Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
nature.org
nature.org
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 life without a car, and people think you are weird, and pass laws preventing you from building a community that is accessible without a car (at least in the US). And that's before we get to the violent deaths caused by car crashes, or the wheezing deaths caused by COPD, or the quality years of life reduced by asthma from cars...
Whereas today, we already see the present danger of micro plastics.. Just because fishing takes part on 80% of the globe as opposed to the <20% we drive on, I think the numbers are worse.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.8272...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro....
Maybe lets not disregard the downsides just yet.
EDIT: Both are bad.. Plastic isn't helping anyone. Marine or mammal .
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd6951
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456...
It's hard to get out of town without a car. The commuter rail schedules are focused on people who live in the suburbs and commute to the city, so they aren't really an option. There's good public transit to the airports, however, so if you live car-free in Chicago, New York feels closer than Wisconsin in some ways.
The "Chicagoland Area" is huge and includes swaths of "city" that are suburbs in everything but name. But, if you live within, say, the rough bounds of Rogers Park in the north, to Humboldt Park in the west, to South Loop to the south, a car probably won't be strictly necessary. (With exceptions for some inner neighborhoods that are underserved by transit for historic reasons, like Clybourn Corridor.)
The El subway is great by American standards (but not world standards) and the bus system is comprehensive, with many 24 hours lines. You would almost certainly rely mostly on buses as for historic reasons the El subway was designed to service the inner city loop and not the outlying neighborhoods, so it rarely goes exactly where you want to be, unless where you want to be is always the office.
The bummer is having to wait on a bus when it's very cold or snowing out.
Biking is still quite bad by any standard except the jaundiced American one, but slowly improving after some recent high-profile killings of children on bikes.
The fact that the commercial fishing industry manages to dump 1/4 of the tonnage of plastic into the ocean despite only a fraction of the human man hours dedicated to its operation and a fraction of the rolling/floating stock is pretty impressive. You'd think they were just throwing nets overboard.
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.
Many individuals can survive without a car given the right municipal commitment.
How would we supply the supermarket, though? A rail line would be unfeasible.
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 get goods from the depot to the store. Some long-haul routes would be needed to serve remote rural communities, and some high-priority stuff like mail delivery.
The expensive part is buying new rightaways, a private company responsible for liabilities like trespassing, security, and runoff (all of which the highways get subsidized by the public)
If the US spent a small percent of what it does on highways it could reactivate tracks that have shutdown since the 50s, rail towns would rise again and be the central b rural hub for groceries again.
If the US replaced 1 lane of every 6+ lane interstate highway, as due for maintenance..., every major metro would have world class transit in less than a decade (you need 2 lines if you don't use modern safe switchingb at stations)
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.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...
Obviously you are not talking about the market price?
On scale rai is cheaper, but less you use the infra and less you transport at one time more expensive it will get.
That doesn't mean every single last meter needs to happen via truck (lots of deliveries in urban areas can happen via foot or scooter) but ... at one point you need to get the 200 cartons of milk to the supermarket.
We could simply use rail.
The idea that folks on bicycles should be subject to gigantic, badly designed commercial vehicles while going about their business is absurd and a product of decades upon decades of lobbying.
Sure, Just In Time is partly to blame for this. But if your stock intake deliveries now become a monthly event, you need to build a warehouse that holds about six weeks worth of raw material. That's cost.
And unless these folks on bicycles delved for and forged the metal for the bikes themselves, assembled the self-made parts and walked all the way to the Caribbean to get the tree juice for rubber tyres, chances are, a truck brought the bikes to them.
It’s worth looking at Switzerland where they have many electric spur lines that do handle the last mile.
The US has some of the best railways in the world. It's just that for various institutional reasons the Americans suck at passenger rail, so people totally ignore that their freight rail works really, really well.
Guess which part of the industry is in government hands, and which part is privatised and deregulated?
The one part where the passenger rail does work well is where the government passenger rail company also owns the network...
> The U.S. entry into the war in April 1917 coincided with a downturn in the fortunes of the nation’s railroads: rising taxes and operations costs, combined with prices that were fixed by law, had pushed many railroad companies into receivership as early as late 1915. A year later, in a last-minute bill passed through Congress, Wilson had forced the railroad management to accept union demands for an eight-hour work day.
Government fixed prices, and made one of their factors of production (labour) more expensive.
>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.
"Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Support" from GAO
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
unless you picture raising wheat in urban environment, in which case I'll just leave you to it.
