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Comment by torgian | Hacker News Reader

The cause is us. This has been in the works for decades, and we’ve been warned about it since the 70s. Governments just haven’t paid attention because they only care about the _now_ not the future.

I’ve seen how fucked our oceans have become since I was young. More debris in areas I never saw plastics before. Snorkeling is more depressing than ever.

We can potentially turn this around, but the oceans that we knew twenty years ago are long gone.

Act now or life is gonna be that much harder in fifty years.

I’m pretty cynical at this point though. I do what I can, but I think we’ve reached the point of no return

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Specifically the governments of Asia need to stop dumping plastic directly into the ocean. Even if they polluted at them same level as the rest of the world, it would be a huge success. But then the rest of the world and the oil industry also deserves blame for spreading the myth of plastic recycling.

Oh no doubt. Plastic pollution is a huge problem here.

The west needs to stop sending "recyclable" plastics to Asia

China used to buy plastic waste from the west (95% of Europe and 70% of USA's plastic waste). China isn't some poverty stricken unaccountable backwater where it was just being dumped, they were explicitly engaging in contracts and giving good rates for backhaul routes on cargo ships. If they then mismanaged the waste after they took ownership of it, that's China's failing.

China have since mostly banned that, which sounds like what China needed to do to reign in their incapable plastic recycling industry. So that's fine, but the problem remains that about 80% of ocean plastic waste comes from Asia. Almost 40% from The Philippines alone even when most of the west's waste was going to China. So this can't be handwaved away as being due to "the west", it's a systemic problem in many countries in Asia in particular.

The issue isn't "whose fault is it", the issue is what can we do about it, because we're all getting equally fucked by this. The hidden assumption is "we = the west". If China mismanages our waste then we shouldn't send it there, because mother nature doesn't care if it's technically our fault or not.

The issue is whose fault it is, because that's who needs to be helped and/or pressured into fixing it.

We should have regulations on exporting waste, but the west exporting waste is not the cause of the pollution.

A lot of waste is exported illegally, and then we refuse to take it back!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Philippines_w....

Did you read the link? The Philippines seems to have had adequate inspection regulations, disputed the contract they had with this private company via legal channels, and Canada reciprocated by amending their laws to be able to receive the shipments back and The Philippines kept up pressure until that was done and it seems to be considered settled.

Dealing with other people's plastic is easy because there is demand and money in it for you. Dealing with your own isn't quite so interesting that way -- that's what they need to be encouraged to do.

Dony you think it is an isolated incident? If you search, there are constant disputes with western garbage being illegally imported into second and third world countries. For every ton of garbage that is caught or adressed, seven pass under the radar. These are corrupt, struggling countries - you could import slaves and nukes if you k wo who to bribe

https://www.greenpeace.org/philippines/press/2698/greenpeace...

That's a better question for you to answer, since the incident you brought up contradicts the point you were hoping to make.

And I know how things work in The Philippines, I've lived there for some years, I've driven past the the shanty villages built on landfills and the storm drains filled with garbage. I know about the corruption. And I'm not saying there's no single piece of plastic pollute the ocean from Asia that came from western waste exports, so that kind of angle would be a strawman.

I'm questioning the extraordinary apologetics for the worst polluters when it comes to this issue. The evidence doesn't seem to stack up that the majority or even a significant part of the problem is the western waste export trade.

We would have the right to point fingers if we at least recycled domestically.

As it stands, if countries in Asia act the way we do, they would offload garbage to those even less fortunate. Then we will be pointing fingers at Somalia and wondering how come there is plastic in the ocean still. How come tribal warlords are not dealing with it?

We, the west, have created this problem, and we refuse to address it. Companies that produce 80% of the worlds plastic are headquartered here, listed on our stock exhanges, and financed here. We could resolve this with a stroke of a pen, if we had the balls to take action instead of playing politics

That's utter rubbish, "right to point fingers"? A problem does not somehow become not a problem when the observer (or pointer-outer) changes. Many Asian countries have massive terrible problems with their waste management and refuse to address it. Not created by the west, created by their own decisions. That's the simple fact of the matter.

