Hacker News Reader

Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

In the modern one? It's always been like that, environmentalists tend to be misanthropic, and their primary goal is making people miserable, not the environment.

And yes that's a strong claim, but I see so many environmentalists promote things that make zero difference to the environment (straw ban for example), but annoy people.

Or things like Italy banning plastic packaging from produce, which makes the environmental worse (much more food waste), but they don't care because it annoys people.

Or even the truly dreadful: Being against nuclear power, and being against burning plastic for energy. These two positions actively harm the environment.

View on HN

I get most of your point, except the one about "being against burning plastic for energy" - looks to me that simply burying it somewhere would be best for the environment.

No - burn it for energy, and then you don't need to pump (and burn) additional oil. It's a one-for-one tradeoff, with the benefit of less trash. It's a 100% win with zero drawbacks (so of course environmentalists are against it).

Sure at some point we won't burn oil, and then we can do something different (recycle the plastic), but we are decades away from that, so doing that now is harmful.

Ok, if you look at individual actions, burning the plastic makes complete sense. But if you look at the economy as an evolving system, you'll discover that if you do nothing together with burning the plastic, society will just adapt to consume the extra oil, while if you bury it, people will probably not make an effort to recover that plastic any soon.

Of course, you can burn the plastic and make some change that makes people burn less oil. But if we are talking about government intervention, you will get much more return if you focus on reducing the fossil fuels usage alone and bury the plastic.

Spoken like a true environmentalist: Make things worse for people and for the environment, in the hope we can "someday" make things different.

It's exactly this attitude that is causing the trouble.

Hum... What?

Are you sure you are on the correct thread?

He is maybe a bit mean, but his point is at least consistent. His whole thesis is that we don't have to reduce energy consumption but just find solutions so that we consume without ruining the enviromnet, or at least find the most impact we can have for reducing the damage right now - at least that is how I read it. And I think that is possibly the only sustainable approach, since it is going to be _very_ hard to convince 7 billion people to give up convenience. It just won't happen.

Hum, ok, increasing the price of energy (because you are not burning the cheapest sources) does indeed push people a little bit into using less energy. I understand his point now.

Now I have to hardly disagree, because we won't solve that problem without some amount of discomfort. And increasing the price of energy so the non-fossil sources can compete better is how can give up the least of it.

Do you expect significant drop in oil price if plastic was getting burned? I'd think it would displace things like coal first...

Plastic comes mostly from natural gas, doesn't it? The "oil" there is just a generalization, as I understand it is on the GGP.

Anyway, the production of any of those is almost completely inelastic.

Pumping oil, turning it into plastic, and then burning it, is really not significantly different from just pumping and burning oil from an atmospheric pollution standpoint. The benefit here is less trash. In terms of emissions, it is at best a slight loss due to reduced effiency and extra processing steps. It is a distraction.

I do not know much about burning plastic, but is it really zero drawbacks to do so? Intuition tells me harmful chemicals would be released. Is it that the burning would be contained and the air filtered?

I think his point hinges on the assumption that the harmful chemicals are no worse than just burning oil/gas. Somehow I doubt this, but I do not know enough to confirm. I mean, is plastic the same as oil? Does it not have _worse_ additives in it?

> I mean, is plastic the same as oil? Does it not have _worse_ additives in it?

Correct. The atoms are the same, just in a different order. Although you may occasionally get chlorine which is not in oil, but it's not common in plastic (other than PVC).

>> Intuition tells me harmful chemicals would be released. Is it that the burning would be contained and the air filtered?

No need for much filtering, you just need proper incinerator that provides enough air. You will need to filter out chlorine, but that's so reactive it's very easy to filter.

The harmful chemicals from burning plastic are caused by incomplete combustion.

The vast vast majority of plastic is just carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Burn them fully and there's nothing harmful emitted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com