[HN Gopher] 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output
___________________________________________________________________
3M to end 'forever chemicals' output
Author : voisin
Score : 512 points
Date : 2022-12-21 04:33 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| About a quarter of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS, and we can't
| make modern chips, autos, or airplanes without them. Once
| politicians learn that the half life for "forever" chemicals
| varies by 7 orders of magnitude, we will have more nuance about
| the issue.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >Once politicians learn that the half life for "forever"
| chemicals varies by 7 orders of magnitude, we will have more
| nuance about the issue.
|
| So long as they can use an issue to lead the line of lemmings
| into the polling place you will never see nuanced opinion from
| politicians on an issue.
|
| Politicians in Texas know full well how rare and irrelevant
| late term abortions that aren't medically necessary are.
| Politicians in California know full well how rare and
| irrelevant murders by people wielding military style arms are.
| But they still spew falsehoods because that is what is
| politically useful.
| kortex wrote:
| > About a quarter of new pharmaceuticals are PFAS
|
| Huh, TIL. I was going to rebut this but I looked into it. I
| didn't realize simply the presence of a -CF3 group is enough to
| classify the whole molecule as a PFAS according to new
| definitions.
|
| > More recently (2021) the Organisation for Economic Co-
| operation and Development (OECD) expanded the definition,
| stating that "PFASs are defined as fluorinated substances that
| contain at least one fully fluorinated methyl or methylene
| carbon atom (without any H/Cl/Br/I atom attached to it), i.e.
| with a few noted exceptions, any chemical with at least a
| perfluorinated methyl group (-CF3) or a perfluorinated
| methylene group (-CF2-) is a PFAS."[3][4]
|
| That's a super popular moeity in medchem for whatever reason,
| so yeah, RIP all thing trifluoromethyl.
|
| Difluromethylene can be degraded much more quickly as long as
| the molecule can be "unzipped" (needs a break point where
| nucleophilic attack can occur), so it's possible we may be able
| to sub in -CHF2 or -CH2F to "cap" molecules and render them
| less persistent.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like 95% sure we
| could choose to chemically break down PFEs instead of dumping
| them into rivers, it might double the cost of some plastic,
| there must be dozens or hundreds of ways to prevent it.
| amluto wrote:
| Inspired by this, I looked up what was in a little anti-fog spray
| bottle for eyeglasses I have:
|
| https://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Vision/Vision/Internationa...
|
| Yep, it's water plus various non-polymer perfluoro compounds.
|
| I get why fluoropolymers are extremely useful (and probably
| fairly safe for their end users). I get why PFCs are useful in
| industrial processes. But why on Earth is it acceptable to
| intentionally use PFCs _as the primary ingredients_ in a _spray
| bottle_ intended to be used near people's faces?
| fomine3 wrote:
| What will be affected?
| thedougd wrote:
| Great news!
|
| Now, can we shut down Chemours too? DuPont spun them off in 2015
| to isolate their risk.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemours
| donatj wrote:
| We should really come up with a better less chemical fear based
| name than "forever chemicals".
|
| Even "forever contaminants" would be a major improvement.
|
| Just being a chemical that hangs around isn't a bad thing. By
| that definition water is a "forever chemical". I am well aware
| this isn't what's meant by forever chemical but the naming should
| involve something implying the negativity other than the ignorant
| use of chemical as a negative.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "Forever chemicals" have half-lives that range from a
| millisecond to 10,000 years, but this level of communication
| accuracy is expected from our media.
| 4ad wrote:
| I'm calling it, if you want GoreTex or similar clothing, get it
| now, in five years it will start to get banned, and in 10 years
| you won't find it anywhere.
| Tepix wrote:
| The more gore-tex is bought, the more PFAS will be released
| into the environment. No thanks.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why are they waiting until 2025? "We know this stuff is bad, but
| just give us a couple more years to realize a full ROI before we
| stop" vs "Holy crap this stuff is bad, we're pulling the plug
| now"
|
| I mean, it's not a ship at sea running at flank speed where the
| ship keeps moving once power has been cut. Just stop making them.
| Now.
| itishappy wrote:
| It kinda is. Not a literal ship, of course, but industry still
| has immense momentum behind it. If you catch your prop on a
| rock, the rest of your ship is going to strain to absorb the
| impact.
|
| According to the article, PFAS are used in semiconductor
| manufacturing process. These are insanely sensitive processes,
| and replacements will need to be found and qualified. That
| takes time. (Note: I'd hope they've seen the writing on the
| wall and have already started this process.)
| someonewhocar3s wrote:
| kazinator wrote:
| H2O: forever chemical or not?
| awestroke wrote:
| Forever chemicals is an informal term that collectively refers
| to the class of synthetic chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl
| substances and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
|
| So, no.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20221221003434/https://www.reuter...
|
| https://archive.ph/s50uH
| legitster wrote:
| "Forever chemicals" is clearly a scary term devoid of context.
| Please help me ground it. Is this a health or environmental risk?
| Is it potential or realized? What's the nearest comparison?
| diordiderot wrote:
| Forever chemicals do not last in the body forever, but they
| accumulate faster than our body can naturally filter them out.
|
| They don't break down in the natural environment, thus why we
| accumulate it faster than we can filter it.
|
| They can be broken down under high pressure i.e. hydrothermal
| carbonization(HTC).
|
| The only solution I can see to remove them (over the course of
| decades / centuries) is to run all of our sewage through HTC
| awestroke wrote:
| Forever chemicals, also known as perfluoroalkyl and
| polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a group of man-made
| chemicals that are used in a variety of products because of
| their ability to repel oil, water, and stains. They are called
| "forever chemicals" because they do not break down in the
| environment and can accumulate in the body over time.
|
| There are a number of dangers associated with exposure to
| forever chemicals. Some of the potential health effects of PFAS
| include:
|
| - Increased risk of cancer: Some studies have suggested that
| exposure to PFAS may increase the risk of certain types of
| cancer, including testicular, kidney, and pancreatic cancer.
|
| - Harm to the immune system: PFAS have been shown to impair the
| immune system and interfere with the body's ability to produce
| antibodies.
|
| - Developmental and reproductive problems: PFAS have been
| linked to developmental problems in infants and children,
| including low birth weight and reduced fertility in women.
|
| - Thyroid hormone disruption: PFAS have been shown to disrupt
| the normal functioning of the thyroid gland, which can lead to
| problems with metabolism and energy levels.
|
| - Other health effects: Other potential health effects of PFAS
| exposure include liver damage, high cholesterol, and decreased
| effectiveness of vaccines.
|
| It is important to note that the extent of the health risks
| associated with PFAS exposure is still being studied, and more
| research is needed to understand the full range of potential
| effects on human health.
|
| My personal prediction is that this will be like leaded
| gasoline all over again, but much much worse. We're already
| seeing these chemicals in drinking water all over the globel,
| in concentrations above limits deemed "safe".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| _Dec 20 (Reuters) - U.S. industrial conglomerate 3M Co (MMM.N)
| on Tuesday set a 2025 deadline to stop producing PFAS, the
| "forever chemicals" used in anything from cell phones to
| semiconductors that have been linked to cancers, heart problems
| and low birth weights.
|
| Perfluoralkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) do not
| break down quickly and have in recent years been found in
| dangerous concentrations in drinking water, soils and foods._
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >dangerous concentrations
|
| Those words need context, otherwise this reads a lot like
| scaremongering. Dangerous as in close to an LD50? A minimum
| measured effect? Or in layman: how much worse/better are
| exposure to those concentrations than say time-equivalent
| exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke? Or first-hand.
|
| >in drinking water, soils and foods.
|
| Routes of introduction to people and environment are also
| important to understand to eliminate hazards while minimizing
| damage. Is the contamination a production 'sloppiness' issue?
| Resulting from correct or incorrect application of non-
| durable goods (e.g. lubricants, firefighting foam). A wear of
| durable goods issue (rubbers, PTFE, etc.)?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you want really specific details then google is the
| answer.
|
| The article gives a perfectly good overview for people that
| don't know the term.
| peebeebee wrote:
| Even very very small amounts of these pose a risk to our
| health. And because they never break down, they keep building
| up in the environment. They are everywhere, in your drinking
| water, in the soil where you plant your vegetables, ...
| ToJans wrote:
| In Belgium there is a huge issue with pfas caused by 3M [1],
| having contaminated things like drinking water etc, so it's not
| even safe to eat vegetables from your garden or eggs from your
| chickens.
|
| It's a massacre TBH, mostly exposing the head-in-the-sand,
| umbrella using fingerpointing mentality of Belgian politics. I
| can imagine 3M has sites like these all over the world, so I
| would assume this only scratches the surface...
|
| Edit: typos, it's early in the morning here ...
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-3m-pfas-toxic-
| foreve...
| Wronnay wrote:
| There is a similar Issue caused by 3M in Gendorf, Germany - so
| this is really a problem all over the world - and 3M isn't the
| only producer of PFAS...
| guerrilla wrote:
| Multiple big cases here in Sweden, it's on the news almost
| weekly with a new one.
| hungrigekatze wrote:
| There's a pretty informative video on PFAS in Germany; at the
| end of the video there's a guy in the US (southeast I think)
| who is located about five miles away from a PFAS plant whose
| pets keep dying and who is underwater on his mortgage because
| no one will buy a house near a literal toxic-waste-producing
| plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovCvW22ol3Y
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Could such chemicals be subjected to a special type of regulation
| where they can still be made, but only for very specialised uses
| that seem worth the risk somehow? Is there a precedent for that?
| Jolter wrote:
| There is: plutonium etc. You're on to something here.
| 101010101010101 wrote:
| jquast wrote:
| I hope this means my dentist will stop giving me free samples of
| Oral-B dental floss that contains forever chemicals, as recently
| as last month, I wanted to say something about what kind of
| doctor suggests putting PFAS products in our mouths but I didn't
| want to be a Wikipedia patient
| https://www.classaction.org/news/oral-b-glide-dental-floss-l...
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Ideally, before mass producing alternatives, they "close the
| loop" on replacements life cycles. Otherwise we'll just be
| reading a new variant of this article in 20 years.
| starkd wrote:
| Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For
| established profits, revenue increases are only marginal
| improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a
| mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit
| increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming
| up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've
| seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the
| late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to
| protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC
| emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps
| repeating.
|
| Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's
| little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are
| in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative
| to the benefits added.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...
| starkd wrote:
| Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For
| established profits, revenue increases are only marginal
| improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a
| mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit
| increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up
| with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen
| this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late
| 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the
| hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted
| thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating.
| Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little
| in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some
| sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the
| benefits added.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| For a deep dive into the world of fluoropolymers (Teflon etc.)
| and their breakdown products:
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c03244
|
| > "We here distinguish between fluoropolymer substances,
| fluoropolymer products, and fluoropolymers in finished articles.
| A fluoropolymer substance such as PTFE, FEP, and PFA is a
| material of known chemical structure. A fluoropolymer product is
| the actual material produced and sold by a chemical manufacturer
| (e.g., Chemours, Solvay, Daikin, Asahi Glass, etc.), it comes in
| different grades (e.g., Teflon-granulate, Teflon-fine powder,
| etc.), and may contain impurities from the production process.
| These fluoropolymer products are sold to manufacturers of
| finished articles (e.g., PTFE tape, waterproof clothing with a
| PTFE membrane, PTFE-coated cookware, etc.) who incorporate the
| fluoropolymer products in their finished articles. The
| distinction is important, as there are many different processes
| of making fluoropolymer products..."
|
| TLDR: The authors generally conclude consumer products made with
| fluoropolymers are going to leach PFAS & similar eventually via
| waste disposal, and suggest restricting use to closed-loop
| industrial processes (where fluoropolymer plastics are often used
| to contain highly corrosive substances in chemical and
| pharmaceutical manufacturing processes).
| RyanShook wrote:
| There are nine thousand known PFAS. They are essential to many
| products and processes. Many don't have a clear alternative.
| Other countries will continue to produce them. But 3M is going to
| ban them all without any discernment. Am I missing something?
| Jolter wrote:
| Can you one product or process where it's indispensable?