This ain't rocket science.
In Europe, a truck may transport about 250000 packs of yoghurt. (Assuming 100ml packs.)
If the truck pays 3 Euro road maintenance tax per 30-mile trip from and to the railway cargo hub, that comes out at 0.0001 Euros per can of yoghurt, a hundredth of a cent.
A few hundred miles or so?
One EV road use tax in Australia (Victoria) is 2.5c per km, I'll assume that's fair for now (I doubt it is, but anyway). A prior post said a truck does 5,000 times more damage than a car, which means the truck should pay $125 per km if it's fair. So a 30 mile trip would be roughly $6000. About 2.5c per yoghurt.
Not a lot. But it's on each item and will add up. Not sure how often trucks run empty to and fro either, someone has to pay for that. Petrol excise here was halved to 22c/L and my car uses about 8L/100km so that 2.5c does not seem too unreasonable.
Are you arguing that making people pay for bread at all is 'regressive'?
And yes, eating to survive is kind of regressive in that sense, but it's not what I'm talking about. If we generally assume society is unfair but still balanced around current expenditures, adding more may upset that balance.
It's the overall tax burden (or net payment, for poor people) of the whole system that's important for these kinds of fairness considerations.
The design of individual taxes should be more concerned with efficiency and deadweight losses.
Bread should cost whatever it fetches on the market (and that will include pigovian taxes, if any).
The amount and frequency of welfare transfers to poor people should be independent of how much bread they buy and when.
To give a concrete example: you get your welfare check at the start of the month, and the government doesn't whether you buy bread with it or noodles, and shouldn't give you a refund either way.
I suppose it might be cheaper for drivers that way, but groceries and other items will all be more expensive, even for those who do not drive.
People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
I agree with internalizing externalities, but let's not pretend that isn't part of individual behavior (consumer demand drives industry), or that individuals don't benefit from them in some way.
And industry lobby drives government policy and regulation.
Industry apologism will not help us move towards mitigating climate crisis effects.
Industry has externalized most of their environmental costs, this needs to change ASAP.
- Energy use in buildings is 17.5% of CO2 emissions
- Energy use in Industry is 24.4% of CO2 Emissions, The steel industry alone accounts for 7% of global emissions of CO2
The _number_one_priority_ is to force out Coal and Methane Gas from the Energy production sector and heating. That alone would cut global emissions by more than 40%.
This is a gigantic step because it solely depends on government energy policy, Infrastructure investiment, and also requires us to advance against an extremely embedded lobby of both Coal and Oil&Gas.
Even when it comes to buying products it's a tough sell - I know my phone battery is made with slave labor, but it's not like I can choose to buy the one that isn't. So when it comes to industry, we share exactly 0% of the blame - not just as individuals, but consumers as a group[]. The problem is two-fold: industry leaders are greedy and politicians aren't working in our best interests. If either of those went away, the problem would be solved. Unless you're in one if those two groups, none of it is your fault.
[] In democratic countries, it can be argued that the voter base is at fault for electing these corrupt politicians. I largely agree with this, but it's a pretty complex topic.
Like the batteries, it's not like I can choose the ones that aren't corrupt. The alternatives don't exist. In the rare event that they do, they get blocked out by the parties or rendered ineffective by their colleagues. At least it's that way here in the US -- which may or may not fit your definition of democracy. The major job requirement for an American politician is how well you can fundraise. And that's just to get a foot in the door of one of the entrenched parties -- they can still just decide to back someone else.
But you can choose to go without the phone that requires the battery. Now I know the canned response is “it’s not practical these days to not have a smart phone”, but going without one will not kill you. If the only phone available killed one person for every phone sold would you still demand to have one?
So who is the criminal here? Me, right now, using my 6 year old phone on the bus? Or is it the capitalists who pushed hypothetical me to the brink of death for trying to live "sin"-free and the politicians who oppose any attempt to keep them accountable?
And more importantly, what's the solution? Because going full Amish isn't nearly as scalable as you might think.
All you’ve pointed out here is there’s a limit to what you’re willing to do for your beliefs, and that at some point you’ll accept someone performing slave labor to keep your fancy, but still not required, electronics.
