81–90 of 328 posts
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Isn’t that flawed logic? If you’re proposing that one of these issues can be fixed with more infrastructure, then couldn’t either? Rail is nice.
Sure! Rail is nice, when the volume permits it. How would we supply the supermarket, though? A rail line would be unfeasible.
To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…
It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.
>when you double the weight per axle, you increase the road damage by 16 times
>For example, while a truck axle carrying 18,000 pounds is only 9 times heavier than a 2,000-pound automobile axle, it does 5,000 times more damage.
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Sure! Rail is nice, when the volume permits it. How would we supply the supermarket, though? A rail line would be unfeasible.
If we wanted to redesign all our infrastructure to minimize auto and truck miles, we’d probably try to replace long-haul trucking routes with routes that pick up from local rail depots. Everyone would live near a train station (or in larger urban areas, light rail that connects to the train stations). There would be a mostly-separate freight network with depots near every population center. Trucks could be used to ge…
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Yikes. You are right and I had not thought about tires as an obvious source of microplastics. What's the solution though?
Stop driving. Drastically reduce the amount of vehicle miles travelled. Shift even more freight to train. Much stricter weight limits on vehicles, maybe? Higher quality tires that wear more slowly may also improve this.
It's too bad rail is so expensive to make compared to roads. Imagine if all roads were instead rail lines, computer controlled. Would make self driving a lot easier to solve. No tire dust...
Maybe if robots could lay the tracks down. OK this idea is out there, but it doesn't seem too crazy tbh.
> More than 100 million pounds of plastic from industrial fishing gear pollute the oceans each year—threatening marine life ... does the actual fishing itself not ultimately also threaten said marine life?
> More than 100 million pounds of plastic from industrial fishing gear pollute the oceans each year—threatening marine life ... does the actual fishing itself not ultimately also threaten said marine life?
Fishing can be done sustainably, and is in some fisheries.
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.
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Stop driving. Drastically reduce the amount of vehicle miles travelled. Shift even more freight to train. Much stricter weight limits on vehicles, maybe? Higher quality tires that wear more slowly may also improve this.
The rail idea is good. It's too bad rail is so expensive to make compared to roads. Imagine if all roads were instead rail lines, computer controlled. Would make self driving a lot easier to solve. No tire dust... Maybe if robots could lay the tracks down. OK this idea is out there, but it doesn't seem too crazy tbh.
My impression was that permitting, land acquisition, and delays due to legal battles make up a ton of the cost. At least in the US.
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> […] yet the EU banned plastic straws because of the waste in the oceans, so now every drink tastes like a schoolbook. Well done EU... Issues are not the Highlander: there can be more than one. Single-use plastics just happen to be a problem as well. And, for what it's worth, people who complain about paper straws remind me of sulky toddlers. Just FYI.
Paper straws are inferior in every respect except not be plastic. People encounter them regularly and the plastic variety never represented a significant portion of the problem. So in some ways the imposition of paper straws feels insulting. No one is going after tire manufacturers or commercial fishing companies, but straws got taken first. It feels like the whole campaign to guilt people for their personal carbon f…
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It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.
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.
> 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 origin-and-destination surveys showed that transcontinental traffic was limited, with traffic heaviest around cities and in interregional movements. Given the low income of most motorists, toll roads would have a traffic-repelling character. As a result, most routes would not carry enough traffic to generate sufficient revenue to pay off bonds needed to finance their construction.
Instead, the BPR recommended construction of a network of toll-free express highways. The BPR's description of "A Master Plan for Free Highway Development" was its first description of what would become the Interstate System. Based on the survey data, the BPR explained that the primary justification for the network was passenger traffic, particularly congested city traffic, not interstate trucking. In fact, the report made little reference to trucks. [0]
Commercial trucking would not start to take foothold over rail until the 1960s, primarily under President Johnson.
To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…
If we take this attitude then nothing will ever be fixed. This isn't really a zero sum game - some people with the knowledge/motivation/clout can try to fix plastic waste from fishing equipment while some other people with the knowledge/motivation/clout can simultaneously try to fix plastic waste from road tyres.
The fact that OP posted this specific article about fishing plastic pollution doesn't mean that they or anyone else aren't concerned by other sources of pollution, or that they're not trying to fix them too. Do you expect people to exclusively talk about the single issue that's most harmful at the exclusion of everything else? Doesn't that just result in much less getting done?
This kind of whataboutism is counterproductive.