|
| I'm not being argumentative, just curious, as I'm not a
| chemist. I know it's already being replaced in ski waxes and
| I'm pretty sure they have alternatives for firefighting foams?
| adrian_b wrote:
| In a typical consumer home, there are very few, if any, uses
| where fluoropolymers are indispensable.
|
| On the other hand, for most kinds of chemical manufacturing
| and of chemical analyses fluoropolymers are truly
| indispensable.
|
| Before the invention of the fluoropolymers, some of the
| chemical reactions that are done now in vessels made of
| fluoropolymers could not be done at all, while the others
| were done in platinum vessels. Even the platinum was slowly
| dissolved, so the cost of the equipment was huge and such
| chemical reactions could not be used in mass manufacturing.
|
| Even the simplest transistor or integrated circuit cannot be
| made without fluoropolymers. Without them there cannot be any
| semiconductor industry.
|
| Besides the containment of corrosive substances, other
| applications for which there are no good alternatives to
| fluoropolymers are in vacuum equipment (also indispensable
| for the semiconductor industry) and in insulators with low
| dielectric constant and with low losses at high frequencies.
|
| None of the industrial uses of fluoropolymers can cause
| significant pollution. However using them in things like
| kitchenware, or worse, in packaging, makes no sense.
| rocqua wrote:
| > None of the industrial uses of fluoropolymers can cause
| significant pollution. However using them in things like
| kitchenware, or worse, in packaging, makes no sense.
|
| I presume it is possible for these industrial uses to cause
| significant pollution, but you mean that it is not
| difficult to prevent pollution from these processes because
| they happen in controlled locations?
|
| Contrasting that against PFAS in kitchenware, packaging, or
| rain-coats where pollution is incredibly difficult to
| prevent because low-level leakage occurs everywhere?
|
| I believe a lot of PFAS contamination comes from the
| production process itself. Especially looking at the 3M
| plant in Belgium. To what degree can the production process
| be made contamination free?
| kortex wrote:
| > I presume it is possible for these industrial uses to
| cause significant pollution, but you mean that it is not
| difficult to prevent pollution from these processes
| because they happen in controlled locations?
|
| Fluoropolymers don't really leach in significant
| quantities on commercial timescales. That would sort of
| defeat their purpose of being inert. So there is a huge
| difference between "these teflon o-rings in this chemical
| plant leach 0.1 ppb of small molecule PFAS per day" and
| "millions of teflon pans go into the landfill each year".
| And further still to "we produce railcars worth of
| volatile fluoropolymer monomers for producing teflon and
| viton".
|
| > I believe a lot of PFAS contamination comes from the
| production process itself.
|
| This exactly. Low-molecular-weight PFAS are much more
| mobile than high weight, thus more polluting. Once
| "bound" in a polymer, the leaching is minimal. The
| problem is the production process, where you have
| primarily the small molecules, which inevitably get into
| the environment.
| Jolter wrote:
| Thank you for obliging me, that's very interesting!
| runnerup wrote:
| 3M isn't banning them, they're discontinuing production. Other
| companies can pick up the slack still.
| Tepix wrote:
| Are you overlooking the fact that PFAS made the rain water of
| the _entire planet_ unfit for consumptionSS?! In my book that
| is several orders of magnitudes more important than "many
| products and processes".
|
| --
|
| SS PFAS: Rainwater contains unsafe levels of 'forever
| chemicals'
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pfas-in-rainwater-...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| No, thats it. What should be the next logical step for any
| government that actually values lives and health of its
| population is to gradually/immediately ban products containing
| them too. If china or india want to drown (and kill) themselves
| in pfas we unfortunately can't stop them but we should
| certainly not support it.
|
| I hope 3M will be fined to hell (possible) and responsible
| managers will rot in jail (unprobable as always). I mean that's
| sole role of any manager - being responsible for all the crap
| happening under their command, good or bad. 'I didn't know' is
| not an excuse when we know 3M knew damn too well and dumped
| superbad waste anyway.
| zdragnar wrote:
| A few years back, 3M entered a near-$1 billion settlement with
| Minnesota for PFAS groundwater contamination. I suspect they
| have been working on a replacement since 2010 or not long after
| (when the legal action first started up) and, given the two
| year timeline to phase them out, I'm thinking they've got the
| replacement already and just need to get it to market.
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| > ...sued by California's attorney general to recover clean-up
| costs.
|
| So what are the clean-up costs? Is it even possible or do they
| just clean up the most urgent parts?
| awestroke wrote:
| The cost of processing all of earth's oceans, freshwater and
| groundwater to remove these chemicals. Quite the cost.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? Literally the next breath of air you
| breathe will be contaminated with PFAs. Every fetus will have
| measurable PFA in its bloodstream before it's even born.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained
| ngoilapites wrote:
| I understood leach also cannot be transformed when I reaches the
| environment, and that water treatment plants --- when effective
| --- are in constant trouble because of it. Can someone clarify?
| themerone wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a win for the environment or human health.
|
| 3M is gifting sales to it's competition to avoid future
| liabilities. Chinese companies are ready to pick up the slack.
|
| 3M is certainly developing safer alternatives, but until they are
| as good and as cheap, companies will buy their toxins elsewhere.
| irjustin wrote:
| > companies will buy their toxins elsewhere
|
| This is where legislation needs to come in.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| Honestly, I try to buy 3M stuff more then existing
| alternatives, even with the higher price, largely cause 3M
| stuff tends to work _a lot_ better and my time not dealing with
| crappy stuff is worth the cost. That won 't change with the
| increased cost of safer alternatives. If anything, I'll buy
| more 3M products.
| lobochrome wrote:
| This is just not true. For many of the products there are no
| quick and dirty replacements from China and even if they would
| field a product it's not just a 1:1 replacement. Qualification
| is complicated.
| titzer wrote:
| This is the "someone's gonna do bad in this world, better if
| the most righteous person around does--hey that's me" defense.
|
| Sigh, there is no iteration of that logic that doesn't devolve
| to vacuous self-justification for engaging in immoral acts.
| themerone wrote:
| I don't agree with your reasoning. Most bad things aren't
| driven by supply and demand. If you jail a rapist, you aren't
| creating incentive for someone else to commit more rapes.
|
| Also, performing a dirty industrial process in a country with
| strong environmental and workplace safety regulations is
| better than moving that process to a country with no
| protections.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| This is the prisoner's dilemma situation. Everyone would
| benefit more from a reduction, but if only one company does it,
| they benefit (in the short term) even more.
|
| I think the signalling is also valuable -- humans have a
| remarkable tendency to adopt attitudes over time, and I think
| every contribution towards the attitude that we should not harm
| the environment is a good one.
|
| I for one currently support and will continue to support
| companies with sustainable environmental practises even if the
| cost is higher, and I encourage everyone to do the same. For,
| that increased cost is like a payment for that piece (however
| small) of the environment that I otherwise would not have, and
| I think that's worth it.
| minism wrote:
| Right.. this is a perfect example of why government
| legislation/intervention in the market is needed to some
| degree.
| flockonus wrote:
| Over our globalized economy I don't see how local
| government legislation can work (unfortunately).
|
| Long are gone the days governments around the world
| coordinated to banish CFCs, for instance.
| safety1st wrote:
| It really only takes the EU and US agreeing that
| something is bad. Together they represent a huge chunk of
| the imports of nearly every sector of the global economy.
| In practice that is what globalization largely is - other
| countries producing stuff that the US and EU buy.
|
| If you manufacture a chemical and the US and EU both
| decide that chemical is banned and can't be imported,
| your business may very well be toast, and you will have a
| large incentive to produce stuff that they want instead.
| This doesn't necessarily even take legislation as the
| relevant governments have a variety of ways they can
| apply tariffs, disincentives etc. to stuff they don't
| like.
| messe wrote:
| It doesn't even take both agreeing necessarily. In many
| cases just either one of the EU or the US legislating
| something is sufficient financial incentive to follow the
| same rule globally.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The entire US benefits from rules only California makes
| for itself. The entire world benefits from rules only the
| EU makes for itself.
|
| That very same globalization sometimes causes influence
| as a pure byproduct.
|
| Regardless, it's not an all or nothing situation. If
| there are 6000 problems, it's perfectly fine to pick just
| one of them, and do something that only makes it 1%
| better. So what there are 5999 other problems? So what
| most of this one problem didn't even get better because
| there is some way around it? Tomorrow you just keep doing
| more of the same and make the current problem 2% better.
| Or make one of the other 5999 a little better.
|
| All progress is plodding. There is no other type.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You establish agreements over a large enough market that
| it actually makes a different so that competitors doing
| the right thing aren't penalized or aren't penalized
| enough that they're disincentivized.
|
| Sometimes that market is the US and you only need a local
| bill to do that. Sometimes you do a bilateral or
| multilateral treaty. But these things happen all the time
| even today. Eg if not for trump there would probably have
| been a new pacific trade agreement and Biden has managed
| to rally multilateral cooperation around security issues
| around Russia (eg see new applications to NATO as one
| example as well as related economic agreements and
| sanctions) and climate change.
|
| The main challenge is that Trump's behavior of cancelling
| deals that were on the finish line as well as backing out
| of existing agreements (Paris accords + Iran) means that
| partners are now more wary of entering into agreements in
| the first place.
|
| This has less to do with globalization and more to do
| with USA's increasing instability as a reliable partner
| that can execute on agreed-upon commitments across
| political transitions. So now countries are less reliant
| on commitments from the USA. From one perspective, that's
| good - local autonomy is a powerful tool. From a
| different perspective, the USA frequently (not always and
| maybe not even a majority of the time) lead the way and
| set a global direction through unilateral action (ie even
| without treaties). Again, that's gone less because of
| globalization I think and more that the world has grown
| tired of USA's political weight throwing and realpolitik
| behavior rather than sticking to common principles
| (democracy, rule of law, not torturing enemies no matter
| what they've done, human rights, raising up scientists
| and facts even when politically inconvenient or leaders
| applying pressure to move their voter base instead of
| playing tail wag the dog, having principles about who we
| count as our allies etc). One set of behaviors engenders
| trust while the other degrades it and leads to
| whatsboutisim politics. Agreements in low trust
| environments are rarer and harder to maintain. Agreements
| in high trust environments are much cheaper.
|
| So, while I agree that the "governments around the world
| coordinating" is harder I disagree that it's impossible
| or that it was caused by globalization Val multi-
| generational realpolitik weight throwing and underhanded
| behavior that killed a lot of the good will brought about
| as the "saviors of WWII" propaganda that was wide spread
| + "golden city" aura post WWII and during the Cold War +
| technological and economically outpacing Russia. We've
| been leveraging that good will more than our finances
| because the former is completely invisible and impossible
| to quantify and measure.
| missedthecue wrote:
| PFAS are used because there isn't a better alternative. A
| globally coordinated reduction in production only increases
| the price of products for consumers.
| Centigonal wrote:
| ...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon
| pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with
| negative externalities for granted.
|
| We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS
| (where externalities are internalized and built into the
| cost) too.
| 4ad wrote:
| We should stop taking the pans, one-time use containers,
| etc, but a GoreTex jacket costs $400, not $40, and even
| the "cheap" GoreTex knockoffs cost $200...
| missedthecue wrote:
| What will happen is that the PFAS pan becomes $26 instead
| of $20. PFAS is not the most expensive part of the pan,
| only a minor component. A doubling or tripling of PFAS
| prices is unlikely to price anyone out of getting that
| pan or raincoat. It's just going to make middle and lower
| class people cumulatively billions of dollars poorer.
| shmageggy wrote:
| What will make people effectively poorer, not having non-
| stick coating on pans, or the large-scale poisoning of
| the natural world and our bodies?
| missedthecue wrote:
| There is no proof that PFAS is causing large scale
| poisoning. Industrial workers with insufficient PPE _may_
| get increased risks of health effects if they are subject
| to prolonged exposure to concentrated amounts. But so
| does exposure to fertilizer and aspartame. The research
| is not anywhere near saying PFAS are causing large scale
| poisoning.
|
| It reminds me of the microplastics debate too. Lots of
| panic about it, little scientific evidence that it is
| causing large scale health problems.