In fact I don't think individuals have much choice. They can inconvenience, or hinder themselves, in what effectively amount to a race amongst each other, or they can participate as fully as they can, thereby also dealing as much damage as the system or culture lets them. Circling back to cars and car culture as a prime example, the popular Not Just Bikes channel also talks about this. In their example of a city in the Netherlands, it's not that people love to bike and therefore bike a lot. It's that the environment is optimized to getting around in not just cars, but for pedestrian, and cycling traffic. Therefore people, who just want to get around, choose these two more often. As long as there's a game, they'll be players, so in order to minimize damage by the players, we need to change the game. Not the player.
This isn't meant to disagree with you or the people who bring the Netherlands up as a positive example.
The stats reflect this (car usage is still going up / barely going down, car size increasing) and it is easily explained given how far people are expected to live away from work without paying a small fortune in rent. On top of that, infrastructure outside cities is getting worse for car-free enthusiasts. Public transit is getting actively worse and more expensive, roads are still optimized around cars first and foremost, and WFH is still barely pushed.
The Netherlands is a great example of how difficult it is, and how easy it is for a government to stop trying beyond the lowest of lowhanging fruit (carfree city centers). A few Americans gasping at the infrastructure of Utrecht not being atrocious doesn't change the 1 hour commute from a popular driveby town 25km away from a medium-sized city.
My country (Poland) has been de-urbanizing since the turn of the century for this exact reason.
People can't afford housing in city centres, so they buy properties in the suburbs and opt to drive everywhere instead.
The first generation that did this is currently nearing retirement and they'll soon have to decide on how to proceed. Fuel is expensive, driving skills wane with age and in an aging society finding a buyer for a house that appreciated in value but has scheduled maintenance of key components is going to be difficult.
What people fail to realize is just how much alternatives have to win out on cars to make a dent. Being marginally less expensive isn't enough when opportunity costs are far higher.
Those alternatives can be much better. That's the real story hidden within The Netherlands: you can't make a half-hearted attempt and expect it to solve itself after because the world believes Utrecht, an already small city by global standards, is the status quo of the entire country. If it doesn't cut deep into car ownership nationwide, it's not the success people claim it is.
I have to disagree. I have lived in Drenthe all my life and what you are saying is just not true where I live. Maybe it's different in the south.
Also hard disagree on WFH, NL has an old and well-established WFH culture and the highest rate of working from home in Europe according to some quick searching. [0]
I agree that public transport is too expensive though - I'm still technically a student so I benefit from freedom public transport, but it would be a serious expense if I had to pay for it.
[0] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/02/europeans-work-home-c...
Sam Vime's "Bike" theory of socioeconimc unfairness?
There's always this chicken-and-egg problem where legislation is talked about as though it could make us want different things, when in fact, the electorate wanting what it wants now, such legislation would be a losing horse for any politician. Making the moral choice seem attractive to one's neighbours is what I'd call true aikido.
I agree especially with this, but with the rest of your comment as well. Culture, politics, economy go hand-in-hand, with no clean initiator among them. I currently think that everyone should try their best, and that those with more influence have more responsibility as well.
We simply cannot solve the problem by asking consumers to care more about the planet than feeding their kids, particularly when “caring about the planet” in this way is basically guesswork.
Climate change and other environmental problems are systemic, and thus we need systemic solutions—in the case of climate change, the ideal and gold standard is carbon pricing (with border adjustments).
My water comes out of a Great Lake and substantially ends up back in it, about as clean as it came out. It's not used up. Some energy is consumed making it potable and pumping it around, and then treating it.
Farms in the Midwest happen to catch a lot of rain, are they using freshwater in a different way than an almond orchard in California, or is it the same (my expectation is that the almond orchard is considered a user and the Midwest farm is often not).
Anyways, they do use in freshwater differently. Where I grew up in NW Ohio, there is practically no irrigation. It rains enough there’s no need. Freshwater use is passive, in other words. Out west, farms have to actively pump water to irrigate since there’s not enough rain. They can control how much freshwater they take out of the water source in a way the Midwest farmer can’t.
Me preserving water here in rainy Singapore doesn't help anyone in Spain, nor vice versa.
Interestingly, the natural state of much of California was a swamp. We put in a lot of effort converting the swamp to desert.
If we reestablished the swamps, California would be a much less pleasant place to live, but it might be a better place to grow stuff like rice.
[1] You're using "Northern California" and "Southern California" differently from everyone else; in normal use, Northern California is the Bay Area, not the north of the state.
No, norcal is north of LA, not just the bay area. I’ve never heard of anybody referring to the bay area as norcal, it’s always “bay area”
But my point is that the region to the north of, say, Berkeley, is not part of "Northern California". It's too far north for that.
