Oil states thwart agreement on plastics
e360.yale.edu
e360.yale.edu
So, a maladaptive systemic influence was noted, but they continued to focus on lower-level discussions around plastics. When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made? I would like to know how this is being addressed, and which other proposals have been made that represent alternative routes to progress - specifically ones that do not require vested interest to forego their short-term benefits in favour of others' long-term needs.
> But only one speaker was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting
If the observers' voices are so important, why schedule them for the very end? Yet another structural failing that demonstrates that the scale of thinking and organisation being employed is insufficient for the stated task.
The countries which benefit the most from ignoring the paper will ignore it in the shadows, then in the light, to the point they just unilaterally denounce it and do their own thing. You can't "stimulate" a country's representatives to care about something unless you give them an equally important incentive, carrot or stick. The stick doesn't work with powerful countries, and the carrot is usually too expensive.
So the methods employed to negotiate and agree on a treaty's text are even less meaningful.
I agree with this statement, and the reasons why they don't work, but also see it as lacking a systems perspective. Incentives are the result of system dynamics and, regardless of how they are wielded, do little to affect the protocols and structures that formed them in the first place.
My suggestion is that, by redefining the structures within which such discussions take place, new incentives will appear. This is anything but trivial and requires a solid understanding of both social psychology and international relations, but it is also not impossible.
If we consider consensus to be counterproductive, we must seek alternatives. Of the top of my head, one route could be to leverage the tendency for friend-shoring. This could involve grouping countries such that immediate impacts to profits are no longer shouldered by single interests. Those countries who possess both wealth and a greater sense of urgency could make side-agreements that allow for a kind of liquid-democracy within the final vote, similar to the way that coalitions form in countries that use proportional representation.
Another options might be to structure trade agreement such that externalities are re-internalised, forcing countries engaged in extractive processes to confront the impact that their activies make. Carbon credits have worked to do the opposite, acting as a lubricant that allow emission to be easily localised elsewhere and enabling an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality.
By all means go solve plastics some other way and educate us all. But there really isn’t any value in just declaring entire methodologies useless because they don’t always produce unmitigated good outcomes.
For grounding, here are treaties that made a material difference:
- The Montreal protocol made a huge difference in reducing CFCs and other ozone destroying chemicals. If you’re old enough to remember “the ozone hole”, this is why you don’t hear it now. Google for reductions in skin cancer attributed to the treaty.
- Conventional on Tabacco Control is only 20 years old but has made huge reductions in tobacco addiction and cancer reduction
- High Seas treaty is even newer but already reducing overfishing in almost half of the ocean
Do you really want to give up and throw those kinds of things out just because some jerks put on a sham treaty show in this instance?
Ok, I'll bite.
What's the internationally recognized alternative to treaties?
I wouldn't call war a better alternative, but it is undeniably an internationally recognized alternative.
Treaties are just the end result of negotiations. The piece of paper itself is meaningless. The agreement it represents is meaningful. The treaty is just a symbol of the important work.
There isn't anything here to suggest countries are bargaining in bad faith, they seem to be pretty up front about what they want and why they want it. And I don't see why there is a presupposition that an anti-plastic treaty is a good idea. Plastic is clearly of enormous value to society, and the linked treaty draft looks a bit wishy-washy.
> Parties shall cooperate in order to prevent disputes and shall seek to settle any dispute between them concerning the interpretation or application of this Convention through negotiation or other peaceful means of their own choice.
The section on settling disputes looks like gainful employment for a veritable office of lawyers with too much free time. I see that this is all backed by the threat of rendering a report if parties can't find common ground. That is so soft that I expect anyone operating in bad faith would just sign on to the treaty then ignore it.
1) "...countries reiterated familiar talking points" 2) "Instead of whittling down a draft of the treaty that had been prepared late last year during the previous meeting in Busan, South Korea, delegates added hundreds of suggestions to it, placing a deal further from reach" 3) "Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others will try to change the mandate so that it no longer refers to the “full life cycle” of plastics, but just plastic pollution — thus turning the treaty into a waste management agreement"
Not coming to agreement, though rhetorical posturing, bureaucratic leverage or the undermining of the core sentiment, means that the damaging status quo will continue, so I consider these to be bad-faith actions, taken in the interest of continued profiteering.
> Plastic is clearly of enormous value to society
This is absolutely true, and also myopic. Plastic is an astonishing material that can remain stable for thousands of years. Why, then, don't we make products that last this long? Because this would not be good for an economy that needs year-on-year production and consumption to increase.
I absolutely think that their approach is disingenuous, though the line between this and dishonesty is not something I would claim to understand well. You may say that taking a position that is fundamentally self-interested is valid, but I would point out that, given the scale of the impact that arises from the attachment to this stance, good-faith negotiation must include some form of integration of information regarding the consequences of holding this position.
At this point, where the negative impacts of plastic over-production, micro-scale pollution of biological systems and climate impacts of manufacture are so well documented, clinging to a "what about me" argument is tantamount to a child repeating the same question over and over in order to avoid listening to the response. So, yes, maybe not classically "bad-faith" but certainly a calculated strategy that prevents progress.