| shmageggy wrote:
| I'm glad lawmakers, investors, businesses, and nearly
| everyone else are not waiting around for "proof", since
| that is a nearly impossible standard. We know that these
| substances are everywhere, and there is evidence of it
| causing harm in animals and in humans
|
| > _With many health effects noted for a relatively few
| example compounds and hundreds of other PFAS in commerce
| lacking toxicity data..._ [1]
|
| If we were to wait to run studies on all of those
| hundreds of substances, there will just be that much more
| pollutant in our environments and bodies that will be
| virtually impossible to clean up. The risk/reward
| tradeoff is pretty clear.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7906952/
| pigsty wrote:
| Iron pans are ridiculously cheap these days and they last
| forever if you bother to read the 3 line instructions
| included with them.
|
| Teflon isn't as great as people were deceived into
| believing. Even if you're absolutely meticulous with
| care, it'll have a noticeable lack in non-stick abilities
| within months and be noticeably sticky after 2 years, and
| rapidly degrading into useless territory. An iron pan
| starts out about as sticky as a slightly used Teflon pan
| and feels like brand new Teflon after a few uses and
| stays that way for as long as a human lifespan.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I mean pans are only one thing. PFAS are used in many
| products. Yes you can make inferior substitutions but
| again this reduces standard of living.
|
| This is not to mention its widespread use in military
| applications. There is already concern about China's lock
| on the global supply of rare earths and other raw
| materials like silicon and magnesium (80%+ market share).
| What happens when the US can't make fighter jets because
| a belligerent China refuses to export PFAS?
| pigsty wrote:
| Generally, matters of national security are exempt from
| consumer goods safety regulations.
|
| A typical company also can't easily handle, say,
| plutonium, but if the military needs it, an exemption is
| granted.
|
| The typical consumer gets by without lead, asbestos, and
| so on. The consumer market will adapt.
| missedthecue wrote:
| But it doesn't look like a market of the government
| banning 3M from making it, they are exiting the market
| out of their own volition
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Does paying for the pollution really help fix the
| problem? Will the government use that money to filter
| rivers for PFAS?
|
| I think a lot of this need also comes from other
| supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic
| cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more
| toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if
| recycled properly.
|
| And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-
| Tex.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-
| Tex.
|
| Nope, they were fine. A bit heavier but far longer-
| lasting, including the waxed versions which can be re-
| waxed if needed to keep up waterproofing. I'm still using
| my army-issued raincoats from when I served in 1992, one
| of them has been with me on a number of expeditions
| (months of paddling the Yukon from Whitehorse to the
| Bering Strait, climbing several mountains, etc) where it
| doubled as a tent bottom, it is still perfectly
| serviceable. The lighter version I still use when
| cycling, it is still waterproof and the seams - which
| usually are the weak spot - still hold. I'm also using a
| 20yo wax coat which I re-waxed a few times (still using
| the original tin of wax), that one hardly contains any
| synthetics. Anything made of Gore-Tex would have
| delaminated after a few months of this type of use.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| But waxed fabrics don't breathe. That was the huge
| advantage of Gore-Tex.
|
| Being able to be dry and yet not get soaked in your own
| sweat was a really amazing invention.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Waxed fabrics do "breathe" more or less as much as much
| as Gore-Tex does and - important - keep on doing so as
| long as you keep them waxed enough but not too much.
| Don't make the coat look like a waxed cheese, you're
| using too much wax. Use enough to get the fabric to
| reject dripping or flowing water, no more. Gore-Tex was
| made to imitate this characteristic without the need for
| wax but once the membrane is damaged it can not be
| repaired, unlike waxed fabrics.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| This isn't true. The Gore-Tex layer isn't damaged like
| this. You're referring to the DNW coating, and there's no
| reason this can't be a waxed layer like old-school rain
| jackets. In fact a lot of companies started offering wax
| based DNW coatings in the name of environmental
| responsibility.
|
| The actual "Gore-Tex" layer, now no longer under patent
| and produced by many under names such as Dermizax, H2No,
| Sympatex and many others, is a thin, flexible, *fragile*
| PTFE membrane. This allows air through, and via a heat-
| pump-like mechanism drives water on its surfaces from the
| warm side to the cool side. There is no 'old school
| rainjacket' equivalent for this.
|
| Usually when your Gore-Tex jacket stops working it is
| because the DNW layer is gone. If you used a wax
| replacement the actual Gore-Tex would still be fine and
| your rain jacket would still be miles better than
| anything available 100 years ago.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| A search says more than a 1000 words - and so do the
| countless questions it produces on just the problem of
| delamination.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gore-tex+delamination
|
| It might work fine for a weekend hike but the stuff does
| not hold up to repeated strain. Eventually it'll start to
| delaminate at the shoulders due to wear from backpack
| straps, cuffs and other exposed spots. This 'eventually'
| will depend on what you're doing while wearing the
| things, as said that weekend hike won't put as much
| strain on it as does walking the Appalachian trail or
| crossing the Hardangervidda, let along climbing a few
| mountains. I like to use material which _keeps_ and _can
| be repaired if needed_ so for me this is a no-go. My
| backpacks are between 30 and 50 years old, my raingear
| between 20 and 30 years, my tents and sleeping bags
| between 20 and 25 years, my cooking gear is more than 40
| years old. It may not be fashionable - who cares about
| fashion when you 're alone in the woods - and it may not
| be the lightest or most high-tech but I know I can depend
| on it.
| spikeagally wrote:
| >> I think a lot of this need also comes from other
| supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic
| cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more
| toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if
| recycled properly.
|
| Why do you need to choose between plastic or paper
| (PFAS)? Does your work not provide glasses? Ceramic mugs?
| Can you not bring your own reusable water bottle?
| concordDance wrote:
| Why are people big on recycling plastic? In the West,
| non-recycled plastic goes to landfill and is LESS likely
| to end up in the oceans or whatever, as "recycling" is
| often sent overseas.
|
| In fact, single use plastic means more oil being used for
| plastic and less burnt for fuel, leading to lower CO2
| emissions.
| lukas099 wrote:
| If things cost more, people generally buy less of them.
| geysersam wrote:
| Paying for pollution makes the customer consider the full
| cost of the product, reducing demand to cases when the
| benefits of using the chemical are actually bigger than
| the external costs.
|
| It's not about using the money to solve the problems.
| It's about making the economy more efficient.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Price elasticity is real: if PFAS is more expensive,
| people will buy (and businesses will produce) fewer PFAS-
| derived products. Raising the price is especially nice
| because it causes price-elastic use cases (think PFAS
| coated paper cups) to drop out, while price-inelastic use
| cases (think teflon joint implants) are not made illegal,
| just more expensive. If the government earmarks PFAS tax
| revenue for remediation, that'd be awesome, but that's
| just a side benefit - the price increase is the main
| benefit.
|
| I do thing greenwashing and environmental whack-a-mole is
| a real problem (heck, we see it in the PFAS space with
| GenX replacing PFOA). I don't see that as a valid reason
| to do nothing.
| themitigating wrote:
| Better solution ?
|
| Let's take one example. Teflon coated cookware. As an
| alternative there are cooking sprays, butter, oils, or
| stiring the contents of the pan more frequently.
|
| In this case it's not a nessacity but a convenience. Why
| don't we start by restricting the use of PFAS to those
| products in which there are no alternatives and are a
| nessacity.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Ceramic cookware is also PFA free, and while it isn't
| 100% as good as Teflon for nonstick purposes, it's about
| 95% as good for roughly the same price.
|
| It's not all that much convenience you give up anyway. My
| home is PFA free for cookware (indoors, at least) simply
| by virtue of owning birds because PFA is toxic to birds.
| I have to use the pressure cooker and air fryer outside
| but the ceramic pans I use indoors do just fine and
| aren't too much harder to clean vs Teflon pans.
|
| I think the only noticeable pain where my ceramic pans
| clearly lose to Teflon is eggs - eggs want to cling to
| basically anything and Teflon is just really good at not
| having things cling to it. Otherwise it's almost always
| just as easy to clean the ceramic pans as it is to clean
| the Teflon ones.
| p1necone wrote:
| In my experience non stick pans are pretty awful,
| basically anything else is a better alternative.
|
| You can't get them hot enough to sear a steak properly
| without damaging the non stick coating, and the non stick
| coating is oleophobic which means that oil pools rather
| than spreading out so you can't get proper browning on
| anything even if you do cook it at an appropriate temp.
|
| Seasoned cast iron and carbon steel will be non stick
| without either of those downsides, and even regular
| stainless steel is perfectly fine as long as you let it
| heat up properly before using it.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| I love my cast iron, stainless, and carbon steel pans,
| but calling them nonstick is a stretch. In fact, their
| stickiness is pretty much their valuable property in
| getting good browning on food.
|
| You can definitely cook delicate fish and scrambled eggs
| on say, cast iron, but you will either be scraping hard
| during clean up or using an absurd amount of oil to cook.
| I don't mind it myself, but its clear why nonstick is
| popular.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I season my stainless steel pan with a few drops of oil,
| rubbed on with a paper towel. Very rarely do I have
| problems with anything sticking to it.
|
| If I'm searing a steak or something at high heat, sure,
| it's going to leave some burnt-on marks, but if you add
| water and leave it simmering on minimum heat with a bit
| of baking soda for 15 minutes, pretty much anything will
| wipe off with no effort.
| haswell wrote:
| A high quality, well seasoned cast iron pan will allow
| you to fry an egg while said egg slides around the pan as
| if nonstick.
|
| Not every pan is capable of this, and meticulous care is
| required to keep it in shape, but I became a believer in
| non stick cast iron when I first met a pan that could do
| it. I had used plenty of "stickier" cast iron pans before
| and my perspective shifted a bit.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Cast iron is useless for food with starch, eg. hash
| browns. The starch absorbs the seasoning and you end up
| with an unseasoned pan with burnt pieces stuck
| everywhere.
| haswell wrote:
| This is why an assortment of pans is critical. I have
| cast iron for sticky things, and cast iron for other
| things.
|
| And seasoning is a never ending task.
| adrianN wrote:
| Nonstick pans are not meant for searing steaks. They're
| meant for making things like creamy scrambled eggs that
| are difficult to get right on cast iron.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I agree. I used nonstick pans for a long time. But once
| the coating starts to degrade, they're _worse_ than
| decent-quality traditional cookware. Because food starts
| to stick, but you still can 't use metal utensils to
| scrape it off.
|
| Now I just use stainless-steel or (rarely) cast iron, and
| I'm much happier.
|
| And it's even cheaper, long-term. A decent stainless-
| steel pan costs $50-$200 USD, but lasts approximately
| forever. Whereas a decent non-stick equivalent costs
| $30-$50, but needs replacement every few years even if
| I'm careful with it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| IKEA make a fantastic stainless steel[1] pan called
| "SENSUELL". Best pan I ever bought! Heavy indestructible
| construction, heats evenly, retains heat, cleans easily,
| can be placed under the grill, looks good, etc. The price
| has gone up recently, but it's still great value IMO!
|
| [1] actually, like many high-end pans, it uses a 3-ply
| construction with an aluminium layer between two steel
| layers
| rngname22 wrote:
| The better alternative is for humans to suffer from not
| having good water-repellant substances but in the process
| avoid polluting the world.
| p1necone wrote:
| > A globally coordinated reduction in production only
| increases the price of products for consumers.
|
| Which is great. Higher prices = less usage.
|
| We don't have to eradicate them entirely before we see any
| benefit.
| missedthecue wrote:
| It depends on demand elasticity. Products with very
| little demand elasticity like energy or medicine just
| make everyone miserable and worse off when production is
| cut, because you can't live without them. Yes you can
| scrimp and save and stretch your dollar, but at the end
| of the day you have to pay up no matter the price.
|
| I'm not sure that anyone knows what the demand elasticity
| for an industrial chemical like PFAS is, but it's
| obviously not a completely discretionary item.
| adrianN wrote:
| Energy has a lot of demand elasticity, it just takes a
| few years for demand to catch up with price changes. See
| for example how fuel efficiency changed during the oil
| crisis a few decades ago. Or how building insulation
| changes with rising energy prices.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >Which is great. Higher prices = less usage.