If X can't/won't do it properly anyone relying on X to do it for them is also at fault.

Nobody who is trying to defend the worst polluters seems to have any actual data giving credence to the idea that the problem is mostly caused by western waste exports.

It's not about defending it, the goal is for it to change.

And that can't possible be by exporting our waste and blaming the ones we are exporting to. Yes there are some ridiculously low hanging fruits in some parts of the world, and more effort must be put into that (from our end as well).

But that doesn't excuse us for not taking the, still low hanging fruits, that we have readily control over.

> It's not about defending it, the goal is for it to change.

For many it actually is about defending it, counter to the goal of change.

> And that can't possible be by exporting our waste and blaming the ones we are exporting to.

What's your evidence for that claim?

Asia does not just mean « China ». Canada has been sending its plastic to the Philippines, where it is constantly mismanaged and ends up in the ocean (edit: not helped by the fact that Canada’s plastic was full of household garbage making it impossible to recycle properly anyway, see [1]) . Is it Philippines fault for mismanaging ? Sure, but it has been public for a long time and Canada kept sending plastic over there knowing full well what would happen with it. But it doesn’t matter because no one will blame plastic coming from Asia’s river on Canada.

Same story applies to India’s ship dismantling industry, where tons of damaging materials ends up in the ocean. Do we stop sending our ships there ? Of course not, because it doesn’t matter no one will blame Carnival for that.

We are not paying for recycling we are paying for environment damage laundering, so that at home we can display impressive lies such as « 98% of Canadian plastic is recycled » or whatever.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada–Philippines_waste_dis...

> Asia does not just mean « China »

Thanks I know, but that's where the vast majority of the west's waste went when we still had big pollution problems with other countries. The solution is for them to control their plastic waste properly and instill their culture with values about litter, with economic incentives and technological help.

I like this mental gymnastics - we have priduced this toxic shit, we refuse to recylce it and ship it to a place where we know it will end up in ocean, and now its someone else's problem.

The west is good at many things, but from slave trade to the oil industry, responsibility and respect for locals was never among them.

The mental gymnastics is thinking Asian countries has no agency or ability to control what they buy or how they manage their waste.

A bit of legal advice, if you know you are facilitating a crime for personal gain, you are likely guilty of a crime. A judge will take dim view of your excuse about the killer or money launderer having his own "agency".

Do you really think these imports are legally clean, they haven't greased a few palms at the customs? You can import anything into Russia if you bribe the right guy.

I bet that if we investigated even just the western side of the trash export industry, we will fund it to be a corupt crine-ridden cesspool

Dispensing unsolicited legal advice is not an argument.

Abdication of responsibility is not an argument

That doesn’t fucking help as long as their governments are willing to do it. What do you think will happen with the local plastics?

Some of the worst offending rivers are in India and the Philippines and “the west” doesn’t send plastic there.

Cut the whataboutism shit and pressure every country directly that is doing this.

More specifically, The Philippines.

https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics

At this point we just need to pay them for their trash or something.

Recklessly polluting a shared and vital resource like the oceans is an act of war. If the US wasn’t busy squandering unimaginable amounts of resources in backwaters like Afghanistan, we could be wielding our military might towards genuinely virtuous ends like putting a stop to this criminality.

We certainly shouldn’t let ourselves be held hostage and paying them “protection money”

This is the kind of America strong arming that I could get behind.

I’m sure Russia and China would too. And then use it to open new fronts against America.

It would be easier and much cheaper to go in and provide proper waste disposal services than to try to use the military. Don't just send money, send people to go in and fix it.

Unfortunately no, that won’t work either. No culture can change it’s behavior without significant buy in from the people which takes a lot of work and time, no matter what you’re trying to do. And more money and more people does not usually mean faster.

The problem is we incorrectly assume that if we build something other cultures will just use it. Really we would need to build a good waste system in a really fucked area, then use that system to clean the area up over 2-5 years. Let the example show a better or improved way.