I’ll use the simple example of dental floss. When I was younger, you could purchase dental floss in a small circular metal container. Today, almost every option of dental floss available for purchase is in an often oversized / non-recyclable plastic container with non-recyclable plastic packaging.
This actually prompted me to once again go on the hunt for that little metal container of dental floss from my youth, and I actually found an option! A US company called Poh sells dental floss in metal container. Just thought I’d share, for anyone else that is dumbfounded when they have to buy more plastic wrapped plastic products to practice good dental hygiene.
India has had the notion of "tooth powders" for ever. Even colgate has been selling it in metal containers for many decades.
The floss and toothbrush are a nice touch, though. Perhaps a wooden toothbrush? (Bristles will still have to be plastic, I'm sure; anything else would be too expensive.)
Here you can buy toothbrushes with horse hair bristles and silk dental floss in a glass jar: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gaia-Guy-Eco-Friendly-Biodegradable...
Or have realized the absolute futility of trying to convince those who are informed and don't care, or those who aren't informed and actively fight against becoming informed. Some of use who've fought this battle all our lives are becoming exhausted and hopeless at this point...
FYI: They do sell cotton dental floss in paper packaging.
Also, here's an unintuitive thing people may not be aware of. Beverages in glass bottles contain about 10x the dissolved plastics in the liquid. This is believe to be from the paint and coatings used on the cap.
Put tarrifs on all trade with non compliant nations and their partners.
It's not just the oil states, it's almost all of them.
I can sen China dumping oil for power generation but there is no way they will switch plastics production on a dime.
There are currently no viable alternatives for humanity to replace plastics in daily use while still maintaining the low cost of those products. Unless humanity opts for more expensive material to subvert plastic consumption, plastic is going to be used regardless.
And China is simply feeding that demand in Western countries with those goods, because those countries want those goods for cheap.
They are still buying natural gas from Russia at record levels lmao.
And yes, we’re all stuck under capitalism so anything that really threatens the profitability of companies will be opposed as much as possible. Combine that with geopolitical events like Americans being the dumbest people possible who elect an openly corrupt authoritarian not once but twice and everything becomes even harder.
Americans are their own captors, fuck them. Using them as a excuse for EU cowardice is not convincing.
> Europe’s LNG imports declined by 19% in 2024. The continent’s gas consumption fell by 20% between 2021 and 2024 thanks to renewables deployment and demand reduction policies.
It’s not without downsides, but too often people just say “plastic sucks” (or equivalent) without thinking of what a world without plastics would look like. A de-growther’s dream perhaps, but everyone else’s nightmare.
What is indigenous science?
Do people think science doesn't involve surveying people with direct knowledge of the situation over the long term?
More to the point though - what does Indigenous Science mean in this context. Its not like Indigenous people have traditional knowledge of microplastics.
More specificly i was wondering what this meant in the context of a plastics treaty.
You can solve plastic pollution in two ways. Either crackdown on inappropriate waste disposal, or eliminate the use of plastics. One is actually possible, the other isn't.
Edit: although to be fair there are a range of "harm reduction" type measures. But if you focus on those, you might solve 10% of the problem and just drain energy from actually solving waste management.
But not for them to "dump it for us". We don't want the river dumping. If we stop sending it or even stop trying to recycle entirely then it goes into a landfill. Going into rivers is an extremely avoidable fate.
0: https://www.ban.org/plastic-waste-project-hub/trade-data/ger...
When we outsource manufacturing, the carbon and a lot of the pollution is our fault, as an inevitable part of it. When we outsource plastic handling, tossing it in the river is not the same. It's really easy to not toss it in the river. We're turning a blind eye to it, but it's not because we actually want it. We want them to stop and they could stop.
A country like China might be able to play the game well enough to get enough power to say Enough is enough but many other nations in South Asia and Africa are still struggling due to the fall-out of...our colonial interference, pressures from the WTO to do things by our rules, wealth inequality that further pushes them into difficult situations... And we blame them.
All this while countries like the US set great examples for others and turn away from the Paris Climate Accords and release doctored research on climate change.
Let's stop messing about. We send it to them to get rid of it knowing what will happen. WE need to do better, we can't just point our fingers for ever. "We want them to stop and they could stop " so why is this the situation today?
The problem is not based on who generates the most plastic. Or in other words, our portion of the blame is not because we generate lots of plastic rather than minimal plastic.
The rivers in less privileged states would be dirty in any case, yes, for the reasons I've listed above.
I didn't use the word "blame" except to say that we shouldn't be blaming others for issues we created (the wealth disparaties, the petro-chemical industry, global consumer culture etc). Blame is neither here nor there, it's a matter of responsibility.
The combination of "Developed countries generate an order of magnitude more waste per capita. It seems unfair to blame poorer countries." and "We send it to other countries, have them dump it for us" sounds like it to me. Plus the sibling comment of "We instead ship it to poorer countries for them to put it in their rivers."
