5 ms·

We've spent 40 years doing nothing, and somehow nothing has been done?!?

by LatteLazy 3y ago

throwaway71271 3y ago
we have paper straws now
- lucasyvas 3y ago
  And yet, when I'm in the grocery store all those produce bags are still plastic while they brag about paper or reusable checkout bags! There is no solution in sight for us - it's way too late.
  - karmakurtisaani 3y ago
    Well, it's a continuous spectrum of outcomes. We might have missed the "nice and livable planet without having to change much", but we're not at "Mars climate" yet.
  - di456 3y ago
    My city banned single-use plastic bags. For a couple years they went away. Then they came back and are now 10x thicker so they can be marketed as reusable.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      This is how I feel about these "reusable" bags too. If you sell them at a checkout, you aren't making people adjust to remember to bring bags. You're just making them spend more to buy single use bags. They definitely are accumulating enough in my house that I'm contemplating using them as bin liners, which is stupid. But I'm probably not gonna change. Besides, even if I brought my bags 100% of the time when I went to the store, if I ever order my groceries to be delivered, which I do when I'm super busy at work or too sick to go to the store, they seem to arrive packed into as many reusable bags as humanly possible. So anyways, yet another thing that we should be leaning on companies to fix but individuals are being blamed for. Paper bags would have been better but not profitable enough compared to selling "reusable" bags at the checkout line.
  - tm-guimaraes 3y ago
    "plastic" is not the issue, "plastic" disposal is the issue. "Plastic" is just too good on the $/weight/resilience ratio. Also, efficient containers like plastics (as in light and thin) reduce a lot the energy needed to transport. And no matter what we do here with plastics, it won't matter without proper trade regulations. It will happen as it did with labour, third world countries will just pick up our share. Third world countries use more fossil fuels, and have way worse waste management, and they don't seem to plan on improving those just like labour is cheap. Their rulers want it that way to keep on competing on price in exportations. Without trade regulations that try to upstream some environmental regulation, all the local rules are useless
- dataflow 3y ago
  You misspelled PFAS.
- tm-guimaraes 3y ago
  sorry about the rant: what a nice thing, instead of a plastic straw that we know how to recycle, we get "paper" with microplastics or some other new non-recycleble composite anyway. The issue with plastics is our logistics for waste management, the common plastics are incredibly useful, but because we are shit at managing waste we are replacing plastics everywhere with worse materials that register as "evil" for the general. You can sell "no plastic" as green, or "bio degradable": Replace a plastic with something that is not plastic even though it's still less useful and non recycleable and you can call your product "green". Or say that it's biodegradable, which nowadays anything that doesn't take decades to decompose classifies, so you can have all the nasty stuff, including the very famous "micro plastics" in there and be green. There are so many rich kids in their "first world problems" that are activists and speak in conferences, that you can go to some in theory "respectable" climate conference and one talk be all about the evils of microplastic and the other about how we should use decomposable plastic (yeah, guess what it decomposes to?). The whole Green conversation is controlled by either privileged activists that clearly do not have a related STEM degree, or marketing/campaign departments calling anything "green"/good for the environment, pure manipulation.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
We've done a lot more than nothing. Just yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35965186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35965186. There were 10 million EV's sold in 2022, and that value is increasing by about 50% a year. The rate of increase in CO2 emissions is now negative. If it stays negative, that means that soon annual CO2 emissions will start decreasing. More concretely, we're on track for 3 - 4 degrees of warming. Way too much, but if we didn't do anything, we'd be hitting 6 or more degrees of warming.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  I am unsure how to respond to your comment: on one hand you contend that we are doing something, on the other you accept that emissions are too high and growing... We've been "about" to do something for decades now. A Cynic might suspect the only reason the rate of increase has fallen is Covid (since the last figures are 2021/2022). And even with that, the problem is (a) getting worse and (b) getting worse rapidly. It's just that the 2nd differential has fallen. Like if we were driving off a cliff, but stopped accelerating, we'd still be going rapidly in the wrong direction...
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    The second derivative went very slightly negative in 2015, well before COVID. The narrative pushed by many is that we need some sort of deus ex machina to save us -- nuclear or hydrogen or the overthrow of capitalism or killing off 90% of the world's population or something. That's BS. We know what the problem is, we know how to fix it and we are fixing it, just too slowly. No magic solution, just a lot of hard work. Keep doing what we're doing, but do more of it, and faster.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      I disagree I am afraid. We DO need a very large change. That does not mean we will get one. I actually think we will just adapt (as best as we are able). Remember: the change required is a matter of physics and economics. That change being politically or morally unacceptable would not make it any less necessary. But by your own admission we have do everything we are willing to do (and had a pandemic), and barely touched the 2nd differential. That's the opposite of progress (it's continued progress in the wrong direction). At this rate, we will still be decades from sustainable emissions long after I am dead (and the earth has warmed beyond liveability)
testHNac 3y ago
We could have gone Nuclear and saved ourselves by slowing down this process. But Greenpeace and other eco activists were outright against Nuclear. Now we are still depending on Coal and Fossil Fuels. So much for saving the environment.
- triceratops 3y ago
  Definitely only "eco activists" to blame. Not the fossil fuel companies secretly funding them.
  - testHNac 3y ago
    If you know that, then surely the politicians also know who want to save the world. What have they done about going Nuclear ? https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear
    - realusername 3y ago
      In the EU, the politicians either bought into the new age BS in an hopeless move to gather votes for the more honest ones or straight up got money from Russia to turn a blind eye for the others.
- adrianN 3y ago
  Nuclear is not the only option and far from sufficient unless you want a nuclear reactor in your cellar heating your home and would like billions of Ford Nucleons on the street.
  - testHNac 3y ago
    Did I say Nuclear is the only option ? I said we could have taken action decades back when we had the Nuclear technology. Not sure why you think one needs a Nuclear Reactor in their house. Anyways, I guess Nuclear sceptics know best. And thus, here we are winning over Global Warming.
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
who's we? I am pretty sure I haven't done anything to make things as bad as they are. So in a way I have spent 40 years doing nothing, true, but that nothing was actually good.

