are going nuts about installation of a subterranean disposal site in their area (proposed because it is the most suitable site due to geological properties). My turning point with nuclear was about 15 years ago when learning about thorium. Very eye-opening. [0] - To the grandparent comment, natural born American who spent most of the adult life and all of childhood in the States. Emigrated a decade ago and still keep close tabs. This post is giving me serious flashbacks to the 1992, when Bush called Gore “Ozone Man”. Was that a genesis of the contrarian political differentiation?
- samuli 5y ago
  Are you sure it was a plastic wrapper and not e.g. cellophane?
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    Things I learned from Wikipedia as a result of reading your comment: Cellophane is not plastic. Cellophane is biodegradable. Rayon is the same substance as cellophane, but in a different shape. Cellophane and Rayon are often made using the "viscose process", which requires the use of carbon disulfide, which is toxic, and the process has toxic byproducts. I wasn't able to figure out if this process has more or less toxic byproducts than processes for making plastic films. I wasn't able to figure out if this process is more carbon-intensive than processes for making plastic films. Harvesting plant matter, pumping water around, etc. sounds energy-intensive. Is it better or worse than digging carbon sludge up out of the ground?
- beebmam 5y ago
  It's important to remember that plastic waste is virtually unrelated to climate change. They both might be "green" issues, but plastic straws in our oceans aren't going to have any significant effect on warming the planet. They'll just end up causing ecological changes/damage. Malicious actors try to conflate the two. Carbon gas emissions pose an existential threat to the future of human society; plastic straws do not.
Johnny555 5y ago
Their are claims of concerns about carbon emissions, but absolute opposition to any work around nuclear. If carbon emissions was the or a very important issue, you'd be going full out on lots of ideas. It's a lot easier to find fault in a point-source danger in your back yard (even if the actual risk is low) than to be afraid of a much more diffuse danger will likely kill more people, but probably not you.
cogman10 5y ago
> Their are claims of concerns about carbon emissions, but absolute opposition to any work around nuclear. If carbon emissions was the or a very important issue, you'd be going full out on lots of ideas. While I agree nuclear is the right way to go... it's frankly too late to put all our eggs in that basket. It takes over a decade just to turn on a new plant in the US due to all the regulations. We can work to improve that situation, but at the end of the day, solar and wind can be deployed much faster and at a lower cost. > I'd love to see more problem solving from the left, rather than the sort of in your face bans on things. I'd humbly submit you aren't listening the left arguments if you think they aren't putting out solutions. Most people I know on the left deride paper straws just as much as you do. The serious solutions that have been proposed are things like carbon taxes, subsidies for renewable installation and electric vehicles, ending subsidies on the fossil fuel industry. Regulations decreasing allowable fuel consumption from vehicles. These are serious solutions that would have major positive impacts. And, as you can imagine, they've all been met with total opposition from the Republicans. Ranging anywhere from outright denying that climate change is real to lying about the impacts of renewable tech or fear mongering over things like "How can we recycle every part of the solar panel! Guess we better just burn oil instead". Nuclear is a fine solution, it isn't the only solution and it is absolutely more of a long term solution until regulations around new plants ease up. In the mean time, the best actions we can take today are making it more expensive to release greenhouse gasses in the first place through taxation and subsidizing greenhouse gas free power generation.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > While I agree nuclear is the right way to go... it's frankly too late to put all our eggs in that basket. It takes over a decade just to turn on a new plant in the US due to all the regulations. We can work to improve that situation, but at the end of the day, solar and wind can be deployed much faster and at a lower cost. I've heard this exact same thing said for 20 years. I expect I'll be hearing it for another 20 at least.
  - VintageCool 5y ago
    You will be continuing to hear about wind and solar for the next 20 years for good reason: they're finally taking off. Wind production in the US has grown from about 2 million megawatt-hours / month in 2005 to 33 million megawatt-hours / month today. Solar production in the US has grown from 1.5 million megawatt-hours / month in 2014 to 17 million megawatt-hours today. Building new wind and solar is now cost-competitive with continuing to run existing coal power plants. With a friendly federal government (if our government actually does anything), I expect wind and solar to grow immensely in the next 10 years. Wind especially looks strong right now. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/ The EIA expects 10% growth in wind and solar this summer compared to a year ago. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47936 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47936
snarf21 5y ago
I don't see it as political at all. It is simply NIMBYism. Everyone wants trash pick-up but not a landfill near them. They want sewer that always flushes but no water treatment near them. They don't want new malls because of traffic. They don't want new apartments because they are afraid of who may move in and their property values. The only reason straws caught on is because no one cared. We are all absolutely willing to give up straws since they don't require any real change in our behavior. Most stores offer reusable bags but people (and lobbyists) would fight back if disposable bags were outlawed. We could charge for them but people would rather pay an extra $0.50 at the grocery store than change behavior. We are addicted to convenience. People hate change, more than the pieces of change, more than anything else. There is a lot of awful in this world driven specifically by people's fear of change.
potatolicious 5y ago
> It seems to be the left telling other people how to live. Heaven forbid folks live in smaller houses in the US This doesn't seem like an exclusively left-wing ideology - anti-housing sentiment is strong across the board across US politics. Try building an apartment building in a conservative part of town and you'll get much of the same bad faith opposition as anywhere else (and more often than not, apocalyptic caterwauling). NIMBYism is sadly a scourge that knows few political boundaries.
bcrosby95 5y ago
According to a friend that works with utility companies to plan out future capacity, nuclear's problem is the high upfront cost. Companies don't want to invest in building one for this reason alone. Building a new one puts a lot of capital at risk.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Nuclear plants in America are old enough that many need to be upgraded. Turns out upgrading is so expensive that many choose to close instead. Just this week two in Illinois closed when the state refused to subsidize the upgrade. It's a pretty bad look, because people see these huge subsidies and balk, thinking that nuclear is a continually expensive form of energy, even though these are one time costs.

