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It's not just energy. You're responding to someone talking about how many things we buy and how much plastic we waste in general. Westerners need to learn that

by drekk 4y ago

It's not just energy. You're responding to someone talking about how many things we buy and how much plastic we waste in general. Westerners need to learn that growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell. Even EVs are illustrating the problem. Rather than make transit efficient we're going to greenwash individual cars. Remind me where those EV batteries come from? Who cares about the externalities of lithium mining — just put multiple EVs in every home, widen the highways, add some interpasses. For people who don't have cars today (most of the world) will we be providing EVs as well? At some point it will be too late and people will experience a rapid decline in quality of life (it's already happening if you look at lifespan) with no recourse. Easier to be in denial about that than to, say, not eat meat every single day. Or not have same-day and two-day free delivery in a country where 80% of product transportation is done by truck. It would be nice to have a silver bullet, but the reality is people will have to make adjustments willingly or have it done for them by the biosphere. The Earth is going to be just fine. Whether or not we will remains TBD.

marcosdumay 4y ago
> how much plastic we waste in general There is already an excess of carbon to get right there on the atmosphere. Again, the problem is how the plastic is made, not the sheer amount of it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Retric 4y ago
Plastics covers a wide range of different materials some are roughly as damaging to the environment as wood. I don’t want to get into the rest of your post, but I would recommend digging a little deeper before you declare something a problem rather than a tradeoff.
- culi 4y ago
  I have a problem with such a claim. When measuring how "damaging to the environment" something is, what are we looking at? Compostable plastics, for example, might seem more eco when looking at the waste, but the truth is that just means they're breaking down into micro-plastics faster How do we measure the impact of those microplastics? Is it by how expensive a micro-plastic clean-up would cost taxpayers? Is it by the (admittedly marginal, but very widescale) increases in health care costs to people that are impacted by it? I think if we actually took a full-scale assessment of these sorts of impacts, we'd have a lot of trouble making such a claim
  - Retric 4y ago
    I mean this quite literally. Cellulose is useful as plastic, it’s also what makes wood stiff. Worrying about cellulose micro plastics is like worrying about the cell walls of lettuce. You can’t digest the stuff but it’s non toxic.
- tsol 4y ago
  Microplastic and microcellulose and very different. Only one has widespread microbes that have evolved to break them down.
prottog 4y ago
Beyond saying that growth for the sake of growth is bad, you're saying that having nice things is actually bad. Same-day or two-day shipping is nice. Automobiles are nice. Not having those things is already a rapid decline in quality of life; why wait for a climate catastrophe to do that, when you can just make nice things illegal to have? If we all lived like cavemen, we wouldn't need to worry about our carbon emissions. Let's lift everyone up to the "westerner's" standard of living, instead of the other way around.
- scrollaway 4y ago
  I was just on holiday in a city where having a car was a necessity in order to go anywhere fast. Now I’m back in Belgium where I can use a bike. I had an app where I could order a car for some occasions and the app is nice. But I do not think it’s superior to a more efficient city: better public transport and bike infrastructure. I agree with you that having nice things isn’t immediately bad, but especially Americans tend to confuse the things they’re used to for “nice things”, fault of not having tried the better alternative yet.
- tsol 4y ago
  >Not having those things is already a rapid decline in quality of life; why wait for a climate catastrophe to do that, when you can just make nice things illegal to have? No offense but this is a really selfish point of view. The point is in one situation only we are uncomfortable, and in the other situation almost every creature on the entire planet is uncomfortable possibly for the rest of human history. The truth is we live unsustainable lives and people have to come to terms with that. If we can't, eventually we'll be forced to. Even if you don't want to. Also, I honestly think life isn't that much worse without 2 day shipping. People literally lived without it for millennia. We know that we can be happy even with fewer conveniences. Giving those up is another story.
- cassepipe 4y ago
  Your comment shows total ignorance or unwillingness to care about the global threat that climate growing instability represents to the whole human race. Reading comments like that now is truly terrifying to me You are either old and don't care because you may not live long enough to live through the consequences or are in total denial of what's happening.
tsol 4y ago
I don't know how this is downvoted, other than people's reflexive distaste to being told they need to consume less. Say what you want, but you can't cheat science. The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising rapidly, and people are changing little in terms of the quantity they consume. Those goods are still being shipped around the world. It's simple math, if we consume roughly the same resources we will continue to produce the same amount of waste. Obviously technologies like nuclear power or widespread solar use would change this situation-- but adoption isn't fast enough to outrun global warming. People are desperately hoping for some revolutionary invention that will break this equation and allow us to consume without consequence. I hope so, but honestly there's a real chance that won't happen.
- Retric 4y ago
  Because it doesn’t line up with reality. The US and Europe has dramatically reduced CO2 emissions and increased consumption. The US is down 15% from 2007 to now and that tend isn’t stopping. Global warming emissions is currently being driven by developing economies but they are going to be investing in the cheapest technology which is renewable energy. Just look at say China’s electric grid and it’s percentage of Coal vs Wind and Solar or it’s EV adoption. That change is based on cold hard economies.