We've spent 40 years doing nothing, and somehow nothing has been done?!?

throwaway71271 3y ago

we have paper straws now

lucasyvas 3y ago
And yet, when I'm in the grocery store all those produce bags are still plastic while they brag about paper or reusable checkout bags! There is no solution in sight for us - it's way too late.
- karmakurtisaani 3y ago
  Well, it's a continuous spectrum of outcomes. We might have missed the "nice and livable planet without having to change much", but we're not at "Mars climate" yet.
- di456 3y ago
  My city banned single-use plastic bags. For a couple years they went away. Then they came back and are now 10x thicker so they can be marketed as reusable.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    This is how I feel about these "reusable" bags too. If you sell them at a checkout, you aren't making people adjust to remember to bring bags. You're just making them spend more to buy single use bags. They definitely are accumulating enough in my house that I'm contemplating using them as bin liners, which is stupid. But I'm probably not gonna change. Besides, even if I brought my bags 100% of the time when I went to the store, if I ever order my groceries to be delivered, which I do when I'm super busy at work or too sick to go to the store, they seem to arrive packed into as many reusable bags as humanly possible. So anyways, yet another thing that we should be leaning on companies to fix but individuals are being blamed for. Paper bags would have been better but not profitable enough compared to selling "reusable" bags at the checkout line.
- tm-guimaraes 3y ago
  "plastic" is not the issue, "plastic" disposal is the issue. "Plastic" is just too good on the $/weight/resilience ratio. Also, efficient containers like plastics (as in light and thin) reduce a lot the energy needed to transport. And no matter what we do here with plastics, it won't matter without proper trade regulations. It will happen as it did with labour, third world countries will just pick up our share. Third world countries use more fossil fuels, and have way worse waste management, and they don't seem to plan on improving those just like labour is cheap. Their rulers want it that way to keep on competing on price in exportations. Without trade regulations that try to upstream some environmental regulation, all the local rules are useless
dataflow 3y ago
You misspelled PFAS.
tm-guimaraes 3y ago
sorry about the rant: what a nice thing, instead of a plastic straw that we know how to recycle, we get "paper" with microplastics or some other new non-recycleble composite anyway. The issue with plastics is our logistics for waste management, the common plastics are incredibly useful, but because we are shit at managing waste we are replacing plastics everywhere with worse materials that register as "evil" for the general. You can sell "no plastic" as green, or "bio degradable": Replace a plastic with something that is not plastic even though it's still less useful and non recycleable and you can call your product "green". Or say that it's biodegradable, which nowadays anything that doesn't take decades to decompose classifies, so you can have all the nasty stuff, including the very famous "micro plastics" in there and be green. There are so many rich kids in their "first world problems" that are activists and speak in conferences, that you can go to some in theory "respectable" climate conference and one talk be all about the evils of microplastic and the other about how we should use decomposable plastic (yeah, guess what it decomposes to?). The whole Green conversation is controlled by either privileged activists that clearly do not have a related STEM degree, or marketing/campaign departments calling anything "green"/good for the environment, pure manipulation.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

