231–240 of 328 posts
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Let’s not forget brake dust which is a lot worse than microplastics, EVs create a ton of that. I bet all things considered, ICE Toyota Yaris is less bad for the environment than some Tesla.
Don't EV brake less because of regenerative braking?
It is 50,000 tons per year. In plastic recycling terms, not that much volume. A very large plastic recycling facility can do about 200,000 tons in a year. http://intelligentliving.co/worlds-largest-climate-neutral-p... A tractor trailer hauls roughly 20 tons - so all the sea nets in the world in a year could be hauled by 2,500 trailers. Not that much in the scheme of things.
From the article: "Unlike other forms of marine debris, fishing gear is specifically designed to catch marine life. Under certain conditions, derelict gear can continue to catch and kill organisms for years."
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The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
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…
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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?
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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…
I would not underestimate the hypothesis that a lake can be screwed up too, consider what happened to the aral sea. Near my home town a big volcanic lake has been used to get water during droughts and it got to a dangerous low level in recent years.
It is 50,000 tons per year. In plastic recycling terms, not that much volume. A very large plastic recycling facility can do about 200,000 tons in a year. http://intelligentliving.co/worlds-largest-climate-neutral-p... A tractor trailer hauls roughly 20 tons - so all the sea nets in the world in a year could be hauled by 2,500 trailers. Not that much in the scheme of things.
It does beg the question, what is the right amount of plastic to be in the world's oceans?
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The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
Well, the freshwater argument could be extended to individual behavior simply by saying: eat less meat. We produce most of our food for cattle, and cattle needs tons of freshwater (both consumed directly and indirectly).
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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…
Big business ties
The Nature Conservancy has ties to many large companies, including those in the oil, gas, mining, chemical and agricultural industries.[42] As of 2016, its board of directors included the retired chairman of Duke Energy, and executives from Merck, HP, Google and several financial industry groups.[43] It also has a Business Council which it describes as a consultative forum that includes Bank of America, BP America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, General Mills, Royal Dutch Shell, and Starbucks.[44] The organization faced criticism in 2010 from supporters for its refusal to cut ties with BP after the Gulf oil spill.[45][46]
Writer and activist Naomi Klein has strongly criticized The Nature Conservancy for earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas and for its continued engagement with fossil fuel companies.[47][48] The Nature Conservancy responded by arguing that it had no choice under the terms of a lease it signed years prior with an oil and gas company and later came to regret.[47]
In 2020, Bloomberg published an article claiming that some of the companies (such as JPMorgan Chase, Disney, and BlackRock) that purchase carbon credits from The Nature Conservancy were purchasing carbon credits for forests that did not need protection.[49]