We consider ourselves part of Northern California and have since at least the 70s. For many up there, the Bay Area is only nominally part of Northern California, in fact as a kid I didn’t think it was. But having gone on to live in San Francisco for a long time, I came to realize that the the Bay Area, for better or for worse, has more in common with Redding then it does with Manhattan Beach.
But I can’t figure out what you think the too-northern Northern Californians should call themselves if they let you lop off the Bay Area (and most would thank you for it).
Near my home town a big volcanic lake has been used to get water during droughts and it got to a dangerous low level in recent years.
We have currently seen major droughts in Europe and it severely affects the ongoing energy crisis. A lot of power plants, nuclear and others, are in direct danger of not being able to be cooled anymore because you need RIVERS for that. And they need to be cool.
Germany is currently experiencing issues with low water levels in some of its major waterways, such as the Rhine. When they dry up to low levels periodically, and they evidently do nowadays, then you have to shut down the plants accordingly.
In France, rivers are too warm to cool plants [1]. There needs to be water AND it needs to be cool. There is no nuclear power without water cooling.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threa...
Just for clarity for others, the reason the water needs to be cool is so that after being used for cooling it doesn't come out too hot and kill wildlife. French plants have applied to temporarily lift these restrictions[1] (which also is not great).
If this becomes a problem longer-term, it might be possible to build larger cooling reservoirs for the water prior to being released back into the river.
1: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-asn-nuclear-reg...
The water doesn't really need to be cool, it can also be used in cooling towers, which means you don't have to put it back into the stream, and therefore you don't care about water temperature. The issue with river water is that we currently don't have enough to divert it for all our needs, be it for a nuclear plant, for irrigation or for drinking.
This winter and spring have been exceptionally dry in France, with slightly more than half the rain we usually get.
The issue is that you want to live in a desert but with a lifestyle like you're not in a desert.
The hard conversation you need to have is that California is not habitable. There's no water and there's nowhere to grow food. If you want to make it habitable you'll need to turn all those golf courses into farms, raise cows on them, plant more trees, and try to expand those green areas as much as you can.
If you want to live in a green city, move to Glasgow, where there's loads of water and because it never gets above about 25°C or below about 5°C it's t-shirt weather all year round and you don't need to refrigerate your house.
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
mm 130 90 120 50 60 70 70 60 80 110 100
Rome average rainfall (https://www.holiday-weather.com/rome/averages/):
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
mm 25 20 19 18 33 6 7 0 42 38 49 96 120
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "drier" ?
You bought a latte last February? Well, then, you're also a buyer of human labor. You're a capitalist, too. The only difference between you and Elon Musk is that he's smarter. If capitalism is a problem, then you're part of the problem, because you do after all buy things. If you really believed in your anti-capitalist rhetoric, you'd grow the beans hydroponically in your basement (capabilities that, if you were serious, you would surely possess even if you weren't born into the tiny minority who actually benefit from the widespread and rigid enforcement of asymmetric state services called "property rights").
Meanwhile, the world is on track to be J. G. Ballard's Drowned World by the end of the century due to the persistence of a moribund socioeconomic system with no exit strategy or real means of improvement.
We produce most of our food for cattle, and cattle needs tons of freshwater (both consumed directly and indirectly).
That is the result of a decades old campaign strategy by BP and others [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi...
I distinctly remember when Teslas became popular, the reaction from environmental types was often frustration because apparently environmentalism is supposed to be about sacrifice and yet Tesla is allowing the unwashed masses to help save the planet. Similarly, when debating climate policy, some of the strongest opposition to carbon pricing would come from self-professed environmentalists who were repulsed by the idea of aligned incentives—environmentalism is a bout rejecting one’s own interests; if the cheap thing and the environmental thing are the same, how will the True Believer distinguish himself from the unwashed masses? There is a deep attachment to pennywise and pound foolish “personal responsibility” solutions.
Honesty this is hard to believe, do you have any source/example to back it up?
* Not actually physically possible
* Its just coal powered
* It's worse for the environment because batteries die after 3 years
* Rare earths!!
* Subsidized foolishness
* Toys for rich people
* Communism
And weirdly those people all get paid to write op-eds in right wing tabloids.
> And weirdly those people all get paid to write op-eds in right wing tabloids.
Oh, spreading hate. Got it.
