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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaiyiuq wrote

Reply to comment by desicant in Open Response to Congresswoman Clark's recent letter by noob_tube03

Right, I wholeheartedly agree that plastics are bad. But to show that they are worse, you need to compare them to the alternatives. My point is that it's so easy to point to all the harns you enumerate, and say "plastics bad! We should ban disposable plastic coffee cups!" when it's entirely possible that such a policy would cause harm to the environment on net.

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desicant t1_jaiz5mx wrote

The example you used was k cups versus just grinding the beans.

Just grind the beans and minimize the plastic waste.

We don't actually need complete information to avoid obvious problems.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaj0g26 wrote

You are asserting that the harm from a K-cup's worth of plastic waste exceeds the harms of a cup of coffee's worth of energy. That is not at all self-evident.

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desicant t1_jaj3is3 wrote

???

Yes. I am asserting that making more plastic (which doesn't break down, makes microplastics, and leaches endocrine disruptors into environmen) is bad compared to not making more plastic.

I don't think we have to wait until a final tally of the global chain of production, distribution, and consumption is performed to n-th levels of accuracy to take reasonable steps towards harm reduction.

And, just to be clear, it isn't k cups that matter - but the actions of corporations and their intransigence against removing plastic from their business model.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaj6jr6 wrote

You just aren't listening. Of course those things are bad. You haven't shown any evidence that they are worse: any comparison of the harms of additional plastic to the harms of additional energy use.

Unless you are asserting that there is no harm from energy use which could possibly be as bad as the harm from plastic, which is prima facie ludicrous.

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desicant t1_jakbodt wrote

Right, so I am listening I just think I wasn't being clear in my response.

I'm rejecting your premise because it is flawed, specifically it commits the McNamara fallacy. This fallacy occurs when you have a complex or ill-defined situation (like "harm") and you've measured one part of it (CO2) and are ignoring the unmeasured parts (plastic pollution)

To be precise to your argument - the research you mention doesn't measure "harm" it only measures energy/CO2 per cup of coffee consumed. Plastic pollution and the impact it has on health and wellness can't be measured using energy/CO2.

Note that when the k cup research was written up by the Washington Post they actually had to post a correction and a quote from the Ocean Conservancy pointing this out. Essentially warning people to not over interpret from the limited data, specifically because the original research failed to take into account plastic pollution and what offsets that may have on health outside of CO2 production.

Now - I challenge you to consider that we don't actually need to measure "harm" in this case because we don't need to find the optimal solution to find a solution that mitigates harm. Indeed, demanding that level of evidence is similar to tobacco companies claiming that no one's ever 'proved' that smoking causes cancer.

Instead consider that with increasing energy production coming from renewable resources and carbon sequestration technologies focusing on atmospheric CO2 capture it seems like these concerns can be addressed using near term scalable technologies.

Conversely, plastics and microplastics, get mixed into the soil, water, and biological tissues in ways that make it hard, if not impossible, to separate out. There is no near term technology that can sort microplastics from soil. It presents a permanent problem. And, unlike the shift in energy production towards renewables, plastics are only being produced in ever greater abundances.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jakbykg wrote

Ok, I understand what you're saying here. I appreciate the really in-depth response! I'm not sure I agree 100%, but I'm at least convinced that you have really good reasons for your position.

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desicant t1_jakcpza wrote

Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation with me.

This has helped me think more clearly about my assumptions as well.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jamdqu5 wrote

It seems like this logic would also rule out e.g. current electric vehicles, which cause permanent environmental damage in the name of reducing emissions.

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desicant t1_jan32td wrote

Like, hypothetically, you have to get a car - it's not a choice - you only get to choose what kind and you can't wait for things to change or improve?

And, to be clear, if you want to 'reduce emissions' that is going to be something separate from 'rare earth mining and slave labor' - so it will be hard to compare directly.

But you could apply a heuristic that considers the long term consequences of one versus the other. The gas powered vehicle relies on gas industry infrastructure after all, and so buying a gas powered car reinvests in that infrastructure. And EVs, in contrast, do not - the purchase of an EV invests in the development of a non-carbon based energy system. So both have long term consequences, it's kind of a wash.

But ultimately how do you know if reduced emissions would offset the impact of rare earth mining? It's terribly difficult to see how that could even be measured, let alone evaluated. And because of the absence of any obvious choice it would probably just come down to making a personal, subjective, choice.

Like this "logic" is just trying to reason with limited information - and sometimes, as individuals, we must make choices before we have all the information we would like. Like we should definitely do more research, get more information, get better batteries, organize labor, de-colonize the countries being exploited by extraction industries - but those are long term projects that, if you have to buy a car to get to work tomorrow, aren't really going to help.

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