Hacker News Reader

How do we stop the demand for plastics (and any other number of process chemicals) and fertiliser?

Also - while it may encourage production at other sites with a higher cost of production, higher prices in general will slow demand.

View on HN

Those are only a fraction of what oil becomes (around 10% total) everything else is burned.

And high prices may also encourage alternatives.

Energy can be replaced by renewables. There are alternatives for various uses of plastics. And I thought manure was a pretty good fertiliser.

Not everything needs to be replaced, but it would help a lot if we replace what we can.

Agreed, what does not help or get us anywhere is the throw hands in the air gesture from grandparent.

We're going to need a lot of EV trucks, to transport the ~2 billion tons of manure.

The manure already needs to be dealt with anyway. Does it really matter whether we're transporting oil or manure? Surplus manure is also causing environmental problems. Why are we using fertiliser if there's too much manure?

"Brown gold" is worth a lot less per unit, so yes, it really does matter. It's a corresponding ~10x increase in the amount of material that has to be transported for the same effectiveness in crop fertilisation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com