We've done a lot more than nothing. Just yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35965186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35965186. There were 10 million EV's sold in 2022, and that value is increasing by about 50% a year. The rate of increase in CO2 emissions is now negative. If it stays negative, that means that soon annual CO2 emissions will start decreasing. More concretely, we're on track for 3 - 4 degrees of warming. Way too much, but if we didn't do anything, we'd be hitting 6 or more degrees of warming.

LatteLazy 3y ago
I am unsure how to respond to your comment: on one hand you contend that we are doing something, on the other you accept that emissions are too high and growing... We've been "about" to do something for decades now. A Cynic might suspect the only reason the rate of increase has fallen is Covid (since the last figures are 2021/2022). And even with that, the problem is (a) getting worse and (b) getting worse rapidly. It's just that the 2nd differential has fallen. Like if we were driving off a cliff, but stopped accelerating, we'd still be going rapidly in the wrong direction...
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  The second derivative went very slightly negative in 2015, well before COVID. The narrative pushed by many is that we need some sort of deus ex machina to save us -- nuclear or hydrogen or the overthrow of capitalism or killing off 90% of the world's population or something. That's BS. We know what the problem is, we know how to fix it and we are fixing it, just too slowly. No magic solution, just a lot of hard work. Keep doing what we're doing, but do more of it, and faster.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    I disagree I am afraid. We DO need a very large change. That does not mean we will get one. I actually think we will just adapt (as best as we are able). Remember: the change required is a matter of physics and economics. That change being politically or morally unacceptable would not make it any less necessary. But by your own admission we have do everything we are willing to do (and had a pandemic), and barely touched the 2nd differential. That's the opposite of progress (it's continued progress in the wrong direction). At this rate, we will still be decades from sustainable emissions long after I am dead (and the earth has warmed beyond liveability)

testHNac 3y ago

We could have gone Nuclear and saved ourselves by slowing down this process. But Greenpeace and other eco activists were outright against Nuclear. Now we are still depending on Coal and Fossil Fuels. So much for saving the environment.

triceratops 3y ago
Definitely only "eco activists" to blame. Not the fossil fuel companies secretly funding them.
- testHNac 3y ago
  If you know that, then surely the politicians also know who want to save the world. What have they done about going Nuclear ? https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear https://environmentalprogress.org/the-war-on-nuclear
  - realusername 3y ago
    In the EU, the politicians either bought into the new age BS in an hopeless move to gather votes for the more honest ones or straight up got money from Russia to turn a blind eye for the others.
adrianN 3y ago
Nuclear is not the only option and far from sufficient unless you want a nuclear reactor in your cellar heating your home and would like billions of Ford Nucleons on the street.
- testHNac 3y ago
  Did I say Nuclear is the only option ? I said we could have taken action decades back when we had the Nuclear technology. Not sure why you think one needs a Nuclear Reactor in their house. Anyways, I guess Nuclear sceptics know best. And thus, here we are winning over Global Warming.

peoplefromibiza 3y ago

who's we? I am pretty sure I haven't done anything to make things as bad as they are. So in a way I have spent 40 years doing nothing, true, but that nothing was actually good.