by drekk 4y ago

marcosdumay 4y ago

> how much plastic we waste in general There is already an excess of carbon to get right there on the atmosphere. Again, the problem is how the plastic is made, not the sheer amount of it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Retric 4y ago

Plastics covers a wide range of different materials some are roughly as damaging to the environment as wood. I don’t want to get into the rest of your post, but I would recommend digging a little deeper before you declare something a problem rather than a tradeoff.

culi 4y ago
I have a problem with such a claim. When measuring how "damaging to the environment" something is, what are we looking at? Compostable plastics, for example, might seem more eco when looking at the waste, but the truth is that just means they're breaking down into micro-plastics faster How do we measure the impact of those microplastics? Is it by how expensive a micro-plastic clean-up would cost taxpayers? Is it by the (admittedly marginal, but very widescale) increases in health care costs to people that are impacted by it? I think if we actually took a full-scale assessment of these sorts of impacts, we'd have a lot of trouble making such a claim
- Retric 4y ago
  I mean this quite literally. Cellulose is useful as plastic, it’s also what makes wood stiff. Worrying about cellulose micro plastics is like worrying about the cell walls of lettuce. You can’t digest the stuff but it’s non toxic.
tsol 4y ago
Microplastic and microcellulose and very different. Only one has widespread microbes that have evolved to break them down.

prottog 4y ago

Beyond saying that growth for the sake of growth is bad, you're saying that having nice things is actually bad. Same-day or two-day shipping is nice. Automobiles are nice. Not having those things is already a rapid decline in quality of life; why wait for a climate catastrophe to do that, when you can just make nice things illegal to have? If we all lived like cavemen, we wouldn't need to worry about our carbon emissions. Let's lift everyone up to the "westerner's" standard of living, instead of the other way around.

scrollaway 4y ago
I was just on holiday in a city where having a car was a necessity in order to go anywhere fast. Now I’m back in Belgium where I can use a bike. I had an app where I could order a car for some occasions and the app is nice. But I do not think it’s superior to a more efficient city: better public transport and bike infrastructure. I agree with you that having nice things isn’t immediately bad, but especially Americans tend to confuse the things they’re used to for “nice things”, fault of not having tried the better alternative yet.
tsol 4y ago
>Not having those things is already a rapid decline in quality of life; why wait for a climate catastrophe to do that, when you can just make nice things illegal to have? No offense but this is a really selfish point of view. The point is in one situation only we are uncomfortable, and in the other situation almost every creature on the entire planet is uncomfortable possibly for the rest of human history. The truth is we live unsustainable lives and people have to come to terms with that. If we can't, eventually we'll be forced to. Even if you don't want to. Also, I honestly think life isn't that much worse without 2 day shipping. People literally lived without it for millennia. We know that we can be happy even with fewer conveniences. Giving those up is another story.
cassepipe 4y ago
Your comment shows total ignorance or unwillingness to care about the global threat that climate growing instability represents to the whole human race. Reading comments like that now is truly terrifying to me You are either old and don't care because you may not live long enough to live through the consequences or are in total denial of what's happening.

tsol 4y ago

I don't know how this is downvoted, other than people's reflexive distaste to being told they need to consume less. Say what you want, but you can't cheat science. The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising rapidly, and people are changing little in terms of the quantity they consume. Those goods are still being shipped around the world. It's simple math, if we consume roughly the same resources we will continue to produce the same amount of waste. Obviously technologies like nuclear power or widespread solar use would change this situation-- but adoption isn't fast enough to outrun global warming. People are desperately hoping for some revolutionary invention that will break this equation and allow us to consume without consequence. I hope so, but honestly there's a real chance that won't happen.

Retric 4y ago
Because it doesn’t line up with reality. The US and Europe has dramatically reduced CO2 emissions and increased consumption. The US is down 15% from 2007 to now and that tend isn’t stopping. Global warming emissions is currently being driven by developing economies but they are going to be investing in the cheapest technology which is renewable energy. Just look at say China’s electric grid and it’s percentage of Coal vs Wind and Solar or it’s EV adoption. That change is based on cold hard economies.