And why would you ignore climate change? Possibly because of the organised campaign to discredit the idea even though basic science made it clear it was a problem.
But now, they'll deny that crime against humanity even happened. "No one actually denied climate change they were just worried about government overreach" while demial is still being done by the same people.
It was all published in newspapers, we have it on record. We have academic studies of how many times certain newspapers admitted that climate change was caused by humans in their op-eds.
We have databases that track their lies over decades:
https://www.partnershipforresponsiblegrowth.org/research-1/c...
But no, now the people who let themselves be convinced by those lies bizarrely blame "Greens" or "environmentalists" for complaiming that EVs were too easy. Which despite being obvious lies doesn't seem to be considered "hate", but pointing out the well documented truth is?
It's not though, rendering the point moot. They are two vastly different materials with different models of wear.
A quick thought experiment would make this very apparent: Do trucks need to replace tires at magnitudes less distance travelled than cars? Do cars tires last 100x longer than motorbike tires?
I've seen it often said that a fully loaded truck is equivalent to 1,000 cars wrt road wear.
Even accounting for tyre numbers and thickness/sizes, it doesn't add up.
> Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
Cars should be something that only a few people really need. Unfortunately auto makers and oil companies have had a huge influence on our government and society since World War II. The result is this stupid nonsense where you can't even go to a GROCERY STORE without some form of car. Where our train tracks are rotting and rail lines are slowly disappearing. Where you can't even go out your back door without seeing a monstrously loud big rig turning acres of asphalt into rutted gravel.
But literally any time someone says X is a big source of pollution, someone always screams that Y is worse so let’s stop focusing on X.
Then when people talk about Y, forget it, here’s Z and it’s the real problem.
They’re all bad. It’s not like there’s one single person on earth who only has time to focus on one single problem. There’s billions.
Yes, yes, i'd like to solve: A, B and C!
What kind of deflection are trying to pass off?
whataboutisms aren't bad because they're wrong - they are bad because they are a distraction. Either the commenter is trying to turn the conversation to a different topic they prefer to advocate for, satisfy their ego that they know more, or they are simply attempting to disrupt discourse.
In reality, the focus should be placed on solutions that have the greatest net positive impact. The size of the problems can guide, but some problems are more fundamentally difficult to solve (which makes them useful whataboutisms).
Of course, if we also added the criteria of "We should only debate things on a forum that the members of the forum actually have the ability to effect change on", then 90% of political posts would disappear.
What's the solution though?
Most pickup trucks and midsized SUVs weigh more than this.
Car taxation should scale quadratic with weight.
I bet all things considered, ICE Toyota Yaris is less bad for the environment than some Tesla.
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.
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.
> It's too bad rail is so expensive to make compared to roads.
Is that actually true? I mean, by what measure is rail more expensive? In comparison to rail road travel is massively subsidised. If we break down cost it would be interesting to see how they actually stack up against each other.
Your average truck puts out 8 metric tons per axle [1], railroads have to deal with 20-25 tons per axle [2] (and records of 40 tons/axle in Australia [3]). That is an awful lot more force that needs to be distributed into the ground, particularly as trucks usually reach only 80 km/h whereas freight trains run at 120 km/h in Europe [4].
Additionally, road vehicles have way more tolerance for shoddy road conditions - small bumps and potholes won't bother them too much, even at higher speeds, whereas rail vehicles are really, really prone to (deadly) derailments when the track goes bad for whatever reasons.
All of that makes constructing rail way more complex and as a result expensive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road#Maintenance
[2] https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/32505...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axle_load
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCterzug#Geschwindigkeite...
And the only way to achieve that capability is lots and lots of very thick steel.
I wonder also if tires could be made to be just as durable yet biodegradable?
Or could bacteria be introduced to roads that eats these particles? I suppose you don't want to make road slippery though.
Yes I agree to drive less, but this really seems like a pretty big problem that needs some solving. Recent medical studies found microplastics in our bloodstream & lungs. Not good.
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.
The movie Seaspiracy makes this point in a very graphic way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q5CXN7soQg
This fact-check runs through all the points of the video in 15 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7QRLZp63Eo
> "We've all heard about blood diamonds. This is blood shrimp." ... "The solution is to leave the sea alone."
It's like a high school teenager wrote this.
I get that they are trapped in the cycle of overfishing, but it seems like cutting back on the pollution is a first step everybody could take.