This example stage is something we often fail at when attempting to export solutions.

One could think that multiple failed military interventions through decades which resulted in worse mess in the end than at the start could teach some lessons but apparently not. Let's send warships do deal with trash problems - yeeeeee haaaaaw, oh yeah.

When you have an unchecked military, everything looks like an enemy combatant. With a populace conditioned to casually suggest military invasion as a solution to every international (and sometimes domestic) problem, I’m sure history will keep repeating itself.

Wait, you're suggesting we should murder people? If so, I'm out.

"we could be wielding our military might towards genuinely virtuous ends like putting a stop to this criminality"

Maybe we should start by dealing with our own criminals that ship garbage around the world illegally?

https://www.ecowatch.com/us-illegal-plastic-waste-2651126176...

If 'reckless pollution' of a shared resource is an act of war, then every country (very definitely including the US) is an aggressor.

I assume their situation is made difficult by a huge population on tropical, (mountainous?) islands. Do they have reasonable locations for landfill?

Could other countries apply tariff-based pressure based on plastics detection at river mouths, and help with any methods of addressing the problem? There was a comment the other day that plastics in food/bev wrappers was one issue. Surely these are not unsolvable problems with a bit more motivation?

Also wouldn't hurt to publicise the info about ocean plastics coming from their islands (like your comment) and hopefully that encourages change also.

The west is also responsible for producing and glamorizing extremely wasteful lifestyles. We could have bulk food grocery stores where you can bring re-used glass jars but instead everything is wrapped in multiple layers of plastic meant to be tossed as soon as the product is consumed. The USA has pushed an extremely materialistic lifestyle that has driven the mass manufacture of plastic waste. Western countries need to take responsibility for the waste we produce instead of sending it “away” to be somebody else’s problem.

Edit: Just expanding on glass jars - I started saving all of my glass jars about a year ago. My shelf of jars is overflowing now, and they have many uses. I use peanut butter jars to hold my daily smoothie. I make candles with the jam jars.

We know the plastics industry pushed disposable products hard. And to me it speaks to a broader problem with US business logic - lie cheat and steal at any cost and that is "good" for society. There may be unseemly actions down the waste stream but we are responsible for the culture that produces so much trash.

I've travelled a fair bit in the "non-west" and they use the same packaging everyone else does.

It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.

Source : https://www.blueridgeoutdoors.com/go-outside/united-states-c...

Its also somewhat of a "lead by example" situation. Those most capable of implementing solutions should implement every solution they have and show how it can be done and then the rest of the world will follow or at least feel the pressure.

Rather than rich countries with citizens living the most resource intensive lifestyles possible judging people in poverty for not having better than first world waste treatment.

I really think that the « lead by example » thing is understated. Developed countries leading by example and demonstrating that sustainable development is profitable and successful is the only way to transform the current situation into a future in which the « polluting stage of development » is understood as being only a transient phase of development and not an end state.

As a father of three American kids, I see this first hand. I read (I think it was in Minimalist Parenting) that the average American kid has something like 40x the number of toys of the Average kid from a developing country. Dunno if it’s true, but I think it’s in the right ballpark.

My wife and I have tried to minimize waste. We generally buy used, etc. We have also tried to buy mostly non-plastic toys. But man, is it an uphill battle.

People just love to give us random stuff. For example, my dad rants about “Cheap Chinese crap”, but then turns around and buys my kids “Cheap Chinese crap” even after I’ve made it clear that I want less clutter in our lives.

There is a constant pressure on American parents to give their kids toys / experiences / entertainment. It comes from observing the frenetic activity of other parents, from targeted ads, from everywhere. But the fact is, kids just need to have a childhood. They don’t need their days stuffed with scheduled activities, the latest toys, etc. Just idle time, imagination, and quality attention from loving parents (Just a little attention everyday goes a long way.)

/rant

Anyway, advice on how to exit the American way is very much welcome.