erhk 5y ago

Trash from encampments is negligible when you realize how many plastics are just dumped into the ocean

slownews45 5y ago
Not where I live. The trash from encampments is pulled up and down the shoreline (tons of bird and other life) with every tide. It's noticeable. Tons of plastic in ocean for sure, but less noticeable unless you are in asia where the rivers and coastal areas are crushed with trash at times. It's just weird our focus is on a plastic straw being disposed of in a restaurant. I mean, the amount of plastic bags in the shipping boxes I see on my street each trash day - mindboggling (airbags amazon and others use).
- emn13 5y ago
  Apparently the type of plastic is quite relevant; but whether straws are worse than air-bags for shipping... who knows. But perhaps more relevantly, however unsightly this whole plastic soup is, I kind of doubt the impact is anywhere near that of climate change, and I'm concerned these kind of issues serve as a kind of feel-good distraction. Maybe that's too pessimistic; maybe the world can deal with plastic soup and climate change and forever chemicals and animal welfare and whatever at once. I'm just not very confident of that.
lumost 5y ago
If you consider how much refuse you generate per day per household member - and then consider that an encampment has next to no sanitization infrastructure, It becomes obvious that the encampment will generate orders of magnitude more waste in the ocean per capita vs. ordinary households. I wouldn't be surprised if the litter ratio was 10,000:1 or more.
- alexilliamson 5y ago
  What? People in houses are probably using more plastic than people who don't have money for a house. They have more money to spend, and a large % will go to plastic, on average.

matttproud 5y ago

The performative stuff has to stop. On the one vacation I am doing since this pandemic began, I saw a place in Northern Italy give out paper straws enclosed in plastic wrapping. You have to be kidding me. It’s missing the point and greenwashing at its finest (unrelated to climate). You’ll meet plenty on the left, especially scientists, who are in favor of nuclear. Where I live (Switzerland[0]), the biggest NIMBY against nuclear are the provincial nationalists who are going nuts about installation of a subterranean disposal site in their area (proposed because it is the most suitable site due to geological properties). My turning point with nuclear was about 15 years ago when learning about thorium. Very eye-opening. [0] - To the grandparent comment, natural born American who spent most of the adult life and all of childhood in the States. Emigrated a decade ago and still keep close tabs. This post is giving me serious flashbacks to the 1992, when Bush called Gore “Ozone Man”. Was that a genesis of the contrarian political differentiation?

samuli 5y ago
Are you sure it was a plastic wrapper and not e.g. cellophane?
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Things I learned from Wikipedia as a result of reading your comment: Cellophane is not plastic. Cellophane is biodegradable. Rayon is the same substance as cellophane, but in a different shape. Cellophane and Rayon are often made using the "viscose process", which requires the use of carbon disulfide, which is toxic, and the process has toxic byproducts. I wasn't able to figure out if this process has more or less toxic byproducts than processes for making plastic films. I wasn't able to figure out if this process is more carbon-intensive than processes for making plastic films. Harvesting plant matter, pumping water around, etc. sounds energy-intensive. Is it better or worse than digging carbon sludge up out of the ground?
beebmam 5y ago
It's important to remember that plastic waste is virtually unrelated to climate change. They both might be "green" issues, but plastic straws in our oceans aren't going to have any significant effect on warming the planet. They'll just end up causing ecological changes/damage. Malicious actors try to conflate the two. Carbon gas emissions pose an existential threat to the future of human society; plastic straws do not.

