> so-called environmentalists who look at this success and cognitive-dissonance themselves into emitting more carbon and accelerating climate catastrophe because "plastic is bad"
I don't understand what this means or whom or what you're talking about, but regarding your general sentiment:
What you're doing is making some very generous extrapolations that are rather dubious and going to need a lot of evidence to make a compelling case for. Examples include:
- That all plastics are fundamentally recyclable with success comparable to some subset of them if only we care to invest more in it.
- That the rates will increase to be much higher than they are. (Because frankly I do not find it plausible that even 55% recycling globally across all plastics is going to do anything but stretch the deadline for a real solution a little bit.)
- That other countries that are still developing won't end up increasing global wastes N-fold, which would easily eat through any moderate 50% or 70% rate or whatever moderate amount you hypothetically manage to achieve. (And it's not even really a "budget" to begin with, given this stuff lingers around.)
- That if only environmentalists cared to spend time lobbying legislators, you'd see legislators across the world react the same way as they appear to have in BC, and on a short time scale. (i.e., you're basically ignoring differing politics, economics, and competing interests.)
By all means, we should make progress on every front we can. But we also don't want to let that distract us or get deluded by half-baked solutions with questionable scalability (and whether it's physical vs. economic vs. political barriers doesn't really matter here). Frankly I cannot fault anyone for believing we do not have the luxury to keep betting the future of the planet on an asymptotic solution. We need drastic global changes fast, and the average person has only so much bandwidth to spare. Giving people a false sense of optimism about recycling can (and has) made everyone too comfortable with plastic consumption, which has been vividly damaging.
I don't understand what this means or whom or what you're talking about, but regarding your general sentiment:
What you're doing is making some very generous extrapolations that are rather dubious and going to need a lot of evidence to make a compelling case for. Examples include:
- That all plastics are fundamentally recyclable with success comparable to some subset of them if only we care to invest more in it.
- That the rates will increase to be much higher than they are. (Because frankly I do not find it plausible that even 55% recycling globally across all plastics is going to do anything but stretch the deadline for a real solution a little bit.)
- That other countries that are still developing won't end up increasing global wastes N-fold, which would easily eat through any moderate 50% or 70% rate or whatever moderate amount you hypothetically manage to achieve. (And it's not even really a "budget" to begin with, given this stuff lingers around.)
- That if only environmentalists cared to spend time lobbying legislators, you'd see legislators across the world react the same way as they appear to have in BC, and on a short time scale. (i.e., you're basically ignoring differing politics, economics, and competing interests.)
By all means, we should make progress on every front we can. But we also don't want to let that distract us or get deluded by half-baked solutions with questionable scalability (and whether it's physical vs. economic vs. political barriers doesn't really matter here). Frankly I cannot fault anyone for believing we do not have the luxury to keep betting the future of the planet on an asymptotic solution. We need drastic global changes fast, and the average person has only so much bandwidth to spare. Giving people a false sense of optimism about recycling can (and has) made everyone too comfortable with plastic consumption, which has been vividly damaging.