And yes I know you only made one of those. So with you not intending that meaning, then I guess you can ignore my comments, they weren't at you.
But I still want to counter the other users' implications and statements. The blame and responsibility we have in uncontained plastic is generally unrelated to the quantity we produce.
> Blame is neither here nor there, it's a matter of responsibility.
In this conversation they're the same to me, you can pretend I said the word responsibility instead.
Only 9% of all plastics ever produced has been recycled. 100% is impossible due to the various composite materials that exist.
Landfills don't work in many places in the world due to lack of space and are expensive, hard to manage and come with methane emissions. Burning is obviously the same as burning fossil fuels and cannot happen if we want to keep our planet habitable. It also happens almost always in poor communities that suffer health consequences because of it.
Even if the disposal was somehow magically solved, we still have the problem with production. Plastics are a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030. Cracker plants for plastics production are also usually placed near communities of colour or in developing countries and create toxic conditions for life around them.
Plastics are a problem. Regardless of the disposal.
Most gets recycled, the rest used as fuel in energyplants. The real problem is the 10 countries in the world that are responsible for 90% of dumping stuff in the rivers (all in south asia and africa).
> Most gets recycled, the rest used as fuel in energyplants.
Do want to share how much work your "almost" is doing here?
> the 10 countries in the world that are responsible for 90% of dumping stuff in the rivers (all in south asia and africa).
How much of it is their own waste? How much was produced for Western consumers and then off-loaded onto them?
From following ocean cleanup project, for plastic ending up in the ocean it's usually own waste. The issue is countries that don't have working waste collection systems, any rainpour will often wash out the trash into river/oceans.
(littering is also an issue in countries with waste management though, but to a smaller degree, I kinda hate when people don't realize that stuff they throw in the street will often end up in rain collectors and directly flow into rivers)
Do you have a link? I think OP meant actual recycling, not waste collection.
I don't think 100% plastic recycling is close to achievable at the moment (even if recycled, it's often downcycled).
Of course theoretically perfectly clean and pure singly type plastic can be recycled, but that is something very different from post-consumer waste
but yes, what can't be recycled is epoxy (also a plastic).
For the case of PET bottles, recycling is possible if:
- products are made from a single sort of plastic with the intent of recycling - can be collected as a dedicated waste stream - are not contaminated in a way that is not easily cleaned - there are rules and regulations to offset the added costs
As all these conditions have to be met, one might as well use reusable bottles instead of recycling altogether, like we do with glass beer bottles. But then why were plastics used in the first place, as there is then hardly any advantage?
Not producing plastic would be preferable, and sequestering it in a landfill is the second best option, but burning it is a great alternative where the first two don't work
Of course the best thing is just not having one time use plastics to begin with. But we tend to over-emphasize the problem and focus on the wrong parts. People using e.g. straws in their drinks is maybe unnecessary but in tons of plastic it's a very minor part of the actual problem. Especially if most of it goes into the trash and ends up in a landfill or incinerator. E.g. People using plastic or paper straws in Berlin makes no measurable impact. It's all very symbolic. The Spree, the main river that runs through Berlin and the only way trash could physically make it to oceans, has been pretty clean since the DDR stopped dumping toxic waste into it a few decades ago. I don't think rule changes in recent years for one time use plastics made any measurable difference.
It's more of a problem on beaches and near coastal areas where some people can't be bothered to clean up after themselves. You see the same on public roads or train tracks where people just toss their crap out of the window. This is the root of the problem: too many people just do the wrong thing without even thinking about it.
IMHO littering fines and more effective enforcement would be very appropriate and should be fairly uncontroversial. If people are being jerks, just treat them as such. Shame them into doing the right thing. Inconvenience them. Etc. Littering is a choice. And it should have consequences. And when people know there might be consequences, they usually adapt. Other things that work are deposits on bottles and cans. Making people separate their trash.
And then go after the big polluters and force them via tariffs, trade restrictions, etc. to do better.
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A "like-minded group" of oil states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Russia) refused to accept:
- Legally binding obligations to reduce plastic production
- Mandatory phaseouts of hazardous chemicals
- Disclosure requirements
- Any controls on new plastic production
I mean does anyone expected anything like this to happen?
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And here's the biggest joke:
Taxpayers around the world are funding all of this. Countries should represent their citizens' interests, right? So taxpayers collectively spend tens of millions to send their representatives, only to get this unexpected result. Saudi Arabia, Russia, and co. blocked the agreement.
We are not even looking at e.g removing plastics from the ocean, because that would force us to come to terms with the inconvinient truth that most of the plastic is from a few rivers in poor areas (basically it is been used as a self emptying trash system) and used up fishing nets.
There are solutions for these problems, but the ones like banning plastic straws simply do not address this problem.
Sounds like a failure of basic leadership and negotiation skills. This sort of one-sided extremism only creates division. It's a lack of wisdom on part of the UN.