|
| Don't lie to us by not mentioning the tradeoffs.
|
| Reduced standards of living = less spare f-s to give
| about abstract big picture issues (like pollution and
| climate change).
| triceratops wrote:
| Who knows? Maybe better health = more spare f-s to give
| about abstract big picture issues.
| [deleted]
| megablast wrote:
| Good. People buy less of them then.
| themitigating wrote:
| Just to chime in about your use of the word "signaling" and
| when others use "virtue signaling".
|
| I believe the traditional term is "setting a good example"
| and even if the motivation is selfish there's a positive
| outcome. "Virtue signaling" was invented to demonize this
| behavior by focusing on (the assumed) motive as selfish.
| triceratops wrote:
| The use of the phrase "virtue signaling" tells me
| immediately that the rest of the comment has absolutely no
| value whatsoever and can be safely ignored.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Good point. Yes, "setting a good example" is a better term,
| so it's not confused with virtue signalling.
| concordDance wrote:
| The term "virtue signalling" is supposed to only apply to
| cases where the act being done isn't actually much help.
| [deleted]
| jmcgough wrote:
| I'm curious - if companies knowingly continue to use PFAS for
| purely financial reasons, would they also risk liability? It's
| becoming increasingly clear from studies that PFAS are toxic to
| humans.
|
| There was that huge settlement by tobacco companies, despite
| the fact that tobacco is still legal, because they ignored
| clear science for years in order to make a profit.
| Jolter wrote:
| It's right there in the article. 3M have already been sued
| over this.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| We ban imports of Chinese PFAS, and the damage gets mostly
| localized to China.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I feel like in 10 years we will be reading panicky articles
| asking why the important production of PFAS and other synthetic
| organofluorines was offshored to an increasingly belligerent
| China.
| themitigating wrote:
| Products can be banned in countries so even if China creates
| them they can't sell them outside China.
|
| I don't get your argument, it's like "someone is going to do
| bad things therefore it's ok for me"?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| PFAS are used to make parts that have none in the end
| product. Eg all modern computer chips.
| themitigating wrote:
| Ok so because we can't ban it all we shouldn't ban any?
| missedthecue wrote:
| No my argument is that just like America decided that rare
| earths mining was gross and messy, therefore offshoring all
| of these strategic material production to their
| geopolitical foe, the same thing is liable to happen to
| other components and chemicals. Note that PFAS has _a lot_
| of military applications.
|
| Out of sight, out of mind right? Until you really need it.
| themitigating wrote:
| "No my argument is that just like America decided that
| rare earths mining was gross and messy"
|
| By saying "just like that" you are implying the decision
| was sudden and without reason. That's false.
|
| You also are basically saying "I'll be sorry" because the
| military needs them but are there alternatives and is it
| essential?
|
| Finally you used "gross" and "messy" as a manipulation
| technique. Messy is also used to describe anything from
| clothes left on the floor to in toys left out. Similar
| with "gross". You are trying to lump pollution with other
| benign activities to imply it isn't important.
| runnerup wrote:
| And china can put them on products and send them to the USA
| anyways and mis-label them because almost nothing that is
| imported is actually checked for toxic
| chemicals/paints/etc.
| krab wrote:
| They'll lobby for a ban of these chemicals, showing there's a
| safer alternative. That's a risk for the competitors and their
| customers.
| rtpg wrote:
| How does this argument not apply to everything? The
| counterfactual (where 3M continues to produce these) is ...
| obviously bad? Producing materials that are bad for the
| environment and human health! Now less is produced, at least in
| the short term.
|
| An example where your argument doesn't play out like you say:
| many chemicals manufacturers decided to no longer sell
| chemicals that would be used for administering the death
| penalty via lethal injection. So many did this that states _had
| to basically stop applying the death penalty_, and basically
| try and trick companies to sell them the materials. A win for
| those who pushed for that to happen (mitigated by the endless
| cruelty of the SC but..). Alternative companies didn't show up
| to "fill the gap".
|
| At one point doing things actually matters. Especially when we
| look at how large conglomerates own many parts of the value
| chain, at one point the end result is simply that these
| chemicals stop being used.
| jmathai wrote:
| The benefit Is true of all investments. The payoffs are down
| the road.
|
| In this case, the environment and health will reap the
| benefits once 3M brings alternatives to market that can
| compete with the current "bad" options.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Nature has no replacement for the electronegativity of the
| fluorine atom.
| lyind wrote:
| It seems like there are many usable substances which are
| hydrophobic (usable as a water repellent). Not so many
| alternatives which are oleophobic (oil repellent).
|
| I am sure proper research is being conducted to find
| replacements.
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1904
| /1/...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There are oleophobic alternatives, but nothing durable.
| Durability is proportional to the chemical bond strength.
| Faark wrote:
| The benefits could be way more immediate. Less supply might
| drive the price up, leading to less usage.
|
| 3M killing production and other signs of the product not
| having a future can drive away investments into competing
| suppliers.
| User23 wrote:
| > How does this argument not apply to everything?
|
| Well one hypothetical way it wouldn't apply is if the US
| federal government backed 3M's move and banned Chinese and
| other foreign companies from unfairly competing with a
| company that is choosing to avoid intentionally poisoning
| their customers.
| yannis wrote:
| It will need an international effort, like the Montreal
| Protocol for banning CFCs and HFCs. Legislation need to ban the
| end-use as well as the production of these chemicals. I was
| involved with a study in the late 80s early 90s about the
| economic impact of the Montreal protocol in southern Africa and
| there was huge resistance against it from major car
| manufacturers (the biggest consumption were car air
| conditioners at the time, more that the use of CFC-11 in foam
| packaging). Dealers stock piled stocks and rogue manufactures
| continued producing for many years. It takes 5-10 years for
| alternatives to be developed and 20-30 years for wide adoption
| before they disappear all together.
| baxtr wrote:
| This is often solved for by imposing import restrictions.
| xvilka wrote:
| As a chemist I am not sure it's even possible to create
| matching alternatives. The stronger links inside molecules and
| outside, the more they are "alien" to life and environment.
| While reducing their usage is a good strategy, an outright ban
| strips technology of useful materials.
| Jolter wrote:
| Can you name one essential application where PFAS is really
| necessary? Something where society would actually be
| substantially worse without it. I'm not talking about ski wax
| here.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Only reasonable example is AFFF fire fighting foam. But
| realistically the amount of liquid fuel fires that you have
| to fight in this world probably pale in comparison with the
| production volumes of unnecessary anti-stick cookware and
| gore-tex fabrics.
| themerone wrote:
| Firefighting foam is much more likely to contaminate
| groundwater, so relative production volume is not a good
| metric for environmental impact.
|
| Gore-tex isn't going to hurt anyone unless there is
| dumping or leakage in manufacturing.
| Jolter wrote:
| Right, I suspected that one ... There seems to be some
| products on the market already:
| https://firestopperus.com/pfas-free-firefighting-foams/
|
| Hopefully they don't contain something even more toxic
| than PFAS?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Orthogonal solvent used for making computer chips. I.e.
| nothing past the 100 nm node
| adrianN wrote:
| They are great in lubricants.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Yeah, imagine catheters before ptfe
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| Ptfe gaskets, lubricants, and maybe certain dielectric or
| insulator applications.
| glasss wrote:
| I have no experience or advanced education in chemistry or
| material sciences. Do you think it's possible that a ban
| would spur innovation? I imagine our modern world has use
| cases that can't just disappear or settle for something not
| as effective.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Unfortunately probably not much - the relevant properties
| come from the element itself (fluorine) where there
| literally doesn't exist an alternative. It is possible that
| some alternatives will come to light, but there is a
| limited design space and it's not as if people haven't been
| looking for cheaper[0] and better solutions.
|
| I'm curious as to the scope of this, and what end products
| are effected. A lot of the best-in-class greases (krytox)
| and orings (FFKM aka kalrez) rely heavily on fluoro-
| components. FFKM orings in particular are head and
| shoulders above everything else by ~100C worth of working
| temperature range. FKM 'Viton' orings are also incredibly
| popular and are widely used in automotive applications for
| temperature and oil resistance in addition to having major
| industrial uses.
|
| [0]Fluorine is a real PITA to produce and make derivatives
| from - environmental issues aside functionally equivalent
| non-fluorine compounds would almost always be cheaper.
| eternityforest wrote:
| For consumers goods there are already many alternatives
| though. Ceramic nonstick and nanotech based water
| repellents come to mind. They are good enough for average
| people who aren't avid hikers or foodies.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if they started using other
| plastics in frying pans one day, meant to be used with
| some fancy temperature control induction system. Lots of
| stuff is slippery enough for food applications, you just
| need one that's safe at the temperature oil gets to.
|
| I doubt my life would be affected much at all without any
| fluoropolymers in goods I directly own.
| erosenbe0 wrote:
| They can't be giving up on all organofluorines. They will
| find substitute polymers with shorter half-lifes
| yannis wrote:
| A ban does stimulate innovation, as the banning of CFs
| shows (See Montreal protocol), It spurs innovation for
| alternatives as there is good money in it and it also spurs
| innovation by end-users. It is a long and slow process
| though.
| titzer wrote:
| It's a question of priorities. Do you put human (and non-
| human) lifeforms' health and safety above technology, or not?
| If all you value is money and efficiency, then you end
| viewing things through the lens of what technology needs or
| wants, which is really just an extension of the economic
| policy of growth, growth, growth.
|
| Before Teflon, people had pans, and they cleaned them. After
| teflon, people will have pans, and they will clean them.
| eternityforest wrote:
| It's not even a case like lithium batteries where my
| lifestyle would be significantly impacted if I had to go
| without.
|
| To some degree prioritizing tech makes sense, if the tech
| is replacing some other thing that harms living beings
| more. I doubt an LED factory is environmentally perfect,
| but the alternative would probably be people using oil
| lamps in many places.
|
| And some things are just too convenient to give up for 1 in
| a million possible risks, like WiFi.
|
| But things that only benefit a small enthusiast community
| in nonessential ways with large costs to everyone else are
| just too much.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Hopefully Chinese people will push back against it and field an
| outrage just like we had in Belgium
| zdragnar wrote:
| A few years back, 3M entered a near-$1 billion settlement with
| Minnesota for PFAS groundwater contamination. I suspect they
| have been working on a replacement since 2010 or not long after
| (when the legal action first started up) and, given the two
| year timeline to phase them out, I'm thinking they've got the
| replacement already and just need to get it to market.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| _some_ will continue to buy the old stuff elsewhere.
|
| _some_ , however few and small, will choose to buy the new,
| more expensive, less convenient, less performant stuff for a
| variety of reasons, once it exists at all.
|
| And as time goes on, pressures and variables change.
|
| Nothing happens without starting somewhere, and the first step
| of ecery change that ever happened can _always_ be
| characterized as impractical, ineffective, irrational. And yet,
| countless such changes have happened anyway despite those
| perfectly reasonable sounding arguments.
| stevev wrote:
| Like lead was for humans in the last millennia, will PFAS be
| studied in our classrooms about a time where it was used for
| almost everything.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's probably good to get away from these things for single use
| consumer items, etc, but I fear we're undermining our
| manufacturing base, chasing it away overseas. I also wonder if
| how bad this stuff is is exaggerated (in part because we don't
| KNOW how bad it is). Oh well.
| rkagerer wrote:
| In other words: Competition is shrinking our margins on these,
| liability exposure is increasing, market growth is forecast to
| stagnate as customers move to alternatives, and the PR is bad.
| Good time to make a strategic withdrawal and spin it as
| environmental stewardship. (Not to say that wasn't a legit
| factor).
| aaron695 wrote:
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the
| move_
|
| Generally speaking, toxic substances are only "cheap" due to
| externalizing many of the costs involved, like increased
| healthcare costs and lost productivity. If you do a thorough
| analysis of the costs of using such chemicals, they aren't cheap
| at all.
|
| Maybe someday humans will get that.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, there is literally nothing this doesn't apply to, near as I
| can tell.
|
| We just gloss over, or hyperfocus on areas based on current
| fashions.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| This can be applied to basically all "cheap" things. There's a
| Russian saying: "a cheap person pays twice."
| andrepd wrote:
| The same thing applies to many other activities: fossil fuels,
| usage of single-use plastics that someone else will clean up,
| promotion of unhealthy and addictive substances like tobacco,
| etc.
|
| I am skeptic that market mechanisms achieve the best outcomes
| at all times, but I'm _positively certain_ they don 't when
| externalities are not even priced in!
