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Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#141

Post by patagonia »

temperfidelis2x wrote: post #131
patagonia wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not disagreeing about the source of the plastic. I’m suggesting that talking about the source of the plastic without also discussing issues such as western oil and chemical companies operating in the regions this plastic is generated ignores fundamental issues such as the undermining of regulatory regimes by these same companies to keep costs down. CO2 has a similar story. India didn’t wake up and come up with th…

The problem is generally not that we are producing plastic. The problem is that some people just throw it away when it's broken / old / what ever, essentially dumping it to the flowing water to get rid of it. This behaviour and attitude towards nature is something that I as a westerner just can't understand and I won't accept any blame-shifting games here. Poverty is also a very bad excuse to dump plastic in nature.…

It is as if you are also not reading my comment.

I’m not shifting blame. I’m sharing it. Look into some of the places the plastic grocery bag you “recycle” get handled. In some cases they are put on a ship and sent to India, sorted by hand, then melted using dirty fuels, again, by hand. So this “America takes care of its plastic, so India should too” is flat out wrong. We may not be as bad, but we do not handle our own issue completely. And if the US is sending your country their trash and doesn’t follow up with how it was handled, how is that not an incentive to do in the most cost effective manner possible, even if that means harming persons and environmental health?

Or let’s talk about clear cutting the Amazon for agriculture. How dare Brazil do that! Have you flown over middle America??? It’s all developed farm land. There are entire states that are basically monoculture agricultural where natural ecosystems used to be. Are you suggesting we return that land to its natural state?

Or let’s talk about electronics. Should we have jail time if you are responsible for purchasing a device without ensuring it was sourced in an environmentally responsible manner? Should people that purchased devices manufactured from raw materials derived by strip mining and processes that leach chemicals be given prison sentences?

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#142

Post by toast0 »

johnydepp wrote: post #24

Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there. Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of envi…

Outside pressure and assistance would certainly help, but change can come from within too. Ocean pollution is diffuse and hard to see the effects of, especially when you're participating in a developing economy and you've got a lot more pressing needs. River pollution is easy to see, and results in clear health hazards.

One of the sparks of the US environmental movement was when a river caught fire because of all the crap that was in it. [1]

Agitate towards cleaning up rivers and other water bodies; sewage, solid waste (trash), and industrial waste are pretty common, and they're all manageable; it just takes capital, sustained effort, and some amount of enforcement. Dumping is visible enough that enforcement in the court of popular opinion can be effective enough, when the courts of law are not enough.

Having clean(er) water will help with all sorts of health issues, the economy, and international relations (competition over water sources is lessened if downstream water is cleaner and more usable)

Keeping plastic out of rivers should also keep it out of the ocean; unless you just collect it all, and then ship it out on a barge and dump it; but even then, having built the collection apparatus, you'll be in a better place to deal with the waste responsibly later.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#143

Post by dang »

nurzo wrote: post #63

If you can't convince Indians not to shit on the streets, good luck explaining to them what throwing plastic bags in the river does to the planet as a whole. With this I'm not saying that Indians will always be dirty, but a loooong time will pass until reeducation is successful, so we have to think of other, more direct (and aggressive) ways.

National/racial flamewar is not allowed here and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do it on HN again.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494646 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#144

Post by titzer »

CptFribble wrote: post #116
titzer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion people will die. Heck, 7.5 billion will die. Everyone dies. The question is not when, but how, and how do they live their lives. I think we should pursue a solution not of genocide, but one of mass sterilization. We should choose about 100 million people from all over the Earth that will represent the gen…

File this under "Things still too radical to say in 2018." Honestly, your proposed solution goes too counter to human nature to be viable, in my opinion. Not to say it wouldn't work if you could pull it off, just that there's too much going against it. Human nature is selfish on a per-tribe basis. I think much of humanity's ills stem from our inability to effectively care about more than ~100-1k people. Even if you c…

> Honestly, your proposed solution goes too counter to human nature to be viable, in my opinion.

I know it does. That's why we are well and truly screwed. But to be honest it's the only thing I can think of that would give us even a fighting chance, because a century of 7+ billion humans will absolutely suck this planet dry. BTW there is no such thing as "sustainable growth". It is a contradiction in terms.

I'll refer you to Al Bartlett. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3LryW47B_M

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#145

Post by erikpukinskis »

vixen99 wrote: post #72
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are things you can do. Earth Strike is one such very recent phenomenon that has organized that directly addresses failures of capitalism that is and has caused environmental collapse. They have direct demands (unlike Occupy that had none). They have direct action days already organized (January 15, 2019 ; April 27, 2019 ; August 1, 2019 ; September 27, 2019). The group already has international interest a…

And what do you intend to do via your Direct Action? No clue in the links you've given.

