Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 372 posts

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#291

Post by wespiser_2018 »

matt4077 wrote: post #105
wespiser_2018 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Tragedy of the Commons is a situation that is about the management of wildlife and natural resources for the purposes of maximizing yield, with the lesson being regulated consumption results in maximal natural harvest. Pollution is just a negative economic externality, or consequence of an action that is unseen by the participants, where more pollution is always worse. Unfortunately, no one owns the ocean…

„No one owns the oceans“ = commons

Yes, I see. What I mean is that no single nation-state owns the oceans, so unlike most other examples of tragedy of the commons, where an organization has domain over the commons, the oceans are particularly difficult because there is no governing entity to resolve disagreements.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#292

Post by mikeash »

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #9
eecc wrote: post #3

Just like Climate Change, oceanic plastic pollution is a case of Tragedy of the commons. I can separate my waste and recycle as much as I want (and I do!) but it’s all useless if a random idiot proceeds to dump my weekly household recycling output into a river and call it a day. This is nothing that can be solved with personal initiative and responsibility; it requires international regulation and enforcement. There’…

I disagree. Tragedy of the Commons is a situation that is about the management of wildlife and natural resources for the purposes of maximizing yield, with the lesson being regulated consumption results in maximal natural harvest. Pollution is just a negative economic externality, or consequence of an action that is unseen by the participants, where more pollution is always worse. Unfortunately, no one owns the ocean…

More pollution isn’t necessarily worse. The polluting activity can produce benefits that outweigh the harm of the pollution.

Pollution is directly analogous to the standard Tragedy of the Commons scenario of a shared pasture, where the pasture equates to the environment, the cows are industry, and grazing the cows in the common pasture equates to industry producing pollution.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#293

Post by muzani »

dev_dull wrote: post #259
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it would be easy enough to ban plastic fishing equipment. Couldn't they make the nets out of hemp, or something else biodegradable?

You think illegal fishermen in the Philippines (where the bulk of the waste in the whale originated according to the article) really care you’ve outlawed plastic fishing nets? Your solution needs to be extremely incentivized and also easy to enforce in those places of the world. “Banning” something will have a laughable impact and only affect people who never created the waste in the first place.

I'm from that part of the world and laws here are more like "recommendations". It rarely gets enforced until there's a complaint. And the authorities are more likely to be focusing on factories dumping cyanide in a river or bauxite strip mining, rather than plastic nets.

The other side of it is that people are extremely poor. Possibly negative net value, lots of debts and no other way to pay next months bills. These people are going to use whatever it takes to live, and authorities who try to enforce it will look like villains.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#294

Post by your-nanny »

dev_dull wrote: post #258
chottocharaii wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market solution is a non-starter. We need laws.

You think blanket laws fixes it either? You need good, well thought out law free from lobbyist influence that tackle the heart of the issue. In other words, something extremely difficult to produce and often times hard to enforce. Or else you get more trash laws like making it illegal to serve water without asking in San Francisco.

you need more than laws, you need enforcement of those laws.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#295

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

dev_dull wrote: post #259
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it would be easy enough to ban plastic fishing equipment. Couldn't they make the nets out of hemp, or something else biodegradable?

You think illegal fishermen in the Philippines (where the bulk of the waste in the whale originated according to the article) really care you’ve outlawed plastic fishing nets? Your solution needs to be extremely incentivized and also easy to enforce in those places of the world. “Banning” something will have a laughable impact and only affect people who never created the waste in the first place.

Once their nets break and no new plastic nets are being produced then yeah, I think they’ll care.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#296

Post by nikofeyn »

dalbasal wrote: post #115
ehnto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that is good advice. Fixing the fishing industry is important, overfishing is rampant as is plastic waste from it. But fish is probably one of the best alternatives we have to other environmentally unfriendly meats we currently raise. As populations grow it is proving to be key to keeping everyone fed. Farmed fish most importantly will soon be the majority of fish consumed. Getting ocean based fishing t…

Commercial fishing is a lot less important than commercial hunting was 200 years ago. The sea is bigger, and the industry can switch to new species when one gets depleted (eg cod, salmon and tuna were once far more abundant) but the problems are still the problems. A fishery, like a bison herd, cannot handle the might of a modern industry. Quota systems and controls keep fisheries from immediately collapsing, but the…

your comment is a little hard to follow, but here's a few specific responses or additions.