Ask for books. Tell your family that your children have enough toys, but what they're really missing out on is stories and games to play, and knowledge about the world. Maybe throw in a “computer games and internet are bad” if you think it'll fit your target audience.

The number of toys or things is a misleading metric.

I have a toddler, and she has likely has 50x the number of toys, but 99% of them are recycled gifts that were handed off to us, or obtained through groups like our local BuyNothing, or from neighbors. Her book collection of children's books, and sing-along books is pretty astounding, but we didn't buy a single one.

Much of our toddler clothes, and baby clothes was likewise donated to us from local families that outgrew them, as fast growing children can wear smaller sizes for just a few months. When all of our kids have outgrown them, we plan on sharing them likewise.

> Anyway, advice on how to exit the American way is very much welcome.

We've made a big deal about giving the kids "experience gifts".

Sometimes it's lessons (my daughter got a week at a horseback riding camp, my son got dirt bike lessons). Sometimes it's a trip (we've taken the kids on 3 separate cross-country road trips with tons of stops at national parks). Sometimes it's a pass to a water park or minigolf place. The kids get involved in the experience they want, so they're emotionally invested and it doesn't feel forced for them. The only rule really is that the thing can't be about electronics (i.e. no going to a video arcade).

Once we established that, we asked that grandparents do the same. Usually this is each set of grandparents taking the kids for a week or more in the summer, but they get creative sometimes.

It's been four years and the kids are much happier with this than the random junk, and have said so.

The "non-west" countries are forced to regularly buy bespoke amount of US goods as official tribute to their suzerain [1].

Other countries might not have much better packaging policies, but if you want a war on plastic waste, US and Europe are some of best places to start it.

1: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/22/china-failed-to-buy-agreed-a...

The best recycling countries are found in Europe.

Reduce, re-use, and only then recycle.

Which one does the US do better?

On the topic of bulk grocery shops, it would be really great if more people shop there (I’m in Vienna and we have a few but they’re struggling) but realistically, i don’t think the general crowd is ready to make such a drastic lifestyle change.I would be happy enough if supermarkets at least try and encourage people to go for the packaging free option, or provide incentives in this regard. It’s ridiculous and nonsensical that they charge more for you to buy your groceries loose aka without packaging. It’s like they’re punishing you for not going for the packet of 6 Granny Smith apples all wrapped in plastic and cardboard.

>It’s like they’re punishing you for not going for the packet of 6 Granny Smith apples all wrapped in plastic and cardboard.

I've always run on the gut assumption that they must be putting the worst apples that still look appealing into those packages.

Hahaha I'm sure somewhere out there, someone's opened a packaging and turned the apple around to find it all brown and disgusting on the other concealed side!

The packaging has a barcode so it can be scanned faster at a checkout. Faster scanning means less checkouts and staff which means lower capital and operating costs.

In central Europe we weight our Vegs and fruits ourselfs and apply a bar code to whatever bag in the majority of super markets.

I sometimes collect these codes on my hand and just put all the Vegs in a cloth bag.

Same! Or if I have to use one of their bags I put all the fruit and veg in the same bag and all the tags on it. Realistically it’s even less work for the cashier to scan everything all at once on one bag rather than pick up multiple packages and scanning them individually, so they have no excuse, really!

At most stores each individual piece of produce has a scannable sticker on it.

> It’s ridiculous and nonsensical that they charge more for you to buy your groceries loose

It probably costs them more. Charge less than your costs and you go bust.

Yeah but it’s annoying because I know there are people who would literally buy the package of 6 apples just cos it’s on a special promo. If it’s almost equivalent to the price of 2/3 apples, why not, right? And then they end up binning the rest that they can’t eat. So much food waste it’s crazy. They need to be more conscious in their decisions.

At least for fruits an vegetables most things at Billa and Spar are individual items you have to pick yourself and they strongly discourage those plastic bags. That's, unfortunately, not the case for literally every other item in their stores tho

I could care less about bulk supermarkets, and I don’t really think they’re a great answer. If anything, they may be worse in some ways.