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Maybe someday humans will get that._
|
| We do get it. Sometimes the costs aren't known in advance, and
| you can't include every _potential_ future issue in the cost
| /benefit calculus.
|
| Isn't that literally what the article is pointing at?
| Shareholders put pressure on the company to stop this, and they
| are. Sounds like a success story.
| rurp wrote:
| Expecting investors to vote against their own financial
| interests for the greater good is a terrible system. 3M
| investors only care because of the threat of lawsuits and
| other legal trouble; those are the mechanisms we need to
| improve. Stricter environmental rules and enforcement will
| force companies to reduce harmful externalities. The
| shareholder pressure is incidental.
|
| Free markets are generally bad at handling pollution because
| the costs are so diffuse and long term; there's often a way
| to increase profits at the expense of someone else's health
| in a manner that can't be precisely quantified immediately.
| hammock wrote:
| >Sometimes the costs aren't known in advance
|
| 3M knew for decades about the dangers of exposure to PFAS
| chemicals but didn't inform the public.
|
| During the 1970s and '80s, it conducted studies on its US
| workers that showed PFAS building up in the bloodstream.
|
| In 1977 the company determined PFOS was "more toxic than
| anticipated" in a study of rats and monkeys; in 1978 a monkey
| study had to be stopped after all the animals died within the
| first few days because the PFOS doses were too high.
|
| In 1980, minutes from an internal 3M meeting said workers at
| the factory in Antwerp were told the chemicals had been found
| in human blood, but the company decided not to tell the
| government
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| I don't think it's a success story when a chemical company is
| pressured to stop producing something because of it's health
| effects _after_ that chemical has made it into the blood of
| nearly every individual on the planet.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| While it's not 3M, American Scandal (Podcast) did a season on a
| coverup by DuPont that's totally worth listening to.
|
| https://wondery.com/shows/american-scandal/season/41/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I haven't done my homework but I find it strange that I hear
| so much about 3M while DuPont seems as bad -- or worse -- but
| it could simply be that I've read more about DuPont and I'm
| missing some inexhaustible list of atrocities 3M has
| committed.
| bwi4 wrote:
| DuPont discovered PTFE while exploring for new
| refrigerants. It was used in the Manhattan Project because
| it could resist flourine used in the gaseous diffusion of
| uranium, then marketed as Teflon after WWII.
|
| 3M discovered PFOS while developing rubber that wouldn't
| degrade when exposed to jet fuel, then marketed it as
| Scotchgard.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I shudder when I think about how I used to coat every new
| couch and my shoes with this stuff. No mask when
| applying. Skin contact for years...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Maybe someday humans will get that.
|
| Clearly 3M has. What's unfortunate is the long feedback loop.
| It takes a lot of damage before it starts becoming expensive
| for suppliers.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > 3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the
| move
|
| Seems like yet again corrupt and incompetent regulators and
| oversight fails, and real action only really happens when the
| courts are used to hold them to account for damages.
|
| EDIT: Maybe those libertarians do have a good idea now and
| again...
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Rather than "ancaps" you might rather look toward actual
| anarchism
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| The humans making the cost/benefit analysis are largely the
| ones whose cost is _actually_ external. I certainly wouldn't do
| the same math, but I'm not casually enriching myself by making
| people sick. The people who buy their products are largely
| their victims, not their accomplices.
|
| Nearly everyone does NOT own the means of production, and the
| few who do know exactly what's wrong and keep on doing it to
| everyone but themselves until they're forced to stop. Maybe
| someday we'll realize that too.
| bwi4 wrote:
| Technically, Blackrock and Vanguard own the means of
| production. We gave them the capital to do so through our
| pensions and 401(k)s. My 401(k) menu doesn't include ESG
| funds, but those that exist have higher expenses and lower
| performance than an indiscriminate index fund. If the
| regulators have been captured by lobbying and revolving doors
| to industry, the only option left is to vote with your
| wallet, but that's easier said than done.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > the only option left is to vote with your wallet
|
| I know it's not popular here but I'll say it: class
| analysis. You can vote with your fingers and bones. You can
| vote with your personal dignity. Your investment portfolios
| are just part of capitalism and it isn't predestined.
| maeln wrote:
| And voting with your wallet means that if you are poor,
| you have no voice.
| triceratops wrote:
| Divestment without regulations doesn't work. You dumping
| your polluting investments is just someone else's
| opportunity to pick them up for cheap and make a profit.
|
| Voting with your wallet is noble, but pointless. Vote with
| your actual vote.
| willio58 wrote:
| Agreed. If we could force companies to pay for externalized
| costs we could get to a net-zero earth immediately. Suddenly
| investments in green energy would increase 1000x
| runnerup wrote:
| I always thought that if our universe _is_ actually a
| simulation, it 's one of countless simulations trying to
| determine a solution to the Tragedy of the Commons.
|
| I suspect it's one of the hardest problems to solve in any
| universe.
| titzer wrote:
| Earth's ecosystems have evolved biodiversity for exactly this
| reason: to _recycle_ the waste products of life forms at all
| levels. They 've gotten really good at this. There is still
| geologic evidence of this having gone way, way out of
| control, like vast limestone deposits, coal, and fossil
| fuels. Those were the unrecyclable byproducts of the day. Who
| knows what plastic will look like in the geologic record, but
| at this point they look destined to be a fine dust that will
| give future (non-human, likely) geologists a perfect marker
| of the Holocene.
| oblio wrote:
| Life optimizes for the most efficient resource usage. Those
| deposits were not an efficient source of energy.
|
| But life itself is incredible, we have non-oxygen using
| lifeforms (inefficient, the earliest lifeforms), sulphur-
| eating lifeforms. Life can use up almost anything, <<if it
| has to>>.
|
| If it doesn't, it just leaves it alone.
| ambientenv wrote:
| "I suspect it's one of the hardest problems to solve in any
| universe" ... and yet solve it we must. I feel it will begin
| with a new enlightenment which will be thrust upon us as our
| survival becomes increasingly threatened and that will
| manifest in a rewriting of our core values and a redefinition
| of wealth more in line with and reverence for the natural
| world.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Tragedy of the Commons ... one of the hardest problems to
| solve in any universe.
|
| No, it's not at all. It's a problem that humans encountered
| for millennia and solved successfully again and again.
|
| That's what organized society is for.
| EastLondonCoder wrote:
| Is it really that hard though? On the top of my mind I can
| come up with several success stories of solving tragedy of
| the commons type of problems. For example:
|
| Global regulation around CFCs made the ozone hole shrink
|
| The don't mess with texas anti littering campaign and similar
| outreach programs worldwide reduced littering
|
| In general taxing negative externalities seems to have an
| effect
| amelius wrote:
| The solution isn't difficult. It is getting everyone to
| agree on that solution that is difficult.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Or is most of the difficulty in trying to convince people
| who've read articles about "the tragic of the commons"
| and think that's the natural state of the world that
| they're wrong?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Look out mother mature in general. It is brutal. Can we
| socially evolve like the Vulcans?
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Evolving into a culture of totalitarian rationalism like
| the Vulcan, would require irrational parties to be at an
| evolutionary disadvantage. That rules out any modern
| democracy from ever doing it, since discriminating anyone
| acting on instinct or feelings won't ever get a majority
| vote.
|
| Totalitarian regimes might succeed, though.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I wonder if we are "beyond the basics of evolution and
| selfish genes" now in terms of human intelligence,
| technology, society and soon: AI. For example once a
| species can edit it's own genes, you get to a point where
| maybe the genes "competing" and "being selfish" becomes
| meaningless, and some other defining "replication force"
| takes over as the dominate shaping of future life.
|
| We might get to "the selfish data"? Genes being a special
| case.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Narh, when it comes to breeding, we humans tend to be
| quite predicable. Outliers definitely exist, but they
| generally don't procreate as much as people who just feel
| the urge and go for it. In order to shape evolution you'd
| need to make what would essentially begin as an edge case
| and make sure it's such an advantage that it reduces the
| likelyhood of others having more children than you.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| True, and this is why ants and cockroaches are more
| "evolved" than humans. (although is it the being or the
| gene?) But humans can conceive bigger goals: we could
| genetically engineer new beings, and replace natural
| gestation with something else. These are untenable ideas
| but in 100 yrs ethics might change and the temptation to
| change _how_ we and things evolve would be there.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Absolutely, hence the remark about totalitarian states;
| such ideas aren't compatible with currently mainstream
| views.
| stuaxo wrote:
| We should remember that the original tragedy of the commons
| didn't happen, the idea was based on false assumptions around
| how greedy people are.
|
| We could start by looking at how people managed systems
| sustainably including the original commons.
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-
| false...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons was a false-flag by british
| aristocracy which enabled them to seize Commonhomd land
| from Commoners in 1500's and drive them into poverty and
| endantured servitude.
|
| In a single masterstroke they gained assets and labour.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| People act in their own self interest which is often at
| odds with the entire population's interest. See: prisoner's
| dilemma.
|
| Tragedy of the commons is now defined in game theory and is
| a naturally occurring phenomenon when people have limited
| resources and the drive to survive.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Sure. But define "limited resources" and "survive". When
| life is zero sum - i.e. either you die or I die, yes
| humans are often selfish. But in actual day to day life
| those situations are exceedingly rare. Our normal drive,
| in my experience, is to form communities around shared
| care of common resources - because that is often both in
| our personal self interest and in our communal interest.
| oblio wrote:
| Your article doesn't say what you're saying.
|
| Your article says that the tragedy of the commons does not
| have to happen, but we don't really have the numbers. Those
| examples could be cherry picking, and everyone's personal
| experience kind of says that the opposite is more common
| (commons mismanagement). That's why the original article
| was so influential: it gave a name to something we've
| always seen.
|
| It's great that we can assume tragedy of the commons is not
| as immutable as some law of physics, but it still looks
| like a powerful social force unless proven otherwise.
|
| And I imagine, like any social study, it's going to be very
| hard to get actual numbers for the tragedy of the commons
| versus comedy of the commons scenarios.
| tim333 wrote:
| I live in Britain where the original commons were located
| and have yet to see a tragic one. The idea may apply to
| things like overfishing.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Do you think the overfishing situation will get
| better/worse/same after Brexit?
| tim333 wrote:
| No idea to be honest.
| Xelynega wrote:
| That's a question that's nearly irrelevant to determining
| if overfishing is because of a tradgedy of the commons.
|
| If post-brexit overfishing numbers increase, what
| evidence is there that the increase is due to individual
| greed and not a government policy?
| jraby3 wrote:
| I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially
| plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc. This frequently means
| I'll be extremely thirst throughout some days but will wait
| till I get home or to work to drink filtered water out of the
| tap.
|
| I went to Las Vegas about a year ago on a work trip and
| realized that the hotel I stayed at uses more plastic bottles
| in an hour than I would use in my lifetime with no thought to
| conserving them.
|
| All this to say that tragedy of the commons is an extremely
| hard problem to solve, even when you know about it and care.
|
| I constantly repeat to myself "no single drop of rain thinks
| it's responsible for the flood" and try not to think of that
| Vegas hotel.
| XorNot wrote:
| Single use plastics literally don't matter if they end up
| in landfill. The vast majority of plastics in the ocean are
| coming from about 5 rivers in China. Plastic in a landfill
| is fine, it's a no-op: oil comes out of the ground, _does
| not get burned into CO2 in the atmosphere_ and then will go
| and sit in the ground for several thousand years (or more
| likely, we 'll dig it all back up once energy is cheap
| enough that it can depolymerized and reused).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You wrote: <<The vast majority of plastics in the ocean
| are coming from about 5 rivers in China.>> I tried to
| Google about it but found nothing. Where did you learn
| about it?
| XorNot wrote:
| I misremembered - it's 10 rivers, 8 of which are in Asia:
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368
|
| Summarised in this article:
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-
| polluti...