> The wider ecosystem effects are not really known.

that's not really true. it is pretty well known that there are major detrimental effects of fish farms. of course we are still learning more and more, but we know at least something. salmon farms tend to take out good stuff from the ocean (fish) and return bad stuff (disease, waste, genetic changes, etc.).

> There are species we don't know exist going extinct, almost certainly, because of commercial fishing.

there are species we know about going extinct due in part to commercial fishing. for example, the southern resident orcas have been struggling heavily due to commercial fishing, pollution, poisoning, capture, river damns, salmon farms, and more. there are very clear actionable things that can be done to save them, but none are even close to being acted upon. it is possible the population there has passed a point of no return such that that particular population will go extinct. they have struggled to even birth new orcas, and due to captures 30-50 years ago, they don't have the leadership they are used to. their behavior has already began to showcase how hard it is for them to even find salmon, as the normally tight knit pods have been seen breaking up to find salmon. there was a month in 2018 where almost none of the pod was seen for an entire month by whale watchers and scientists, an event that hasn't happened in decades or ever since they've started being observed.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#297

Post by wespiser_2018 »

EB66 wrote: post #15
wespiser_2018 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Tragedy of the Commons is a situation that is about the management of wildlife and natural resources for the purposes of maximizing yield, with the lesson being regulated consumption results in maximal natural harvest. Pollution is just a negative economic externality, or consequence of an action that is unseen by the participants, where more pollution is always worse. Unfortunately, no one owns the ocean…

Your understanding of the tragedy of the commons is not accurate. Cases of pollution in public waters are typically prime examples of tragedies of the commons. Just because it's a "negative economic externality" does not mean that it is not a tragedy of the commons. Even the wiki page for tragedy of the commons lists "water pollution" as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Example... Maxi…

Still, I disagree, the mainstay of Tragedy of the Commons is about resource management through regulation, which does not apply well to oceans plastics. The "Water Pollution" example provided is about water management for the purposes of irrigation, and pollution of groundwater that needed for said irrigation. Ocean plastics could be different, if its just the systematic degradation of an ecosystem, orthogonal to resource management interests.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#298

Post by magduf »

cazum wrote: post #276
bsenftner wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya know, it should not matter how much lobby money is thrown at a politician or political party when the desire of the lobby money harms the nation. That right there is a litmus test for a captured, useless to the citizens, politician.

It's not really all that useful to place the blame on the individual politician when they are all susceptible to this behaviour. It's like how in my town there's a stretch of road that is really shitty. All potholes and uneven road. Almost all drivers I've seen go over it way too fast and often damage their vehicles. Sure, I can blame each individual driver for not being 100% attentive, but when they all fuck up in t…

Depending on how small your "town" is, if these people damaging their vehicles are locals and not out-of-towners, I'd say they deserve a lot of the blame: they should know about this road by now. Out-of-towners, of course, I wouldn't blame the same way as I wouldn't expect them to know.

Now if by "my town" you really mean a city, then I might be expecting too much of the drivers.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#299

Post by uxcolumbo »

dorfsmay wrote: post #200
scotty79 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind vegetarian. I rarely eat meat and never crave for it. However vegan just sounds horrible. Eggs and cheeses are incredible, milk, fish, prawns. Cutting them out feels like cutting half of the nutrients out of my diet. I wouldn't risk it unless I had very extensive knowledge and dedication to human dietary requirements and what which plants can provide, which I don't have and won't have.

Aren't fish and prawns animals? Would you still considered a vegetarian if you ate them?

If you eat fish you're a pescatarian not a vegetarian.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#300

Post by undersuit »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #192
ASlave2Gravity wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't China buy up a lot of US / EU plastic waste via recycling programmes? Are these numbers offset because once China buys the waste, they simply dump it? Are we knowingly selling our plastic waste to a state that will miss-manage it? I know China lately has stopped buying plastic waste from states.

China doesn't take plastic anymore. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-b...

The article that GP linked uses data from 2010. It might take longer than two years for the effect of China refusing the US's trash to actually make a change in media graphics.
Post reply on HN