71–80 of 136 posts
Look I'm glad to see the new research improvements but these articles don't really do much in the real world except move the academic world partners forward a bit.
The unnecessary inclusion of 'spider' in the article makes the claim 'vegan' suspect. It's plant-based silk. There are many creatures that spin silk, no need to mention "spider-like" specifically.
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It seems rude to trivialize efforts that reduce the unnecessary suffering and killing of billions of animals every year, don’t you think? The last paragraph is ripe with ignorance, too. What exactly were you trying to achieve with your comment?
It was meant in jest, but if you must take it seriously, my opinion is that veganism as a movement has largely been coopted by high-gloss, low-impact "plant based foods" marketing that follows all the aesthetics and few of the values of older movement. There isn't a measurable decrease in meat production or consumption, just a noted increase in overpriced prepackaged vegan food products. I say that as a vegan of more…
I think it also likely that much of today's raising of consciousness - for veganism or otherwise - comes from successful marketing; is that inherently bad?
Lastly, two of the largest milk producers have filed for bankruptcy in the last few years, so there certainly seems to be some positive impact. Dairy is bad for humans and animals (and the environment!), and I'm very glad people are accepting that and making a change.
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Cost is a big one because the external costs of plastics are not priced in. Plastic stuff is so cheap that people buy it for nothing more than a brief chuckle before disposing of it (see "secret santa" gifts, party stuff etc.) Taxing it appropriately is hard. I've often thought about a simple blanket markup per piece of tat, raising the price of said piece of tat from amusing chuckle to stupid waste of money. But how…
Conceptually, taxing it is very easy. Increasing taxes on fossil fuels will flow down to all fossil fuel derivatives, including plastic. Politically impossible, though.
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I do not think it would make a difference. Replace plastic recycling with the harms of carbon emissions, surely that has been known by sufficiently many people. When push comes to shove, sacrifices on a collective basis are hard to make. Especially when you can point to others that are not making them.
>Especially when you can point to others that are not making them. Each country is only responsible for x% of global emissions. The rest of the world is responsible for 100%-x%. As 100%-x% > 50% each country has to do nothing as the rest of the world is always the worse polluter. What is this type of fallacy called? I see it all the time.
If US makes it so its residents cannot afford to go to Hawaii and Taihiti and Seychelles for their honeymoon, but China continues to allow their residents to go, then unless the people of the US are very selfless, I predict it is not going to well for the leaders of the US.
It is a prisoner’s dilemma, if anything.
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It seems rude to trivialize efforts that reduce the unnecessary suffering and killing of billions of animals every year, don’t you think? The last paragraph is ripe with ignorance, too. What exactly were you trying to achieve with your comment?
Seems to be a pattern with human thinking. Plenty of noble causes, some recent and very very public, get tarnished because of select bad actors. I don't know why but so many of us seem to look for reasons to say that X isn't a problem. Whether or not i agree with (loud) vegans shouldn't affect the idea that our treatment of animals in large scale slaughter is abysmal. By nearly any measuring stick. Why are we so pron…
> Why are we so prone to write off large, obvious movements?
Every time ethics are involved some people can feel judged, feel guilty and project it into anger. Cynicism becomes an easy coping mechanism.
One example is people stating that they don't care about something. (If you don't care, why are you spending time saying it?)
Another is accusing entire crowds engaged in causes of being hypocritical or egotistical.
...then social media stepped in created a huge echo chamber.
Something I don't fully understand is why single-use plastics are still in use. Every once in a while, a replacement is advertised, but still not used. The reasons I can think of are: 1. cost - this could be an very simple reason; 2. conflictual requirement - the supposition that chemical indestructibility is what makes plastic at the same time necessary but problematic. Is there any other factor/complexity I'm missi…
The plastics/oil industry mislead the public and government about how recyclable plastic is (it's not) to prevent legislation from passing which would reduce unnecessary plastics. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
People underestimate the enormous lobbying and marketing power that comes with that.
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Conceptually, taxing it is very easy. Increasing taxes on fossil fuels will flow down to all fossil fuel derivatives, including plastic. Politically impossible, though.
Just some napkin math, in the US we make 100 billion plastic bags a year out of 12 million barrels of oil. That breaks down to about 200 bags/gallon or .7 cents worth of oil per bag at current oil rates of $57/barrel. If you taxed oil at 10 times the value of the oil, a bag would increase to 7 cents. I'm still not blinking much at that price, it's a rounding error to me and now I have $35/gallon gasoline. It sounds l…
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I do not think it would make a difference. Replace plastic recycling with the harms of carbon emissions, surely that has been known by sufficiently many people. When push comes to shove, sacrifices on a collective basis are hard to make. Especially when you can point to others that are not making them.
>Especially when you can point to others that are not making them. Each country is only responsible for x% of global emissions. The rest of the world is responsible for 100%-x%. As 100%-x% > 50% each country has to do nothing as the rest of the world is always the worse polluter. What is this type of fallacy called? I see it all the time.
Human societies have been signing agreement and treaties to access shared resources like bodies of water and grazing land for thousands of years.
There are millions of international laws around trade, transportation, safety, aeronautics down to the smallest details.
Regulating emissions is so unpopular because it goes against financial interests of large companies.
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Could you explain what you mean? I find it hard to believe that the environmental impact of one sturdier plastic bag is equivalent to hundreds of slightly flimsier bags. I’ve shopped in a few European countries, and found the reusable plastic bags have maybe twice or three times the mass of the “non-reusable” one. I can’t see how they would have multiple orders of magnitude environment impact.
I have not yet verified the references, but this SciShow episode seems to propose exactly that: https://youtu.be/JvzvM9tf5s0
This looks about right to me - he's comparing with the very heaviest re-usable plastic bags which I could imagine have at least 6 times the mass of the single use bags.
I typically use the lighter re-usables plastic bags - unless I need to carry a lot of heavy stuff - which are maybe half the weight/thickness of the ones he uses for the comparison.