| standardUser wrote:
| Nothing government regulations with decent enforcement
| couldn't stop. We just need to elect governments that pass
| those regulations.
|
| The thing is, the majority of voters in most societies
| don't want those regulations.
| runnerup wrote:
| Actually the tragedy of the commons cannot be stopped by
| one government. If USA chooses to tax all externalities
| perfectly, both our production capacity and consumption
| will be a tiny sliver of its current quantities. By GHG
| alone we'd lose 80% of our economy, but that doesn't take
| into account the potential cost of removing dioxin and
| PFAS from our groundwater, remediating lithium mines,
| cleaning our air of fly ash, preventing any toxic
| chemical leaks, making our rivers and lakes and ponds
| drinkable again, etc. I believe that would reduce us to
| about 1% of our current GDP.
|
| Assuming we didn't riot ourselves to rubble, other
| nations will quickly outstrip us. Eventually we'd be a
| vassal state of another superpower. Either because they'd
| buy our politicians, use crises of supply shortages to
| force us into free trade deals which axe our externality
| taxes, or via outright force.
|
| Other nations would do to us what the USA did to Latin
| America when those nations wanted to throttle their
| development for ecological reasons in the 60's and 70's.
|
| Sustainably, we probably wouldn't even be able to keep
| and train a competitive military -- 6% of our nations
| carbon emissions are from our military, accounting for
| 52% of federal carbon footprint, and our military emits
| more GHG than 140 countries (individually/separately).
| oblio wrote:
| > Actually the tragedy of the commons cannot be stopped
| by one government.
|
| Perfect is the enemy of good.
|
| The US could focus on lower cost - high impact
| externalities taxing.
|
| It could persuade, cajole, bully its partners and allies
| to agree to a treaty doing the same. It did it for FATCA,
| for sure it can do it for climate change and general
| environmental destruction.
|
| Once you have such an international treaty in place, most
| of the rest of the world would follow. US partners and
| allies are probably 70% of the world economy, and the
| countries with the most slack, economically, that can
| best afford this.
| standardUser wrote:
| "We just need to elect governments "
|
| Yeah, I said governments, plural.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I would try not to worry too much though.
|
| It becomes a sickness at some point. Check out Scott Adam's
| law of slow moving disasters if you want some optimism.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Doesn't look like much of a 'law' to me. His optimism
| ignores some fundamental facts, like living in a (nearly)
| closed system. So there must be a point at which oil
| production will decline because our usage far outstrips
| it's production. Humans are trying to adapt yet I don't
| think extraction from shale, fracking, and giant super
| buildings in the desert are going to solve the
| fundamental issues around sustainability.
| bilsbie wrote:
| He's not saying to ignore problems. Rather that we tend
| to fix things just in time once the problem becomes very
| apparent. Y2K is the best example. Fixing the ozone hole
| would be another one.
| jraby3 wrote:
| I really don't worry too much. I'm lucky to be surrounded
| by the tech seen in Israel and just see so many
| innovative ideas and solutions to various problems on a
| daily basis.
|
| It's more that it just doesn't seem worth it. We use a
| bag for a few minutes and it's in our environment for
| 1000 years. It seems like such a bad trade to me.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| You really shouldn't do this. You are risking your health
| by becoming dehydrated. I'm not sure your avoidance of
| plastic at all costs even makes sense on any level.
| dublin wrote:
| Funny how Europeans and others aren't constantly
| "hydrating" (in fact, they tell me they think Americans
| are silly for carrying water bottles around), yet they
| never suffer any effects of dehydration. (Most European
| meals are served with only single-digit ounces of
| liquid.) You really don't need to drink very much, and in
| fact drinking large quantities can produce some bad
| effects by demineralizing the body (magnesium in
| particular, but many others too), especially over the
| long term...
| jraby3 wrote:
| I monitor my urine color and how I feel. If I feel bad
| I'll grab a glass of water or even buy a plastic bottle,
| but that happens maybe once a year.
|
| I really think that people aren't that fragile and the
| bottled water industry has done an excellent job of
| making people think they need to constantly hydrate in
| order to not have a heat stroke.
|
| Imo it's enough to just pay attention to yourself and how
| you feel.
| dmd wrote:
| About 20 years ago, I made a mistake at work which I later
| calculated put an extra 8500 metric tons of CO2 into the
| atmosphere. (It had to do with the delay/routing of a cargo
| ship.)
|
| There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could
| come even close to making up for that...
| dublin wrote:
| Fortunately, this planet has abundant land and sea life
| that will absorb and fix that carbon dioxide for you,
| liberating highly reactive oxygen in the process. No
| problem - the amount of carbon used is proportional to
| the amount of carbon available. All available evidence
| shows that CO2 lags global temperature rises, rather than
| leading it. Science IS real, and it says carbon is NOT a
| pollutant.
|
| You should have no guilt over this (although efficiency
| is always to be aimed for). And carbon is probably the
| least objectionable byproduct of burning the bunker oil
| that fuels ships - you can't make anything that heavy
| burn cleanly without insane combustion temperatures.
| herrrk wrote:
| Hate to be that guy but surely this is a (citation
| needed) scenario. Especially because google sez you're
| wrong.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Oh, wouldn't it be nice if that were true...
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >There is literally nothing I could possibly do that
| could come even close to making up for that...
|
| I can say from personal experience this is not true! You
| can help fix other people's mistakes! I was an energy
| engineer for a while.
|
| You'd be amazed just how much low-lying fruit there is in
| terms of energy waste. I was also GOOD at this job.
| Instead of doing the brainless measures, I would really
| dig and do a lot of modeling and data mining and stuff to
| figure out truly optimal solutions. My fee + cost of
| measures were easily covered within 1-year of savings,
| and yet it was an incredibly difficult sell to get people
| to want to spend the money.
|
| But... I had one client, for whom I had to sign an NDA,
| that single-handedly blew all the others out of the
| water. They had been emitting LARGE (like, think ~1
| ton/month) quantities of sulfur hexafluoride for years.
| Sulfur hexafluoride, if you don't know is 23,500 times
| more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. This had been
| going on for YEARS.
|
| Our three-man team came in and was able to find all the
| leaks with some really nice thermal cameras so they could
| replace the failed seals and parts.
| david422 wrote:
| Sure there is. I'm assuming you also routed cargo ships
| more efficiently in your job which prevented extra CO2
| from being released. You can't pull the CO2 back in, but
| you can still prevent future CO2 from going out.
| elevaet wrote:
| That's in the range of 10x the CO2 an average human will
| produce in their lifetime. If you could find a way to get
| 20 people to cut their emissions in half, or 200 people
| to reduce it by 5%, or 1000 people by 1%, you could
| balance out your CO2 ledger :)
|
| Or, if you still work in the industry and can find a way
| to make the shipping routes more efficient, or prevent
| future mistakes like that, you could make it into the
| green and achieve CO2 karmic heaven!
| is_true wrote:
| One alternative is to add a couple of free condom
| machines to a couple of local bars. haha
| culopatin wrote:
| So avoiding the birth of 10 humans makes up for it?
| Doesn't sound like that much.
| cj wrote:
| (Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than
| your lifetime's worth of CO2 is to not have children. By
| not having children, you're not just saving the CO2
| output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that
| could have resulted from that single child.
|
| Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who
| wants to have children :)
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Murder is even more effective.
| bernawil wrote:
| vote for Genghis Khan of the Green Party!
| int0x2e wrote:
| simondotau wrote:
| I would hope and assume that the community rules of HN
| don't look kindly upon advocating the murder of any
| specific individuals.
|
| That aside, I think it's naive to assume that your
| proposed action would have a relevant outcome. Any
| successor is going to need to travel between facilities
| just as much -- if not moreso -- as they are brought up
| to speed and need to have ongoing meetings with
| executives and managers across a dozen locations.
|
| Not to mention the travel involved in post-death matters
| of funerals, media coverage, high profile criminal
| investigations, and so on. And of course the wealth of
| one person then gets inherited by perhaps a dozen people,
| any of whom might live a more lavish (i.e. carbon
| intensive) lifestyle when they inherit even a small
| fraction of such enormous wealth.
|
| Quite frankly I don't see how your proposal has any
| chance of being remotely carbon positive.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with you per se, but I do
| think these "EV-lite" type analyses are too broad:
| environmentally conscious people may be more likely to
| have children who are environmentally conscious, work on
| climate engineering, &c.
|
| That's not to say that we should encourage them
| specifically to have children either; just that children
| represent potential in a way that the number of bunker-
| fuel cargo ships does not.
| TrickyRick wrote:
| Even the most environmentally conscious person in an
| industrialized nation will emit massive amounts of CO2 in
| their lifetime, provided of course that nobody invents a
| "quick fix" for CO2 emissions in their lifetime. Of
| course in theory the child could be that person to invent
| that quick fix, but the expected value is still that the
| child will contribute to a lot of CO2 emissions.
| woodruffw wrote:
| The point is that "will emit massive amounts of CO2"
| isn't a complex enough metric: if that's how we're
| calculating EV (which I disagree with in the first
| place), then it would be perfectly appropriate for me to
| go around killing truck drivers and suburbanites.
| nightski wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Climate change is happening. It
| doesn't matter what we do as individuals, the system
| can't be changed from individual action and it can't be
| changed via collective action as that would require full
| cooperation.
|
| There is no practical way we can achieve the goal of
| survival for all through reduction of CO2 emissions. It's
| a farce because we'll never get all parties to agree.
|
| The only path forward is to hope we have some very clever
| science and engineering that can help us survive this
| disaster.
| walleeee wrote:
| > There is no practical way we can achieve the goal of
| survival through reduction of CO2 emissions. It's a farce
|
| It's a farce because it's already too late for emissions
| reductions to cut it. We need to pull carbon _out_ of the
| atmosphere or, as you say, engineer other solutions.
|
| But a robust solution is not going to be limited to the
| physical/material domain. Societies are malleable and so
| are people. We need to design ourselves and our
| activities into a vibrant planetary ecology, not throw up
| our hands and try to patch around historically contingent
| circumstances
|
| As Octavia Butler put it, God is change, and change is
| not to be reacted to, but to be _shaped_
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I've thought about this. I think it really depends on
| whether we need more climate-minded voters in the future.
| If we do then those susceptible to this message are
| exactly the wrong ones to hear it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| We need climate-minded voters _now_ , not years in the
| future. In fact, even now is too late really: we needed
| them 40 or 50 years ago!
| serf wrote:
| there is nothing controversial about pointing out the
| connection between having kids and CO2 output, the
| controversy begins when telling people which way they
| should decide.
| nrclark wrote:
| That's true. It's also an entirely different tragedy of
| the commons. If nobody has children, we are going to be
| screwed when our generation is too old to work.
| lazide wrote:
| Overheated flooding Greenhouse with a bunch of geriatric
| seniors bitching at each other and pointing fingers and
| with no one able to actually get up and do anything
| sounds about right.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| If nobody has children, then it won't matter if there is
| more or less CO2 in the air. Environmental quality
| doesn't have inherent moral worth. The moral worth is in
| the impact it has on people in the world. Nothing at all
| matters any more if there are no people.
| starkd wrote:
| yes, take away the single greatest potential joy people
| can have in their lives. Great plan for humanity, chief.
| burntwater wrote:
| Children are _a_ potential source of great joy. Saying
| they are the single greatest source is hyperbolic and
| frankly offensive in some ways.
| carapace wrote:
| You can always adopt?
| cj wrote:
| I'm gay, and I don't feel like the single greatest
| potential joy has been taken from me.
|
| There are ways to have children without creating your
| own.
| jnwatson wrote:
| To optimize, you should aim to kill as many people as
| possible. Bonus points for killing children of wealthy
| individuals, since they have the highest potential for
| future CO2 usage.
| mcronce wrote:
| The real lifeprotip is always in the comments
| olau wrote:
| It's also not great advice for humanity. Better to have a
| CO2 high future than no future at all.
| triceratops wrote:
| They might be the same future though.
| simondotau wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think any (serious)
| high CO2 predictions involve the extinction of our
| species, but rather extensive displacement as a changing
| climate changes zones of habitability on our planet.
| tremon wrote:
| We're currently running a simulation to refute or confirm
| your assumption. Check back in some 150-200 years to see
| if your assumption was true.
| simondotau wrote:
| Will do
| jraby3 wrote:
| That's a sunk cost. You can't change the past and it
| shouldn't affect your future decisions.
|
| Plus someone in your position doing a great job could
| probably save a ton of carbon from hitting the
| atmosphere.
| brohee wrote:
| You can plant 8500 trees. Various entities do it for as
| little as $1 per tree (e.g. https://onetreeplanted.org/).
| If that stops you sleeping that's possibly affordable.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Which would be dead or a worthless monoculture that
| killed a healthy ecosystem in a few years, right?
| brohee wrote:
| Quite a few of them got at it intelligently, and actually
| restore healthy ecosystems destroyed by the burning and
| grazing that was once practiced.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| In one sense it may never, but in another sense it will.
| In that other sense, you know a mistake to avoid and
| perhaps can enlighten those around you not to make the
| same sense. Accidents happen, but you make up for them by
| making sure those accidents don't happen again or are
| very likely to be repeated.
