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> owe their entire existence to plastics I think that's fundamentally untrustable argument since a very similar one was used to justify slavery. "It's perplexi
by eesmith 2y ago
> owe their entire existence to plastics
I think that's fundamentally untrustable argument since a very similar one was used to justify slavery. "It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid 'anti-slavery' mentality bandwagon when they probably own their entire existence to slavery and other forms of forced labor. Abolishing slavery will lead to societal collapse."
Just because it's true - much of modern life is utterly dependent on plastics - that doesn't justify a continued high dependency on plastics.
> Everything will get recycled eventually
And we're all dead in the end.
That "eventually" is hiding a lot. Like, what of the plastic in the water. How will that eventually be recycled? What effect does the plastic trash have on sea life, including discarded ("ghost") plastic fishing nets.
Given your indefinite "eventual" time-frame, you'll need to estimate the net future value of continuing with a lot of single-use plastics, vs. that of switching to another solution, where the overall advantages across a century may justify a decade-long expensive transition.
> People in the future will surely find a way to use what's in landfills again.
That's one-sided optimism. Flip it around, and people in the future will surely find a way to eliminate the need for single-use plastic.
> Now you know why plastic replaced glass containers in a majority of applications
We also know the history of "why" depends on cheap petroleum and ignoring the cost of waste management.
Like, we know why Freon (or HCFCs in general) replaced older refrigerants, only later to learn about the high cost due to ozone depletion.
We know the history of why plastic grocery bags mostly replaced paper, but the cost to the store didn't factor in the full cleanup costs or environmental impacts.
- constantcrying 2y agoHow disingenuous. The argument against slavery wasn't that it is economically non-viable and has long term negative consequences. The objection was purely on moral grounds, which should completely supersede economic or environmental factors. Plastic use should be weighed between harm and gain at each occasion of use. The same just isn't true for slavery, the analogy is terrible. There is appropriate use for plastics, there isn't appropriate use for slavery. You can not discuss both of them in the same manner.
- eesmith 2y agoAnd you are being obtuse. One of the arguments for slavery is the correct observation that even the abolitionists "probably owed their entire existence to slavery", and the correct observation that abolition would collapse society. As such, any argument along similar lines, like "you owe your existence to [single-use] plastics" and "society would collapse" should they disappear, is inherently incomplete and untrustworthy.
- constantcrying 2y agoThe argument is incorrect for slavery and correct for plastic. That is what you don't get. Slavery is wrong whether or not it benefits people, because it is immoral as such. Plastic use is not immoral and therefore you need to weigh the benefits of plastics against the issues with it. The comparison is just idiotic. Also, plastics are far more widely used, far more useful and far more beneficial than slavery ever was. Abolishing plastics as a whole means the total collapse of industrial society, every single production process somewhere depends on it. And again plastic use isn't inherently immoral, so the argument is categorically different from slavery as you can not object to the use of plastics on purely moral grounds.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago>Plastic use is not immoral Given that plastics manufactured today will exist for thousands of years and microplastics have found their way into everyone's blood, you could definitely make the argument that frivolous plastic use is absolutely immoral.
- constantcrying 2y agoAre you stupid? This is a specific consequence of the overuse of plastics. Not inherent to plastic itself. If you can not make that distinction please shit up.
- throaway728 2y ago