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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)

#261

Post by koheripbal »

dakr wrote: post #10

Not to minimize the impact to ocean life and the environment, but lost fishing gear costs money. The upside of which is that there is direct financial incentive to recover lost gear. I know nothing about this space, but a former coworker started a company about ten years ago in part to allow fishers to track and recover their gear: https://www.blueoceangear.com/

The nets wear out. There is no incentive to recover here. Most of these nets are dumped when they develop too many holes to be useful. It's easier than bringing the shredded net back to shore and trying to dispose of it.

Chinese shipping fleets do this routinely.

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

#262

Post by kiliantics »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #245
williamscales wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The trucks that endanger cyclists aren’t going anywhere. They’re absolutely necessary to get goods from rail depots to markets so (among others) our dear cyclists can purchase them.

It's possible to restrict vehicle size in urban centres, plenty of cities do. You can move things with smaller safer trucks and vans for the last mile. In some cases, this is even done with cargo bikes.

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

#263

Post by throwaway894345 »

eloisius wrote: post #110
julianlam wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! Rail is nice, when the volume permits it. How would we supply the supermarket, though? A rail line would be unfeasible.

You're getting closer. Suburban supermarkets might be unfeasible without long-haul trucking. That's just another example of the public subsidizing the suburban lifestyle, which is unsustainable without fossil fuels and public subsidies. Rail can very well transport goods from port to population centers, where box trucks can handle the last mile to stores.

Lol you came so close! Suburban supermarkets would get their goods just like your urban supermarket: smaller box trucks transporting goods from rail depot to supermarket.

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

#264

Post by HPsquared »

Fiahil wrote: post #196
dark-star wrote: post #6

It is so obvious, and has been known for years, yet the EU banned plastic straws because of the waste in the oceans, so now every drink tastes like a schoolbook. Well done EU...

Some restaurants I've been to, used real straws made of real wheat.

They could even be organic.

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

#265

Post by [deleted] »

koheripbal wrote: post #248
grapeskin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars don’t get a free pass. But literally any time someone says X is a big source of pollution, someone always screams that Y is worse so let’s stop focusing on X. Then when people talk about Y, forget it, here’s Z and it’s the real problem. They’re all bad. It’s not like there’s one single person on earth who only has time to focus on one single problem. There’s billions.

It's a classic whataboutism distraction attack on the conversation. whataboutisms aren't bad because they're wrong - they are bad because they are a distraction. Either the commenter is trying to turn the conversation to a different topic they prefer to advocate for, satisfy their ego that they know more, or they are simply attempting to disrupt discourse. In reality, the focus should be placed on solutions that have…

[deleted]

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

#266

Post by throwaway894345 »

kiliantics wrote: post #262
throwaway894345 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trucks that endanger cyclists aren’t going anywhere. They’re absolutely necessary to get goods from rail depots to markets so (among others) our dear cyclists can purchase them.

It's possible to restrict vehicle size in urban centres, plenty of cities do. You can move things with smaller safer trucks and vans for the last mile. In some cases, this is even done with cargo bikes.

I guess my point was “the trucks doing the last mile delivery aren’t going anywhere”, contrary to the parent’s claim that trucks are unnecessary and that rail will handle the last mile. I fully expect trucks will get smaller if only because no one is going to use an 18-wheeler to transport goods between a rail depot and a supermarket a mile or so down the street.

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

#267

Post by recycledmatt »

recycledmatt wrote: post #232
dakr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

The issue is economic incentives do not align. The fisher can bring it back to shore and probably have to pay to dispose of it in a landfill. Or they can drop it in the ocean for free, while creating a negative externality.

If someone setup a fund to pay fisherman 5 cents a pound to bring their nets back, and then they would deal with disposal, they could avert most of this. No one has stepped up with $50 million a year tho to solve this.

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

#268

Post by mschuster91 »

formvoltron wrote: post #230
mschuster91 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, by what measure is rail more expensive? Your average truck puts out 8 metric tons per axle [1], railroads have to deal with 20-25 tons per axle [2] (and records of 40 tons/axle in Australia [3]). That is an awful lot more force that needs to be distributed into the ground, particularly as trucks usually reach only 80 km/h whereas freight trains run at 120 km/h in Europe [4]. Additionally, road vehicles have…

Do trains really need to be so heavy? I was imaging things the size of cars or smaller on rails, moving around everywhere cars currently move around.

Unfortunately yes. A car or even a truck is standalone and its frame only has to account for the forces of itself moving and crash absorbance, whereas a railway car has to be able to withstand the pull and push forces of dozens of cars - the most basic train has one locomotive at the front and each car must be capable of transferring the entire pull force that the first one behind the locomotive gets, which is for European railways usually anything between 200 to 700 (MTAB IORE) kN.

And the only way to achieve that capability is lots and lots of very thick steel.

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

#269

Post by dimitrios1 »

gresrun wrote: post #98
dimitrios1 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interstate highway system was not built for commercial trucking. > In the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938, Congress asked the BPR for a report on "the feasibility of building, and cost of, superhighways... including the feasibility of a toll system on such roads." The BPR based its report on data collected from extensive highway planning surveys that had been conducted around the country beginning in 1935. The or…

It was also built to allow the U.S. Army to rapidly move convoys of trucks, tanks, & materiel around the U.S.[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...

And also built to allow rapid evacuation of large cities in case of nuclear attack. I think it's lost on a lot of people today just how many things we did in the 50s, 60s, and 70s because we were scared of being bombed.

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

#270

Post by MichaelZuo »

eru wrote: post #208
hnick wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That seems reasonable, a rise on prices of stable commodities can easily be counterbalanced by reducing taxes elsewhere.
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