Just a simple tragedy of the commons I guess. The obvious steps towards sustainable fishing involves either higher cost or lower yields in the short-medium term. The few who would be willing to would go out of business. Since fish don't generally respect borders, the same dilemma occurs even between countries. If you voluntary give up your yield, other countries get more.
The only way I know to solve this is to properly price externalities, Milton Friedman style.
We had massive glass sponge reefs. They were destroyed by trawlers. That’s prohibited now. I suppose we’re expected to believe the industry wouldn’t be trawling today if they were allowed to, but I don’t buy it. Although the glass sponges were nurseries for untold millions of fish and their prey, and those stocks are so incredibly depleted and unable to recover, they still fish every single bit of quota they can and fight tooth and nail to increase quotas. Many complain that they aren’t allowed to trawl, too.
I suppose what it comes down to is that everyone thinks they are the exception. Even our meat eating practices on land are so resource intensive and absurd, but no one things they are complicit in an activity like what we’re seeing with fishing. None of this is sustainable, but we’re all participating and all very sure it’s someone else’s fault.
Really, sustainable fishing at our population scale seems like an absurd notion.
Once an area is destroyed in this fashion there isn't much future for fish or fishermen. Fishermen can continue to fish or not, but without a healthy ocean floor the fish won't reproduce, the nurseries won't be there, and parasites/diseases will wreck the remaining population for decades. The best society can do is to help fishermen to move to a different profession and turn the harbor into apartments.
The images you might see of a turtle with a 6-pack ring around a flipper are nothing compared to the damage a torn off chunk of a trawler's net might cause.
Large scale fishing fleet however do not generally repair fishing nets, especially trawlers. It not economical to spent time and manpower for it, and since they are out at sea for weeks/months there isn't any space. The law require them to dispose broken nets at landfills but that is a cost center. As such it is suspected is that they just intentionally throw the nets over board.
You could fix that by moving the cost. Make nets really expensive to purchase, and instead give a deposit back at the landfill. This way, there would be a profit in properly disposing of nets.
Of course, it might not be practical to suddenly have to watch for contraband smuggled nets at the borders.
Chinese shipping fleets do this routinely.
Not to downplay this issue (its important). But I sort of dont believe the estimates. Theres 4.6 million fishing vessles globally. That would be 22 tonnes per vessel or 46,000 pounds. I dont see 1 vessel producing 46k pounds of plastic waste per year unless they are literally dumping their fishing nets into the ocean purposefully and repeatedly.
... does the actual fishing itself not ultimately also threaten said marine life?
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.
I used to believe it until I began reading salmon reports and various population studies for species like rockfish and lingcod, key commercial species.
Our definition of sustainable is essentially “not completely shitting the bed”.
We’re supposed to be a model of sustainability. I don’t have much faith.
We’re also talking about sustaining populations that have already been decimated in the last 150 years. Let’s not pretend the numbers we’re trying to hit resemble anything like healthy.
It’s an incredible disservice to ourselves and future generations to pretend industry standards for sustainability are anything more than an excuse to squeeze more juice out of a dried up fruit.
Plenty of fisheries are indeed quite local, and managed responsibly. Likewise some aren't.
I love eating fish but this is a fact we all have to face.
Availability is an issue in poorer locales, but unless you’re a fisherman yourself fish is also quite expensive.
The feed ratio for farmed salmon isn't 20, it's 1.2.
12 pounds of feed for 10 pounds of salmon.
The ratio is about 6 for beef, 4 for pork, 1.6 for poultry.
People who don't know things or make up statistics to support their environmental doom narrative do harm to the causes they are trying to help. Anyone skeptical of you can easily find your numbers are false, and very very false at that. Why would anybody believe any of the rest of what you have to say when clearly it's demonstrable that you don't know what you're talking about on an easily countered point.
Big business ties
The Nature Conservancy has ties to many large companies, including those in the oil, gas, mining, chemical and agricultural industries.[42] As of 2016, its board of directors included the retired chairman of Duke Energy, and executives from Merck, HP, Google and several financial industry groups.[43] It also has a Business Council which it describes as a consultative forum that includes Bank of America, BP America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, General Mills, Royal Dutch Shell, and Starbucks.[44] The organization faced criticism in 2010 from supporters for its refusal to cut ties with BP after the Gulf oil spill.[45][46]
Writer and activist Naomi Klein has strongly criticized The Nature Conservancy for earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas and for its continued engagement with fossil fuel companies.[47][48] The Nature Conservancy responded by arguing that it had no choice under the terms of a lease it signed years prior with an oil and gas company and later came to regret.[47]
In 2020, Bloomberg published an article claiming that some of the companies (such as JPMorgan Chase, Disney, and BlackRock) that purchase carbon credits from The Nature Conservancy were purchasing carbon credits for forests that did not need protection.[49]
Also, almost all large corporations donate to all major charities - that's standard corporate governance. It doesn't mean they somehow influence or undermine articles like this.