Johnny555 5y ago

Their are claims of concerns about carbon emissions, but absolute opposition to any work around nuclear. If carbon emissions was the or a very important issue, you'd be going full out on lots of ideas. It's a lot easier to find fault in a point-source danger in your back yard (even if the actual risk is low) than to be afraid of a much more diffuse danger will likely kill more people, but probably not you.

cogman10 5y ago

> Their are claims of concerns about carbon emissions, but absolute opposition to any work around nuclear. If carbon emissions was the or a very important issue, you'd be going full out on lots of ideas. While I agree nuclear is the right way to go... it's frankly too late to put all our eggs in that basket. It takes over a decade just to turn on a new plant in the US due to all the regulations. We can work to improve that situation, but at the end of the day, solar and wind can be deployed much faster and at a lower cost. > I'd love to see more problem solving from the left, rather than the sort of in your face bans on things. I'd humbly submit you aren't listening the left arguments if you think they aren't putting out solutions. Most people I know on the left deride paper straws just as much as you do. The serious solutions that have been proposed are things like carbon taxes, subsidies for renewable installation and electric vehicles, ending subsidies on the fossil fuel industry. Regulations decreasing allowable fuel consumption from vehicles. These are serious solutions that would have major positive impacts. And, as you can imagine, they've all been met with total opposition from the Republicans. Ranging anywhere from outright denying that climate change is real to lying about the impacts of renewable tech or fear mongering over things like "How can we recycle every part of the solar panel! Guess we better just burn oil instead". Nuclear is a fine solution, it isn't the only solution and it is absolutely more of a long term solution until regulations around new plants ease up. In the mean time, the best actions we can take today are making it more expensive to release greenhouse gasses in the first place through taxation and subsidizing greenhouse gas free power generation.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> While I agree nuclear is the right way to go... it's frankly too late to put all our eggs in that basket. It takes over a decade just to turn on a new plant in the US due to all the regulations. We can work to improve that situation, but at the end of the day, solar and wind can be deployed much faster and at a lower cost. I've heard this exact same thing said for 20 years. I expect I'll be hearing it for another 20 at least.
- VintageCool 5y ago
  You will be continuing to hear about wind and solar for the next 20 years for good reason: they're finally taking off. Wind production in the US has grown from about 2 million megawatt-hours / month in 2005 to 33 million megawatt-hours / month today. Solar production in the US has grown from 1.5 million megawatt-hours / month in 2014 to 17 million megawatt-hours today. Building new wind and solar is now cost-competitive with continuing to run existing coal power plants. With a friendly federal government (if our government actually does anything), I expect wind and solar to grow immensely in the next 10 years. Wind especially looks strong right now. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/ The EIA expects 10% growth in wind and solar this summer compared to a year ago. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47936 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47936

snarf21 5y ago

I don't see it as political at all. It is simply NIMBYism. Everyone wants trash pick-up but not a landfill near them. They want sewer that always flushes but no water treatment near them. They don't want new malls because of traffic. They don't want new apartments because they are afraid of who may move in and their property values. The only reason straws caught on is because no one cared. We are all absolutely willing to give up straws since they don't require any real change in our behavior. Most stores offer reusable bags but people (and lobbyists) would fight back if disposable bags were outlawed. We could charge for them but people would rather pay an extra $0.50 at the grocery store than change behavior. We are addicted to convenience. People hate change, more than the pieces of change, more than anything else. There is a lot of awful in this world driven specifically by people's fear of change.

potatolicious 5y ago

> It seems to be the left telling other people how to live. Heaven forbid folks live in smaller houses in the US This doesn't seem like an exclusively left-wing ideology - anti-housing sentiment is strong across the board across US politics. Try building an apartment building in a conservative part of town and you'll get much of the same bad faith opposition as anywhere else (and more often than not, apocalyptic caterwauling). NIMBYism is sadly a scourge that knows few political boundaries.

bcrosby95 5y ago

According to a friend that works with utility companies to plan out future capacity, nuclear's problem is the high upfront cost. Companies don't want to invest in building one for this reason alone. Building a new one puts a lot of capital at risk.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Nuclear plants in America are old enough that many need to be upgraded. Turns out upgrading is so expensive that many choose to close instead. Just this week two in Illinois closed when the state refused to subsidize the upgrade. It's a pretty bad look, because people see these huge subsidies and balk, thinking that nuclear is a continually expensive form of energy, even though these are one time costs.