Hacker News Reader

Comment by tadfisher | Hacker News Reader

I'm firmly in the "we need to do everything we can to reduce global warming to below 2 degrees C and potentially cause a mass extinction event" camp, and I get extremely irritated when folks fail to understand that demand is for energy, our energy distribution is interconnected via a grid, and those points make energy a fungible commodity.

Better than powering recycling plants, though, is to stop producing and consuming single-use plastics. A great way to do this is to stop subsidizing recycling programs and bake the energy cost into the product that must eventually be recycled.

View on HN

> I get extremely irritated when folks fail to understand that demand is for energy, our energy distribution is interconnected via a grid, and those points make energy a fungible commodity.

And I get irritated when people don't understand basic economic concepts like supply and demand. Texas is overwhelmingly building renewables to meet demand. The more demand there is for energy the more renewables get built, further driving down costs. It's a virtuous cycle.

> Better than powering recycling plants, though, is to stop producing and consuming single-use plastics. A great way to do this is to stop subsidizing recycling programs and bake the energy cost into the product that must eventually be recycled.

Sure, then write a well researched article about it and back it up with facts then post it here. The low effort cynicism farming in TFA isn't helping. In fact it does the opposite because it makes people feel helpless, which only benefits incumbents.

Multiuse plastic releases much more phthalates and is very expensive. It’s both a pipe dream and a bad idea. The only solution is landfill.

Or… we can trust Exxon (ffs) to build a recycling plant of the future that somehow is green also.

There are many long-life, reusable materials besides plastics.

> The only solution is landfill.

Why would it? The only thing needed to get rid of plastic is destroying it's key advantage over other materials (price) either by force or will.

I am very convinced that science will bring us a better material e.g. by looking at nature if we are "forced" to do so, this can be through market force, e.g. oil becoming just too expensive. I'm thinking long term here.

Landfill is the only solution that is guaranteed to fail. We're living on a quasi-infinite planet with a population that is to this date increasing. It will be easier to get new resources onto the planet than it is to get them away from the planet and stuff piling up indefinitely is clearly infeasable.

>population that is to this date increasing

Yes, but it will peak then fall[1]. The number of babies born per year has already peaked and is falling[2].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/un-population-2024-revision

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-births-per-year

it's entirely possible humanity will not stay in that regime forever and grow exponentially again

Reply on news.ycombinator.com