Direct action these days just means walking around with signs.

No one can be bothered to learn what the term means so it’s just become a buzzword.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#146

Post by hannasanarion »

carapace wrote: post #136

A lot of doom and gloom here. I feel ya but I want to point out we have the necessary solutions to save ourselves if we just notice and apply them. For example, olivine just might "cure" atmospheric CO2. [1] The primary things to look to are: Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution"; applied ecology (aka Permaculture); and Neurolinguistic Programming to help us get over our BS. [1] https://climitigation.org/categor…

You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right?

Normally I give people the benefit of the doubt and presume they meant natural language processing and expanded the acronym wrong, but I can't see how that could apply here.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#147

Post by goldfeld »

AndrewOMartin wrote: post #103

So you're saying whales can be used to conveniently filter plastic from the sea? How many whales do we need to deploy to get an entirely clean ocean?

If you can't harbor any feeling for even a huge, complex and intelligent mammal, you're a much bigger threat to the environment than 6kg of plastic could ever be.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#148

Post by omegaworks »

temperfidelis2x wrote: post #125
omegaworks wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You likely have a functioning sewer system and fresh water taps to your home. Americans always underestimate the amount of effort and wealth it takes for the infrastructure that maintains their normalcy.

It doesn't take a genius, sewer system or fresh water taps to build a dry toilet though. Nothing to do with America.

It does take land that you possess and are willing to sacrifice for long-term composting. We're passing judgement here without knowing anything about the social systems in these places.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#149

Post by freeflight »

goldfeld wrote: post #134
freeflight wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not gonna happen, most people still don't grasp the stakes at play nor how they are contributing in the worst ways possible. On one side you have sometimes a bit too righteous vegans getting their third child, going "I'm saving the planet by teaching my children the right way to live!" On the other side, you have nationalist sentiments going "I need to get as many children as possible or else our ancestry is dyi…

If someone is determined to be an example of sustainable living, having extra kids might be productive, even very much so, as it helps the signal-to-noise ratio of good values spread faster in the population; think of it as a multiplier. The actual weight of having more people is a rounding error compared to all the extra people who on top of it have questionable ethics and morals all around (most people including or…

> as it helps the signal-to-noise ratio of good values spread faster in the population

This only works if the "don't care" population doesn't outgrow them. You are pretty much betting on speeding up, outcompeting them, but that in itself is only contributing to the overall problem.

Especially considering that the "don't care" approach requires less effort, as in time and resources for the individual, thus is more likely to be practiced succeed and given on to the children, of which they very likely will have more.

Because even children are something that needs to be "invested in" to actually meaningfully contribute when they are adults, instead of being another "net negative" to the sustainability of humanity on this planet.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#150

Post by carapace »

hannasanarion wrote: post #146
carapace wrote: post #136

A lot of doom and gloom here. I feel ya but I want to point out we have the necessary solutions to save ourselves if we just notice and apply them. For example, olivine just might "cure" atmospheric CO2. [1] The primary things to look to are: Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution"; applied ecology (aka Permaculture); and Neurolinguistic Programming to help us get over our BS. [1] https://climitigation.org/categor…

You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right? Normally I give people the benefit of the doubt and presume they meant natural language processing and expanded the acronym wrong, but I can't see how that could apply here.

Yes, I meant the other NLP.

> You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right?

I know no such thing. I'll grant you that most of the people talking about it, and many of the practitioners, are saying "pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit", and that's extraordinarily unfortunate.

Nevertheless, the foundations and principles of NLP are sound and the reproducible results should not be ignored. NLP develops algorithms for change that work. Is it a scientific body of knowledge? No. But it should be. We should do science to it.

I'll point out that it originates with an application of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar to transcripts of therapy sessions with very effective therapists (Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erikson. I think I spelled the names right.)

It's not pseudoscience because it doesn't claim to be scientific. Despite it's unscientific nature it does provide reliable, repeatable algorithms for overcoming our worser natures. We can use the techniques without buying into any "new age magic bullshit" whatsoever. The whole point is that you don't have to believe in any particular thing to have the techniques work. It's like aspirin. You don't have to believe in aspirin to relieve your headache with it. Aspirin doesn't care. NLP is the same way. In fact, you can alter your belief structures using NLP, so logically it's ontological status must be "meta-belief", but that's getting way far afield.

My main point stands: NLP works. (So who cares if it's wrapped in astrology or the "Enneagram", or wearing rubber pants? We can clean it up later when the fire has been put out, eh?)

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