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| You just have to keep working and do a better job from
| that point on.
|
| If you make fewer mistakes than the person who replaced
| you if you quit, you will make up for your mistake
| eventually.
| concordDance wrote:
| Why try and minimise single use plastic? That's oil going
| straight back into the ground (landfill) rather than being
| refined into petrol and burnt!
|
| Single use plastic is way better than recycled plastic at
| slowing global warming.
| Reason077 wrote:
| A lot of it doesn't just go into the ground. It ends up
| getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean where it
| pollutes beaches, and gets ground down into micro-plastic
| particles which poison sea life. Still more gets
| incinerated, creating local air pollution and
| contributing to carbon emissions.
| concordDance wrote:
| If you're putting single use plastic in a non-recycling
| bin in the developed world its pretty much guaranteed to
| go to landfill, not the sea. More so than putting it in a
| recycling bin where they might transport it on a ship to
| China.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Welcome to the developed world (in my case: Germany),
| where recycling is enforced by ordinances and/or
| contracts with your waste removal organisation, which
| will check if you did so properly, and refuse to take
| your refuse away if they think you have not recycled
| properly enough.
| Reason077 wrote:
| In many (most?) European cities the non-recycling bin
| will go to an incinerator, not landfill.
|
| China banned the import of waste in 2018. But other
| countries do still import it.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| > It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean
|
| Not where I live (northeastern USA), where the vast
| majority of discarded plastic ends up in landfills.
| Virtually none gets "washed (or dumped) into the ocean";
| the minor exception is trash dropped by thoughtless
| people.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" the minor exception is trash dropped by thoughtless
| people."_
|
| In many parts of the world, this is completely normal,
| unfortunately, not a "minor exception". Even here the UK,
| canals and rivers are often full of floating plastic
| bottles, bags, and other litter. I know because I've
| volunteered to clean it up: the quantities we pull out is
| insane. And a few weeks later, it's all back again.
| Frustrating and sad.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" This frequently means I'll be extremely thirst
| throughout some days"_
|
| Why not carry a reusable water bottle? I have a great
| double-wall steel bottle (Hydro Flask), which is much
| better than a plastic bottle because it keeps water cold
| all day long and is basically indestructible.
|
| In most places I travel to it's not difficult to find
| sources of clean, cold water to refill it. Worst case, I
| will buy a large bottle of water to refill it from, which
| at least is cheaper and generates less waste than using
| multiple small plastic bottles throughout the day.
| smilekzs wrote:
| For me, there's always a metallic residual taste in my
| water whenever I use a stainless steel bottle. Got tired
| and returned to using normal mugs.
| feet wrote:
| Glass is an option
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Glass with a silicone sleeve over it is surprisingly
| resilient. I have had a few glass bottles with silicone
| covers that I carry around (not all at once...) and have
| dropped them more times than I can recall and they always
| just bounce. Of course they can break, especially if you
| do something like put it in your shopping cart and drop
| something heavy on it (whoops).
| dublin wrote:
| The inertness of glass not only makes it always the first
| choice for food contact, it's also the most cleanly
| recycled material on the planet, when it does break.
| Unlike plastics (which for all practical purposes can't
| really be recycled), and metals, which require complex
| separation and realloying, glass can be easily separated
| visually and reused indefinitely. It is quite likely that
| the glass in your refrigerator right now contains glass
| first produced by the Romans.
|
| (Of course, we should just reuse glass containers, like
| we did when I was a kid - a small deposit is a big
| motivator for kids to collect bottles for reuse!)
| TylerE wrote:
| Big caveat that all that recyclability really only works
| for clear glass.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Glass is heavy and causes transportation tires to
| generate more micro plastics on the highway and has a
| higher co2 emission burden.
| feet wrote:
| More than steel? We're talking about reusable bottles
| here, shipped empty. What is the comparison of empty
| glass or steel to full plastic? What is the difference in
| mass?
| nebopolis wrote:
| There exist industrial reaction vessels etc which are
| made of stainless steel with a bonded liner made of
| glass. That seems like the ideal "forever" food container
| material to me - chemically nonreactive and easy to
| clean, but lightweight and resilient to impact. The glass
| layer would be lost in recycling, but it shouldn't impede
| recycling the metal too badly as it'd just be a tiny bit
| more slag in the crucible.
| zip1234 wrote:
| That's a good point. Need to stop subsidizing over the
| road trucking and build more rail. Much more efficient.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| If you're sensitive to metallic residual taste, then look
| for containers made from a type of stainless that meets
| your needs. There are many kinds [1], I prefer 316 but
| you might need 321 for example. Some day I'll engage a
| machinist to fab one up for me that uses standard gaskets
| I can get from any MRO firm in the world.
|
| [1] https://www.brikksen.com/home/page/blog?p=the-
| different-grad...
| bushbaba wrote:
| Many of the metal water bottles come with a plastic liner
| to avoid the metallic taste
| atombender wrote:
| Some also come with a non-stick (Teflon-type) coating.
| Zojirushi makes incredibly nice vacuum-insulated bottle
| [1] that unfortunately has a non-stick liner. The inside
| of the bottle is super easy to clean, but the chemicals
| used in the manufacturing are awful.
|
| [1] https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6
| &tid=17...
| jankeymeulen wrote:
| Good you mention a teflon-type coating in a discussion
| about 'forever chemicals'.
| amluto wrote:
| Zojirushi also makes them without the liner. It's a
| choose-your-poison situation: the lined ones seem to
| perform much better with green tea.
| atombender wrote:
| Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. What do you mean by
| "perform" here?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Could be the green tea is made with slightly lower
| temperature water so less likely to leach chemicals off
| of the liner
| amluto wrote:
| Green teas seem to stop tasting good after a fairly short
| time stored in a stainless steel bottle.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Which brand(s) did you use? I use Contigo, Stanley,
| Alaaddin and (old) Starbucks tumblers and bottles, and
| they leave no taste in the water.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Stainless steel starts with a metallic taste, but after
| first week of use it is usually gone. Also there is
| titanium and aluminium.
|
| Or just get a reusable plastic one, perfect can be an
| enemy of good.
|
| Individual use of plastic is not relevant, as long as it
| goes to landfil and not ends up in the ocean througg
| recycling fraud. In UK most plastic ends up sent to
| poland, where it's burnt or sent onwards to Turkey where
| it becomes untraceable. I stopped recycling plastic
| because the system cannot be trusted - at least if it
| stays in UK you know it wont be hurting anyone.
|
| Half of plastic waste in the ocean waste is discarded
| fishing nets.
| [deleted]
| amluto wrote:
| I once did a fair amount of experimentation and found
| titanium to impart a much stronger metallic taste than
| stainless steel.
|
| Aluminum is not an amazing food contact surface -- it's
| quite reactive. I would not use an uncoated aluminum
| bottle for anything other than plain water.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I have never tried titanium, surprused to hear it does
| that.
|
| The aluminium bottle I have is likely coated, I wouldn't
| know - i do use it just for water, and it seems fine.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I have never tried titanium, surprused to hear it does
| that.
|
| The aluminium bottle I have is likely coated, I wouldn't
| know - i do use it just for water, and it seems fine.
| jraby3 wrote:
| It's definitely a choice. I prefer to travel light even
| if it means I'll be thirsty sometimes.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| There are some truly tiny and thin metal flasks. Even a
| little water is surely better than none.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Yes, but if you're sipping out of one at, say, the dog
| park, don't be surprised if people give you funny looks.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I've seen people try to have a full course fast food meal
| at a dog park. Maybe they got some funny looks (mostly
| from the canines), but everything was fine in the end.
|
| Life's too short to be worried about funny looks.
| opan wrote:
| >I have a great double-wall steel bottle (Hydro Flask),
| which is much better than a plastic bottle because it
| keeps water cold all day long and is basically
| indestructible.
|
| They actually dent quite easily. I have a 40oz Hydro
| Flask with a couple dents from an incident with a spider
| a couple years ago. I had my bottle on the counter top
| while I was eating and suddenly a spider was on it. In an
| attempt to kill the spider, I knocked over the bottle on
| to the wooden floor (trying to squish it). It dented the
| bottle near the top and on the bottom. I looked up some
| videos and it's definitely not just me. Found one where
| it looked like a whole family dented theirs and they used
| a trick with dry ice and a hair dryer to fix them. I
| don't know if it gets harder to fix the longer you wait.
| Mine still works okay, so I haven't done anything about
| it.
|
| I'm pretty sure the outside is aluminum, fyi, unless they
| make multiple types. The inside part is probably steel.
|
| I love my Hydro Flask and have drank more water because
| of it. My only complaint is that the straw lid gets a lot
| of crap building up in the small gaps and it seems
| impossible to adequately clean. Maybe an ultrasonic
| cleaner could do it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I'm pretty sure the outside is aluminum, fyi, unless
| they make multiple types. The inside part is probably
| steel."_
|
| The original standard Hydro Flask is, except the lid,
| entirely Type 304 stainless steel (aka: 18/8 steel),
| powder coated on the outside.
| bradstewart wrote:
| I've had the same hard plastic Nalgene water bottle for
| 10 years or so. Doesn't dent, doesn't break, costs about
| $10.
| throwanem wrote:
| I've had good luck with Simple Modern steel bottles,
| including back when I still hiked and did urbex and kept
| one strapped to the side of my backpack. It came through
| everything from scrambling up and down steep forested
| hillsides to getting bounced off crumbling masonry with
| little more than the occasional chip or scratch to the
| finish. I've dropped it plenty of times too, of course,
| and it's likewise survived unscathed.
|
| I can't vouch for its durability when used to beat a
| spider to death because I'm not afraid of tiny harmless
| animals, but in every other respect I have nothing but
| praise.
| beezlewax wrote:
| You can carry a water bottle in a small backpack or if
| you're in a city with fountains use them. Or buy water that
| comes in cartons though I'm not sure it's easy to find
| these or if they're actually plastic free.
| jraby3 wrote:
| I realize that. It's definitely a choice since I like to
| travel light and walk a lot.
| cyxxon wrote:
| I have used the Stash bottle from Hydrapak [1] for a few
| years now, that one is the definition of light, and very
| versatile. The interesting thing is that the opening fits
| the filter by Katadin made for their BeFree bottles [2],
| so you could even take that on hikes where you are not
| entirely sure of the water quality (filters particles and
| bacteria, but not viruses). I actually carry and use this
| combo, not related to the companies.
|
| [1] https://hydrapak.com/collections/water-
| bottles/products/stas... [2]
| https://www.katadyngroup.com/us/en/8019641-EZ-Clean-
| Membrane...
| asenkyr wrote:
| Water (or any other liquid) packed in cartons is mostly
| just green washing.
|
| Most of the cartons are either lined with plastic, or
| they are tetra packs. Both of these options (especially
| tetra packs) are much more difficult to recycle and worse
| for the environment than simple PET bottles.
| int0x2e wrote:
| Please, please, please stay hidrated! As a person on their
| 3rd round of kidney stones - please drink more water!
| bboygravity wrote:
| The amount of plastic ending up in oceans/nature from "The
| Western world" is not very significant relative to the
| total.
|
| There are entire continents that essentially dump most of
| their (plastic) trash straight into rivers (and thus
| oceans). Looking at you (South East) Asia...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The Western wolds is comitting massive fraud and has you
| fooled too.
|
| In UK recyclers get paid by the government a small amount
| per ton recycled. It is , however, not enough to trully
| recycle anything. So they take out a few valuable
| plastics, and pay randpm company in poor country to tale
| this plastic, and to sign paperwork saying that it's
| going to a recycling facility. In reality it will simply
| be dumped, and money will be pocketed.
|
| Then when someone complains, they pull the documents thst
| were signed by some random fall guy, make a surprised
| face, and claim they thought the plastic would be
| recycled.