Selecting the oil companies alone from the list of donors to imply there's some influence operation going on is highly misleading.
https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/dwr-durable-water-re...
If you’re reading this, the lifestyle you’re living is very likely incompatible with a planet that isn’t ravaged by climate change. You’ve got to make drastic changes to how you choose to live and do everything you can to get everyone else to make drastic changes to how they choose to live.
Don’t like the sound of that? It’s OK, just blame those darn fishermen for leaving plastic in the oceans.
PLant-based diets only make sense if you live somewhere where it's ecologically cheaper to eat plants than animals. This doesn't work, for most of the world.
> This doesn't work, for most of the world.
Yes, other than significant parts of Asia, North America, South America, Africa, and Europe this is a non-starter.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-imp...
As you can see, it specifically points out that the transport aspect pales across the board in comparison with other more important factors.
So no, not vegan.
If you've got a clever trick for using this without running it through a cow, you'll be rich.
Otherwise, what are you going to do with it? Pile it up and let it rot, releasing even more carbon dioxide and methane?
You won’t do me once me that feeding cows food humans could eat is a good thing, or that raising meat isn’t an environmental train wreck, or that processing grain through cows to then eat them is more efficient than eating the grain ourselves without a cow in between.
Is it possible you're concentrating your view of livestock farming to the very artificial "feedlots" that they have in parts of the US where there's basically nothing for anyone to eat and no water?
If this was true, 87%+ of US beef wouldn't be from feedlots; they'd be grazing on limitless grasses instead.
In the USA in 2019, about 87% of beef came from large feedlots. A lot of other farming is done in densities too high for grazing, so they are bulked up on externally sourced grasses and grains until slaughter. Some may spend time outside or actually grazing, but in North America this isn't common and it isn't in many other countries either. Feedlots are commonplace in Europe and Asia as well.
Canada is not much better with 69% coming from feed lots in 2020. Interestingly, and sadly, national herd size is decreasing while feedlot capacity is increasing. If this is to keep up, that 69% will balloon quickly and real grazed beef will be a rarity.
The bottom line is that we like to imagine our meat comes from nice places, but statistically that is exceedingly improbable for the majority of people. We are dreaming. We say no way, the meat I eat comes from [insert nice idea here], I'm an exception, but the reality is that's likely something that was marketed to us at best and not reality.
> I've never in my life seen people feeding corn, maize, or soy that is human-edible to cattle
This isn't relevant. The plants we feed livestock don't magically appear; we grow them in order to feed livestock. We could stop. They are resource intensive products we produce specifically for feeding livestock. In the case with soy, a lot of it is pressed for oil and the remaining defatted material is fed to cows. Should that material be waste? No, of course not. Could we use better oil crops with less edible/waste byproducts? Absolutely. Soy is viable as an oil crop because it's so heavily subsidized; we could be investing in higher quality oil crops instead and using land to grow soy for humans instead of livestock.
For cases where it doesn’t make sense (these are exceedingly rare), they should do what works best for them.
If we were to ship the equivalent calories and nutrition in vegetable form we would be able to ship it earlier and more often than the meat, too. Plant based nutrition is more abundant, more efficient, and more secure in almost every region of the earth.
The only case where meat makes rational sense is generally when you prefer the taste and/or calorie density. This doesn’t often make sense on a population scale. I don’t think it makes sense for individuals either, but that is still considered opinion these days.
60% of the population in the US is one paycheck away from being homeless. what the fuck do you propose they do, stop eating?
begin with yourself. send the plastic toy you've typed this on to recycling and don't buy another one.
Here’s what I’m willing to do: not eat meat, not drive a car, not fly in planes, not live in single family housing, not use air conditioning for my apartment, and not have kids.
Is that enough? No. But it’s all I’m willing to do.
glad to hear that
But do they release ("leach"?) microplastics into the ocean? Especially when degraded over time?