For me, it’s the packaging. Japan is a great example of this.

Think of a banana, or an orange. Perfect package right? Now wrap them in plastic. Then when you buy them, they’re placed in a plastic bag. Sometimes each individual banana is wrapped individually... with plastic.

That’s Japan. That’s a lot of Asian countries, in fact.

Meanwhile, nearly every possible vegetable and fruit is wrapped in plastic when bought at a supermarket in Switzerland. It’s infuriating. They have their own skin and are sold by weight. Why do we need to wrap them in plastic??

A lot of the "plastic" is cellophane which is more or less chemically purified wood and decomposes. We have a problem with disposable containers but I think the attack on grocery store packaging materials misses the point.

A lot of what is commonly called cellophane is sadly not actual cellophane (actual cellophane is kind of crinkly, like old-fashioned clear candy bags). It's been replaced by polypropylene in most use cases as far as I can tell.

Trash itself does not have to be a problem. Just stop putting it in the ocean.

No one wants to use glass jars from home and most people think you're strange for favoring such an inconvenient idea so readily. Plastics didn't need to push disposables that hard, they were already better.

> No one wants to use glass jars

I do. So do many others. Moreover people want what is pushed on them (aka marketing/public relations works).

> Plastics didn't need to push disposables that hard

Funny because they did push them hard. Tough to say how things would have gone if they hadn’t.

> they were already better.

Better in some ways, worse in others. At first it may have seemed like a good idea, but at this point we need to find ways to reduce plastic use.

Re-used containers means reduced food-life after buying it or more preservatives, and higher chance of contamination. That will increase probability of food-poison. More wastage, more food needs to be produced, more environmental impact

On the topic of reusing bags, I wish it were as simple as stopping using single-use plastic bags. The most "environmental-friendly" alternative seems to be reusable-bags made of polyester PET(recycled), but you still have to reuse them on average more than ~35 times in order to have less environmental impact. graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

more info: https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#are-plastic-alter...

"In fact, studies have shown that when we compare environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy, water and resource use, plastic packaging tends to have a net positive impact. The impact of plastic production and handling is lower than the impacts which would result from food waste without packaging."

Similar situation when ditching plastic or composites for glass bottles. You need a large number of reuses of the glass container (break-even at around 30-50 reuses) or you will actually end up with a net increase in emissions. Recycling glass should be a last resort, as it requires a lot of energy (compared to e.g. recycling PET bottles). Because glass is so much heavier than plastic packaging, transport distances also need to be kept low (good in general). If transport distance exceeds something like 500 km, a glass bottle will always result in higher net emissions than a tetra pack, even if reused a billion times.

But it's not just about emissions. Throw glass in a hedge, and it's pretty inert: a shiny rock. Throw plastic in a hedge, and it'll drift and get stuck around something, or get eaten by something that really shouldn't be eating it, or break up into tiny pieces and poison the entire food chain… likely all three, and more.

The biggest issue with plastic stuff in the wild is that things get stuck in it, especially marine wildlife, and birds and some other animals getting digestive problems when tearing it apart and eating it.

On the flip side, most plastic packaging (mainly PE and PP) is non-toxic and biology doesn't really interact with it at all, even if you reduce it to microplastics. Yeah, that stuff is pretty much everywhere - but it's not really doing anything.

> On the flip side, most plastic packaging (mainly PE and PP) is non-toxic and biology doesn't really interact with it at all, even if you reduce it to microplastics. Yeah, that stuff is pretty much everywhere - but it's not really doing anything.

We're just starting to understand the harms plastics are causing to our health as we increasingly find plastics in places like our blood, our stool, and in our unborn children. There are already plenty of concerns about plastics resulting in hazardous exposure to endocrine disruptors. It's pervasive across the food chain as well. The idea that "it's not really doing anything" requires a dismal of all the harms we know about already and a remarkable level of optimism about what we will or wont find out in the future.

for more info see:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/micropla...

https://web.uri.edu/gemsnet/files/article_gemsnet.pdf

https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2020/p...

