Microcosm of consumer waste creation - overflowing plastic

So much packaging, so much plastic - both are unsustainable

In Beth Gardiner's carefully researched book, Plastic, Inc., the relationship of fossil fuel companies and plastic production is described in detail. Oil and gas from fossil layers are the basis for plastics in myriad forms and performance characteristics, much of which has unknown effects on the human environment and our bodies - let alone effects on the many other life forms we share planet Earth with. All of the plastics, though, break down into microplastics and then into nano-plastics so small that we breath them, we drink them, we eat them, and we accumulate them. As the Green Economy grows and fossil-fueled consumerism shrinks, the oil and gas pumpers see expanded plastic use as a new outlet for their destructive extraction. If people use less oil and natural gas, then they can buy more plastic things and throw more of it away to make room for still more.

Places with small land mass do not have the luxury of piling and burying medical, construction, manufacturing and consumer waste like the volume now flowing in USA. Incinerating the increasing volumes of packaging, delivery containers, takeout containers, and breakable (cheap, disposable) plastic products also has consequences unfavorable for the environment and what lives in it, including us. Various forms of plastic require additive chemicals which are released into the air and water, therefore into the food and drink we consume: whether burned or buried or littered, the plastic and its baked in chemicals break down and roam freely. Rich or poor, all must breath, eat, and drink. Pricey or not, the digestive tract gives the same result. The only answer is to produce less of the single-use (throw-away) plastics: Reduce and Reuse, as the Green Movement declares for all materials, not just plastics.

This photo on Sunday morning, when the city main library is closed during summer hours, is a good illustration of the nature of the plastic problem: too much (quantity) and too dangerous (quality) for waterways and places clogged by litter escaping the landfill pipeline from bin to burial. The sticker price makes plastic seem so cheap as to be negligible. But that is only the market cost for 1000 plastic bags or 100 plastic toys or 10 synthetic tires. The total cost for extracting, transporting, refining, and then producing plastics from the original oil or natural gas is much greater than the day's stock market price per barrel of oil or cubic meter of gas. There is the inherited legacy cost of aging infrastructure, capping old wells, tracing the gas leaks of the greenhouse gases from old or abandoned wells. and clean up or remediation that is passed onto other countries storing our plastic trash. And future generations dealing with our consumerism is an even bigger cost that is not factored into today's sticker price. There is damage from well-field roads and spills. There is the cost of micro-plastics filling the air, land, and sea - including plants and animals everywhere. Worst of all, there is documented damage from untested chemical releases in the microplastic breakdown to act as endocrine disruptors, affecting the hormones responsible for reproductive success of animals, including DNA of humans. Ready or not, unwanted or not, plastic convenience may literally be the death of human reproduction and the species. The Neanderthals had a good run of nearly 350,000 years that we have evidence for. But anatomically modern humans have been going for less than that.

Use Less Stuff as the author, Robert Lilienfeld, wrote in a book by the same name in 1998. Or take the slogan of the War-on-Drugs, "Just Say No" to throw-away plates and cups and knives, bags and extra wrapping.

Extreme weather in a big world with bad energy habits

 

about 8 a.m. on February 17, 2021: cold dashboard temperature

Reversing from the garage the car's thermometer on the dashboard showed 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3.8 Celsius) but within a couple of minutes driving to work the number fell little by little until stopping at negative five degrees (minus 20.5 Celsius). That is cold enough for one's breath to land on eyelashes and freeze almost instantly, producing a decidedly unpleasant sensation.

Somewhere it is written that the USA population comprises something like 5% of the planet's humans, but that those citizens (and the undocumented people, as well) consume about 20 or 25% of the annual energy budget around the world. And of those 5% of Earthlings the wealthiest 10% of the richness pyramid probably account for an outsized part of the fuel consumed and carbon footprint produced each day and cumulatively for each year: luxury services and goods tend to require more energy than items of an ordinary status, or indeed by comparison to the alternative of doing without such luxuries all together.

Therefore, so long as old habits persist for transportation, gift-giving, leisure pursuits, plug-in conveniences, and so on, the disproportionate spoiling of water, air, and habitats will go on until no more remains. Let us hope that enough people see the insanity and injustice; and that peer pressure, government carrots and sticks (incentives and disincentives) can transition the consuming public to think twice before making a purchase, flicking on an electrical switch, or jumping in the car for little or no reason other than boredom or aimlessness. Such a transformed mentality would lead to fewer single-use (disposable) products, fewer one-stop trips (instead combining errands and appointments and commuting), and less landfill discarding of uneaten food or unloved chattels.