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Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

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Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#201

Post by the_gipsy »

jandrese wrote: post #117
pcj-github wrote: post #46

100 million pounds of lost gear by the fishing industry is such a ridiculous underestimate that, judging by some of the comments here, make people believe this number to be somehow OK. The fishing industry has been dodging responsibility for ocean pollution and habitat destruction for forever, good to see more research that people can use to put pressure on them to actually give a s** and change their ways.

The crazy part about this is how this is the fishermen shitting where they are eating. All of the ocean pollution contributes directly to collapsing fish populations, which puts them right out of a job. Why doesn't the appeal of "if you keep doing what you're doing you won't be able to keep fishing, and your children definitely won't be fishermen" work? I get that they are trapped in the cycle of overfishing, but it…

Tragedy of the Commons

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#202

Post by PeterisP »

williamscales wrote: post #143
dahdum wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles. I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.

No, not at all. There's just no need whatsoever for trucks. We could simply use rail. The idea that folks on bicycles should be subject to gigantic, badly designed commercial vehicles while going about their business is absurd and a product of decades upon decades of lobbying.

You don't have (and IMHO can't have) rail directly to all the businesses and retail warehouses that currently receive deliveries in semis, so that's adding a significant expensive extra loading/unloading step for large trucks which you still need between a rail station and a distribution center before the 'last mile'.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#203

Post by hardlianotion »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #177
milesvp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? water usage is a huge environmental issue. Only people far upstream really can say it’s not. We are amazing at not only diverting freshwater from streams and rivers, we’re also really good at pumping it out of the ground and diverting aquifer water from reaching downstream as well. While fresh water is largely renewable, it’s not like it’s an infinite resource and it’s very hard to see the long term effects of c…

Water usage isn't an environmental issue. There's as much water now as there ever was, barring a few hundred litres aboard the ISS. The issue is that you want to live in a desert but with a lifestyle like you're not in a desert. The hard conversation you need to have is that California is not habitable. There's no water and there's nowhere to grow food. If you want to make it habitable you'll need to turn all those g…

If you think Glasgow is t-short weather all year round, you are quite inured to the cold and wet.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#204

Post by PeterisP »

colechristensen wrote: post #152
dmbche wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely a claim but I assure you no human being has a clue of how to manage the ocean - it's kind of ludicrous. And by the fact that the ocean is so large, it industrial fishing is notoriously impossible to regulate - meaning that even if you "fish sustainably", it doesn't really matter - a large part of the market remains and will remain unregulated, by nature.

That’s a bit excessive. No human knows how to manage fish populations?

No human knows how to solve global coordination, i.e. if some countries switch to be sustainable and some others don't, the former pay the costs, but the latter gain a signficant benefit as their immediate catches simply increase (as fish don't care about borders). We don't have a "world government" that can practically impose binding restrictions on anyone in cases that don't go so far as where military violence makes sense.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#205

Post by rob74 »

neuronic wrote: post #189
maxerickson wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is freshwater usage? My water comes out of a Great Lake and substantially ends up back in it, about as clean as it came out. It's not used up. Some energy is consumed making it potable and pumping it around, and then treating it. Farms in the Midwest happen to catch a lot of rain, are they using freshwater in a different way than an almond orchard in California, or is it the same (my expectation is that the almo…

Don't make the mistake and rely on current rain. It's not funny how quickly moist regions can turn arid as a result of climate change. We have currently seen major droughts in Europe and it severely affects the ongoing energy crisis. A lot of power plants, nuclear and others, are in direct danger of not being able to be cooled anymore because you need RIVERS for that. And they need to be cool. Germany is currently ex…

Not only power plants - river barges have to reduce their loads because of the low water levels, which leads to shortages and price increases.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#206

Post by eru »

Macha wrote: post #198
eru wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already what's happening. The US has some of the best railways in the world. It's just that for various institutional reasons the Americans suck at passenger rail, so people totally ignore that their freight rail works really, really well. Guess which part of the industry is in government hands, and which part is privatised and deregulated?

Of course, this ignores that the tracks are mostly privately owned and the private operators prioritize their own freight traffic over the passenger traffic despite the latter being less time sensitive. The one part where the passenger rail does work well is where the government passenger rail company also owns the network...

Well, the whole system (or systems) used to be various private hands when they were first built. The government takeover came later.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#207

Post by eru »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #164
eru wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do (some) profit seeking companies use trucks then?

because the massive subsidies on trucking can make them sometimes convenient enough to be worth it.

Oh, so what kind of expense are you talking about? Which costs do you want to include?

Obviously you are not talking about the market price?

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#208

Post by eru »

hnick wrote: post #147
eru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why regressive? Are you arguing that making people pay for bread at all is 'regressive'?

Regressive because the new "tax" on the bread is a flat value, independent of the buyer's income and means. That's what the word means when it comes to taxes and fees. And yes, eating to survive is kind of regressive in that sense, but it's not what I'm talking about. If we generally assume society is unfair but still balanced around current expenditures, adding more may upset that balance.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter whether any one particular fee or tax is progressive or flat or regressive.

It's the overall tax burden (or net payment, for poor people) of the whole system that's important for these kinds of fairness considerations.

The design of individual taxes should be more concerned with efficiency and deadweight losses.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#209

Post by konschubert »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #178
jrajav wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed we were talking about the high-tonnage 18-wheeler semis in context, not last-mile delivery.

What are you going to replace those with?

If only the last mile is done by truck, road maintenance taxes will have virtually zero impact on price.

In Europe, a truck may transport about 250000 packs of yoghurt. (Assuming 100ml packs.)

If the truck pays 3 Euro road maintenance tax per 30-mile trip from and to the railway cargo hub, that comes out at 0.0001 Euros per can of yoghurt, a hundredth of a cent.

Re: Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

#210

Post by csmpltn »

picture wrote: post #11
csmpltn wrote: post #5

What about boats with fiberglass hulls?

Hulls of boats generally don't just go missing or left behind. And, the fiberglass doesn't cause as much damage as high surface area fishing nets. I remember reading that the paint can be an issue though, as there are added particles to get the aesthetic glimmer that will get into the water over time

> "Hulls of boats generally don't just go missing or left behind"

But do they release ("leach"?) microplastics into the ocean? Especially when degraded over time?

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