No. Like I said, PE and PP - which are the vast majority of plastic packaging, especially for foods, because the materials you are referring to are not food-safe in the first place - are biologically inert.

In fact, the monomers of PE and PP (ethylene and propene) are also not toxic, which is uncommon (compare with e.g. PVC: vinylchloride is toxic in all sorts of ways, polystyrol: styrene is also toxic in a few ways and damages DNA, teflon: it's monomer is also a carcinogen). This is important, because making plastics generally leaves precursors in the finished product: the more the worse the process control is, which costs money and requires know-how.

See e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23862761/ for a study looking at whether these are EDC; they're not: "There were no significant differences between test and control groups in vagina or uterine weight. Data suggest that effluents from plastic food containers do not appear to produce significant adverse effects according to Hershberger and uterotrophic assays."

The single most problematic plastic for health purposes is PVC. PVC in its chemically pure form (difficult to do) isn't bad, either. But pure PVC is a hard, brittle plastic, which is not that useful. So most PVC products consist of a large portion of plasticizer; some products (e.g. cables and other types of very soft PVC) are actually more plasticizer than PVC both by weight and volume. Both PVC and toxic paints are a popular choice for all kinds of toys.

It's true that not all plastics are EDC, but that doesn't mean that accumulation of those non-toxic plastics in our bodies is harmless either. There is very little research on this at this time, but studies done in animals (mostly sea critters) suggest that plastics accumulating in their bodies could lead to problems such as metabolic disorders, reduced feeding, energy deficiency, infertility, immune responses and inflammation, oxidative stress, etc.

"It is not always necessarily the chemistry that harms us. Sometimes it's the shape and the presence of foreign particles in our bodies," (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-autopsies-microplasti...)

It's too soon to say what health impacts these plastics in our own bodies are having which makes it far far too early to have any confidence that there are none.

It's a good point to make that something can be inert and non-toxic and still cause issues. And we indeed don't have the data yet to say for certain what the result is, however, what we can tell so far is that there are no overt issues; the article uses asbestos as an example, but we're pretty confident that the effect level isn't anything like that.

Personally it seems far more likely to me that globally observed health issues are caused by the proliferation of chemicals in everyday life that we know are definitely toxic. So IMHO an excellent plastic to blame if you need one is e.g. PVC (and also PTFE because OH BOY WHAT A SMART IDEA TO PUT THAT SHIT ON PANS WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG I HAVE NO IDEA).

(This part made me laugh a little: "Microplastics are plastic fragments less than 5 millimeters in diameter, or about 0.2 inches, barely visible to the human eye. ")

You've obviously never stepped on broken glass from a bottle carelessly tossed away.

Re-using glass containers is actually an extremely low chance of contamination. We have had easy glass sterilization techniques for a long time (most dishwashers have a sanitization cycle). Further, your shelf life won’t be significantly reduced, unless you just don’t clean your containers.

The underlying argument you were responding to wasn’t really greenhouse gas focused. The discussion was mostly about plastic waste in the oceans and our environment. While it is possible the greenhouse gas budget is better with plastic, this doesn’t address the problem of accumulating forever waste within our environment.

It's an interesting idea, let supermarkets do customer's sterilization and void closure of glass container after refilling, that sounds good +1.

---

The graph I linked to was encompassing a wide variety of environmental impact https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

If you just want greenhouse gas emission, this is the one https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-comparisons-g... which interestingly show worse impact for single-use plastic bags

As soon as you say 'governments of Asia' you've lost. They've a lot of polluting to do before they catch up with other 'government's' legacy of pollution. National governments are not compatible with solutions to global problems.

The governments of Asia need to stop dumping plastic into the ocean ? I’m pretty sure it’s the people, not « governments », who are dumping plastic on the land, which gets washed down the rivers into the ocean.

I agree that the blame is not always 100% on individuals. But systematically blaming anything bad 100% on « governments » is not productive either.