Curious how much microplastics in the food chain comes from glitter being consumed by fish.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/duw480...
https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2019/11/08/the-great-glit...
https://www.thecut.com/2018/12/who-is-the-mystery-glitter-bu...
both are a problem. the industrial fishing nets degrade slower, the microplastics (that then likely bioaccumulates) comes from all sources.
Entirely made up, based on nothing. Yet... here we are with plastic straw and bag bans...
Let's think about that for a minute while we contemplate all of the similar "data driven" bans we endure.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-mo...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-b...
[3] https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-no-evidenc...
I don't know how we can accept he conducted actual investigative research at the age of 9, particularly when the data is so wildly off from reality, no records were kept, and he can't even name some of the companies he supposedly based his "data" off of.
So yes... entirely made up.
McDonalds serves like 70M meals a day alone. Customers often grab a couple straws and use one. Ask anyone who has worked fast food -people take three straws and discard two all the time.
If you include straws like those little red coffee straws and juice box straws I can absolutely see hitting 500M.
The number of at least 100M, so he got the order of magnitude right, I'm sure.
Being one order of magnitude right isn't sufficient here (he could have just as easily made up 999M and still be one order or magnitude right) - particularly when fabricated "data" was used to push for legislation that impacted so many people yet has had so little effect on the environment.
Additionally, this kind of stuff causes the public to lose faith in "science" and our legislators that push this type of agenda through.
Not one entity stopped to research the data themselves - they used a 9 year old's made up data to ram through laws. Really should give us all pause when considering new legislation.
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/pdf/circular-economy/single...
page 4, they name fishing gear and single use plastics. the footnote says "Based on JRC analysis and further data analysis provided by Eunomia"
JRC is joint research centre
the initial data is composed by a kid? sure, why not. is the whole ban based on that report? uh, no
In this case, they literally get what they pay for, because after the trial, they're complaining about all the paper products instead of budgeting to continue with the starch-based solution that was so very much better.
The point of the products I mentioned is that they don't contain PFAs. They are starch and cellulose. Cellulose just so happens to look and behave an awful lot like plastic. If you've ever seen those novelty see-through rolling papers, they're the same thing but without the starch. You're not smoking PFAs with them.
The process is expensive. It's hard to convince people the extra costs are actually worth it in the end. Hopefully they keep working on the products and discover some manufacturing efficiencies. But it is like competing real fruit beverages against big-name colas - it's a tough battle to win.
Our liquor store (LCBO) used to have bags made from the same stuff. When our provincial premiere got everyone to charge 5c for each plastic bag, they just stopped using it entirely and went to paper bags. I liked those original compostable/recyclable ones because they were less stretchy and therefore less likely to break than normal plastic grocery bags, and way easier to carry because of the handles.
But the same reasoning applied - it was more expensive than paper bags, so that's all they use there now, too.
Besides, I was talking about a set of products that are made from starch and cellulose. They'll break down real fast with the rest of the compost. Faster than your desk that also would degrade and get eaten up under those same conditions.
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.
Spitballs, as a kid.
I recently spent a week in Texas and I must say, the disposable plastic bags and plastic straws were a big improvement in quality of life. I'd gladly pay some extra fees to offset the environmental damage. Banning such things seems like an emotional move, not an evidence-driven approach to improving the environment.
Sippy cup lids like they've got at Starbucks now aren't too bad. Enough height that you get most of the spill control from a flat lid plus a straw. Sometimes I miss drinking from the bottom up, but it's ok enough for me. Certainly better than a paper straw, yuck.
I doesn't work that way, though. Offsetting environmental damage is just capitalism cosplaying as environmentalism, pure feel-good propaganda.
Coffee cups also have lids that let you drink without a staw. Is there any reason you can't put the same lids on soft drink cups?
Banning plastic straws was a useless feel-good measure that raised costs and reduced quality of life (ever so slightly). It makes no difference to the ocean, as Western countries don't have rivers of trash flowing directly into it, and straws are an insignificant amount of plastic relative to everything else we use.
So I'll complain readily about plastic straws because terrible legislation turns the majority center against the cause. We could have used that political capital and public support to make a real difference, but now we're worse off than where we started.
A tractor trailer hauls roughly 20 tons - so all the sea nets in the world in a year could be hauled by 2,500 trailers. Not that much in the scheme of things.
"Unlike other forms of marine debris, fishing gear is specifically designed to catch marine life. Under certain conditions, derelict gear can continue to catch and kill organisms for years."