Yes and no. You need a proper functioning garbage disposal system first. I've visited places in countries where the people could shop plastic wrapped items en masse but the government failed to provide proper garbage disposal. What are these people supposed to do? They get their food wrapped in plastic but have no way of disposing of said plastic other than dumping it in nature.

Fair point. In many cases though, people can vote for their government. But not always indeed.

Not this Asian coutries meme again.

Do you know we the 'west' are shipping trash to them, illegally? And when its exposed we refuse to take it back?

https://www.ecowatch.com/us-illegal-plastic-waste-2651126176...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Philippines_w...

Ctrl+f

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It seems there's no data, I assume they are just "story-telling" a couple of data points

You dont like this article, there are hundreds more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/climate/plastics-waste-ex...

I think the figure is "48 million tons" in January sent from US to Malaysia and Indonesia.

I still need more context data to change my mind, but it's a huge improvement over previous links, thanks.

Where is the link between plastic in oceans and gray whale deaths established?

Litter is unsightly but plastic can just be put in a landfill without much harm.

Ahhh classic Hacker News "West good, East bad" level of "critical" thinking

> Specifically the governments of Asia need to stop dumping plastic directly into the ocean.

"The West has been dumping tens of millions of tons of trash in Southeast Asian countries for more than 25 years - now they want to send it back"[1]

[] https://www.businessinsider.in/science/the-west-has-been-dum...

We don't know what the cause is. From the article:

Scientists are now scrambling to figure out what is killing these 40-foot-long marine mammals. The “what” is anything but obvious.

Some scientists believe there may be too many whales for the population to sustain itself. Others say this explanation of “overcapacity” and “natural causes” overlooks the gantlet of hazards that grays now face — including ecosystem alteration, ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, plastics pollution, disease, ocean acidification and loss of kelp forests.

> We don't know what the cause is.

I'm always wondering what cause someone who replies with this is trying to advance.

You are probably correct, we don't know what the cause is for this specific problem. We do know that we cause massive, let's say, "alterations" to the oceans by acidification and plastic pollution alone, and there is very strong indication that the effects of those alterations are not positive.

So the worst case when addressing those issues is that we have solved or at the very least ameliorated acidification and plastic pollution, only to find out that gray whales dying specifically was not covered by those causes.

Yes, finding out the actual cause is important (there may be other issues we are not yet aware of), but prioritizing the recovery of the ocean in general is not exactly a waste of effort in the meantime. As an analogy, if a bathroom smells like excrement, fixing the toilets known to overflow is a suitable activity. If it still smells like excrement after, or if you discover a different cause while the toilets are being fixed, you're still glad you fixed those toilets.

I agree, the "we don't know that the cause is" type of answer makes me think of those doctors saying back in the days that we didn't know whether smoking cigarettes caused health issues.

There's something called common sense and it's whatever contradicts common sense that deserves a clear explanation/evidence. It's quite obvious that whales shouldn't expect much from the way we treat our oceans.

Cause? Saying "it is very possible, even likely, that human activity caused this, but as of right now we just don't know, so let's not jump to conclusions and do the science first" requires some shady motive now. Refusal to blame yourself with literally 0 evidence is itself evidence that someone is an oil company shill or something.

Troubleshooting is very much like science.

If you are trying to fix the problem, finding the cause is very important. By just doing something, or worst many somethings, you may make the problem worse and still have no clue of how to fix it.

Now something like this is a little harder because it is not just trying to fix a problem, it is trying to fix a problem with a time limit. Similar to emergency medicine. But harder because the patient is one who's anatomy and physiology you are not familiar with. And they might have reactions to the medicine you are giving them.

The article keeps hinting at lack of food, malnourished, feeding in unusual places. Then goes on to say the last mass die off occurred during colder than usual weather as opposed the recent hotter then usual. It sounds like more data would be very helpful.

Also >Refusal to blame yourself with literally 0 evidence is itself evidence that someone is an oil company shill or something.

Is very hostile and breaks the guideline: >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I don't know that questioning this idiom breaks the guidelines.

If not a shill it sounds like an ask for more resources, to save the gray whales or study the oceans, or something.

Either way, "a precise cause has yet to be determined" seems to be playing a little too close to the vest, and can be true without being especially meaningful.

"Bad ocean management" turns out to be more of a triage problem and less blue-sky research for the sake of knowledge.

The insinuation that there's a motive to say "we don't quite know what it is yet", in the comment I was responding to, is all I addressed. That assumes bad faith, all I'm doing is pointing out how ridiculous such an assumption is.

> I'm always wondering what cause someone who replies with this is trying to advance.

Rational thought? The search for truth?

The moment we are happy with “humans lol” as an answer to everything, we’ve given up on science and solutions.

In this scenario, finding the actual cause could actually lead to a specific solution (e.g. banning a particular type of sonar).

Ship strikes have been increasing over the years now as our ever-growing global economy depends on maritime transport.

The scientists are working on good solutions but it might be too late, too many ships travel too fast these days[0].

They also mention this in the article:

In a study published this year, a research team found that a variety of whales face risk of ship strikes. That was illustrated in May, when two fin whales came to port in San Diego, plastered to the hull of an Australian warship.

But of all whales in the Pacific, grays are the most likely to be struck by ships, the study concluded. “Risk appeared greatest during south- and northbound migration when much of the gray whale population is moving through waters near shore” — places with “high vessel densities,” the study found.

According to a NOAA database, 205 gray whales were killed by vessels between January 2016 and December 2020 in the eastern Pacific.

[0] https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGV...

> Some scientists believe there may be too many whales for the population to sustain itself.

That's the one no one wants to hear. Commercial whaling is practically extinct. Sustainable hunting (like Norway and the Minke) might actually be the solution.

If the oceans can't sustain such a small population of whales, then the ocean ecology is itself a problem.

Bear in mind that before voracious industrial-scale harvesting, oceans were teeming with life.

This book says it all: https://www.jbmackinnon.com/the-once-and-future-world

> too many whales

The more people will overfish, the more gray whales we should have around. And this whales can migrate.

The cause isn't known. It's probably us, but saying "it's us" isn't helpful. Finding out the reason is helpful.

It's hard enough to make changes to global human behavior when we have a well-defined problem with a known solution. Guessing at a cause and getting it wrong--or making hand-wavy statements about how the entirely of human behavior is a problem--not only doesn't help anything, it actively hurts efforts to solve problems.

If you present people with evidence and with a pragmatic plan to solve a problem, they're more likely to act. Obviously we get it wrong far more often than we get it right, but there are success stories, like saving many birds from extinction by banning DDT.

If you can't come up with a cause and a solution, you just come off as a crank. If you get the cause wrong or your solution doesn't work, that makes it all the harder to win support for the million other things that need fixing.

While I'd say anyone ruling out man made causes of these whales' deaths would be demonstrating severe cognitive dissonance, isn't it equally likely to be a disease or something not man made? Why does every bad thing that happens have to be caused by man? They could have a virus that jumped to them, something along those lines, just like out pandemic (which, I've heard, is not man made, and about the only problem plaguing this earth that people are adamantly sure isn't). There are literally millions of other species they interact with besides us, many of which could cause this.

Maybe do the science before we jump to conclusions?

> Act now or life is gonna be that much harder in fifty years.

We've been saying this about Global Warming for a while. (An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006)

By the time people say "we need to do something," sadly, it's already too late.

Humanity's Great Filter is ourselves.

What can I do as an individual? Honest.

Just generally consuming less would be a great start. Most first world lifestyles are awash in unnecessary consumption - so much so that your quality of life is likely to improve through cutting out the crap, well before you have to make any hard compromises about your lifestyle.

Outside of not getting to see whales what about the loss of gray whales would mage life harder? If anything it seems like the reason no one cares is because of how inconsequential the problems are to society outside of being pleasant to witness.

Time to remake Star Trek IV the Voyage home?

Are you on the west coast? What are these “areas”?

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