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| Where does it end then ? Burned in the air ? I don't know
| if it is worse or better, I have no data about it. But I
| suppose it's neither neutral.
|
| Recycling plastic is very hard as a single product is
| often a combinaison of different kind of 'plastics',
| which happen to be a generic name for different
| materials, and which impose different kind of treatment
| for each of them. Colored plastics add up to the issue as
| you can't recycle different colored plastic of the same
| kind together...
|
| For example, a single coca-cola bottle is typically made
| of 3 kind of plastics : the bottle itself (transparent),
| the cap(red with white or black scripting), and the
| wrapping around of the bottle (made of 2 or 3 different
| colors).
|
| And that's nothing compared to toothpaste tubes, which
| was taken as an example in a recent 'Der Spiegel' issue
| to illustrate the ecologic nightmare plastics represent.
| And let's not forget ketchup plastic bottles, which is
| also some kind of marvel of assembled plastic enginering.
|
| Plastic recycling is currently more a matter of vertue
| signaling than a reality as only 1 to 5 percent of
| plastic (I don't know the exact numbers) is curently
| recycled worldwide.
|
| In western world (or at least in europe), most of them
| are incinerated in electricity thermal generators or
| buried in waste dumps.
|
| Until recently, american waste (plastics) were send to
| China to be buried or burned, until the chinese
| government made it illegal.
|
| The real indicator should be some kind of a 'plastic
| consumption index' by countries and/or companies and/or
| household, used to monitor the amount we produce it, use
| it and get rid of the waste.
| wirrbel wrote:
| I recently mail-ordered rice, and because I wanted to buy
| two different styles I did not opt for the 3kg (like 6 lbs)
| bag but 2 packs of 1.8kg. Turns out 1.8kg were packed in 3
| bags of 600g, so now I have 6 bags at 600g rice, that on
| first glance look like they are paper, but its actually
| plastic coated paper. Its really hard to avoid at times.
|
| As for avoiding bags I have two wicker baskets like this
| https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B009BMXLLI/ which
| means I can avoid shopping bags and they are actually quite
| convenient for carrying.
|
| Tap water is luckily very drinkable in Germany (rumor has
| it that Coca-Cola company bottles it and sells it under
| their 'Bonaqua' brand).
|
| However, there is so much out of our control with plastics
| that require regulation. Just think of the packaging.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| Most bottled mineral water is just filtered tap water
| with some different minerals added to give it flavor.
| wongarsu wrote:
| This varies by market. In the US, they just bottle tap
| water. In Europe this is really unusual, bottled water
| uses their own wells with different requirements and
| regulations. For example a stable mineral concentration
| and taste is very important for mineral water, but of
| secondary concern for tap water. Also tap water might
| come from surface water (rivers etc) while mineral water
| doesn't.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| In Poland, there's "mineral water" where it needs to
| fulfill those requirements, and "spring water" that is
| basically bottled tap water. The first one costs like
| 0,5$ for 1,5L , while second one can be bought for as low
| as 0,2$.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Germany has mineral water and table water. Table water is
| the bottled tap water.
|
| Though where I live, even table water would be better
| than unfiltered tap water. Not because of health concerns
| (I actually had my tap water lab tested as the building
| is from the 60s), but because of limescale in the kettle
| and disgust on my tastebuds ;)
| RajT88 wrote:
| Does the preferences for the qualities bottled water in
| Germany have any intersection with the history of public
| springs emitting carbonated mineral water?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHvj0MJw7z4
| Semaphor wrote:
| I have no idea, but I also prefer uncarbonated water ;)
| wongarsu wrote:
| You mean if everyone else's preference for flat water is
| linked to their springs emitting flat water?
|
| After the world seems to be in agreement that CocaCola
| and most lemonades are best served carbonated. But for
| water there's this weird schizm over carbonation.
| Gud wrote:
| Tap water is vastly different depending on where it is
| sourced. In my experience, most countries have pretty bad
| tap water.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I still think about how good Vancouver tap water is
| compared to the stuff we get in London.
| Reason077 wrote:
| London tap water varies a lot in different parts of
| London. When I used to live in North-West London it was
| very hard (ie: full of minerals) so you'd constantly be
| cleaning the limescale gunk out of your shower, off your
| taps, etc. And I also remember it smelling noticeably
| "chlorinated" at times. Now I live in East London (E14)
| and it seems much softer - we get a bit of limescale but
| nothing like it was at my old place, and no pool-water
| smells.
|
| But anyway, I think anywhere in London, so long as you
| run it through a filter (ie: Brita filter) and chill it,
| it tastes more or less as good as any bottled water.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Yeah I've never thought London water was bad, but
| Vancouver water tasted amazing.
| HPsquared wrote:
| After a few rounds of filtration it's all going to be the
| same.
| Reason077 wrote:
| But if you carefully filter and re-mineralise it before
| bottling, you can turn it into more or less the same
| product anywhere.
| donatj wrote:
| I would say it varies pretty widely on a much smaller
| than country level, moreso by source. Water from an
| aquifer almost always tastes much better than water from
| a river.
| hashhar wrote:
| Tom Scott did a video about bottled-water, tap-water and
| mineral-water regarding this - see
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD79NZroV88
|
| It's interesting because the correct answer is that each
| country/region has different expectations from bottled
| water, mineral water.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I had a similar discussion with friends who said they were
| going to stop flying completely. To me all you are really
| doing there is reducing the cost at the margin by reducing
| the demand by a tiny amount.
| pigsty wrote:
| That example is one reason why legislation is necessary.
|
| There will always be detractors saying we should just make
| people want to make the right choice, but all it takes is
| one person in a company to make a decision that outweighs
| the collective efforts of millions.
| dublin wrote:
| Aristo! Aristo! A la lanterne!
| latexr wrote:
| > I try really hard not to use single use plastic.
| Especially plastic bags
|
| People treat plastic bags as single use, but you can reuse
| them for years. I'm not saying you should seek them out,
| but don't just throw them away after one use when you find
| yourself with some.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| I love thin grocery store plastic bags, and reuse each
| one dozens of times. But my local government (small
| Massachusetts city) banned them, so now grocery stores
| have to use paper (much less reusable) or extra-thick
| bags (more bulky, less flexible, don't last significantly
| longer).
|
| It takes real amounts of thought to reduce your
| footprint; the visible/obvious solution often isn't the
| right one.
| jraby3 wrote:
| I end up using the bags I get (from food delivery,
| shopping for fruits etc) as garbage bags or dog poop
| bags. So I reuse the ones I have. But they still last
| 1000 years in our environment to save me a minimal amount
| of convenience.
| swarnie wrote:
| I've got to a similar conclusion as you but with a very
| different outcome.
|
| It makes absolutely no difference if i minimise my plastic
| or diligently sort them for recycling because a Vegas hotel
| will make all my efforts for naught.
|
| Climate change is already here and there is nothing the
| individual can do about it. The optimum play now is to
| accept that the group is useless and make individual steps
| to mitigate the effects on you personally.
|
| Sorry, never nice doing a pre-7am nihilism dump.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Apathy guarantees failure. "All it takes for evil men to
| succeed..." and all.
| jraby3 wrote:
| I think individuals can help but not so much by
| conservation. More in trying to affect policy change at
| local or national political agencies.
| wjnc wrote:
| Dehydration is more of a risk to you than the environmental
| risks you marginally save on others. Still I applaud the
| effort since the economists view is too restricted.
|
| Get a stainless steel container and hydrate for a lifetime.
| jraby3 wrote:
| The risks of dehydration are way overstated imo. And I
| live in a warm weather country.
|
| Whole being thirsty isn't optimal the actual risk of
| something serious happening is negligible. Especially
| since I monitor my urine color and other signs. It's more
| convenience and the habit of convenience we're all so
| used to these days.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > The risks of dehydration are way overstated imo
|
| I'm not so sure about that. Some people are more
| susceptible to it than others. There's also some weird
| trait that makes some people drink less water than
| others. Both my father and myself seem to share this
| trait. We have to force ourselves to drink water. For
| whatever reason, I could go an entire day without
| drinking water. Not sure why it is, but it causes
| problems. I was on vacation with my father and he
| collapsed in literally the middle of nowhere because of
| dehydration. It was pretty scary and he almost didn't
| survive.
| tartoran wrote:
| I do too and have to remind myself to drink water
| otherwise I find myself in a lethargic state.
| spockz wrote:
| I have the same thing. I have to "force" myself to drink.
| Especially in Warmer weather. My daughters have the same.
| I'm not sure whether it is genetic or nurture.
| overtonwhy wrote:
| What about the benefits of high levels of hydration?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| What are the benefits of high levels of hydration?
| int0x2e wrote:
| Most people are constantly dehydrated. The fact lots of
| people drink sugary drinks makes it even worse. As
| someone dealing with a 3rd round of kidney stones -
| please stay hydrated! You don't want this pain, trust
| me...
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > Most people are constantly dehydrated.
|
| This strikes me as something constantly asserted but
| never proven. It should be pretty trivial to find out if
| this is the case, medically, so there should be data. I
| went ahead and searched around and although I see a lot
| of headlines about it, there is a lack of definitive
| corroboration. I found these sources:
|
| "According to the lay press, 75% of Americans are
| chronically dehydrated. While this is not supported by
| medical literature, dehydration is common in elderly
| patients."[0]
|
| " In fact, scientific studies suggest that you already
| get enough liquid from what you're drinking and eating on
| a daily basis. We are not all walking around in a state
| of dehydration."[1]
|
| "The notion that there is widespread dehydration has no
| basis in medical fact"[1]
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555956/ [1]
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/water-works-2/
| wjnc wrote:
| The thing is that if you monitor your urine color (and
| act upon it) you are already managing hydration?
|
| My mother in law was hospitalized twice for dehydration.
| She is mindful of it and still some days she doesn't
| drink enough. Drinking is hard for her as other
| commenters mention here too. After that I just started
| drinking an extra liter of tea by just carrying the
| bottle around. Even the extra peeing stopped after a few
| weeks.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Stainless steel containers are often lined with plastic,
| since people don't like the metallic taste that the steel
| imparts.
| roflyear wrote:
| Reusable plastic is fine....
| Reason077 wrote:
| In general there is nothing wrong with long-life plastic
| products. Plastic is a really useful and important
| material when used appropriately!
|
| It's the insane amount waste and environmental pollution
| that _single-use_ plastic generates that is the problem.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Nothing wrong unless it is used to store food or water
| and contains some BPA-like compound (AFAIK it includes
| most plastic produces nowadays even so called BPA-free).
| guelo wrote:
| The BPA replacements are probably just as toxic as BPA
| but it will take 20 years of science to prove it
| conclusively enough to get them banned.
| dublin wrote:
| ^^^^THIS!^^^^ There is early evidence that most BPA and
| pthlalate replacements may be considerably _worse_ for
| you than the things they are replacing. (At least, worse
| in the sense that they are possibly more dangerous as
| endocrine disruptors and hormone mimics, and also
| possibly harder to remove from the body...)
|
| Best choice is to insist on glass packaging wherever you
| can. It's inert and infinitely recyclable.
| jraby3 wrote:
| Exactly. What I always tell vendors when I get a strange
| look after refusing their plastic bag is that we use it
| for 5 minutes but it stays in the environment for 1000
| years.
| bluGill wrote:
| They make plastics that biodegrade in a few years.
| Supposedly even in a landfill they degrade (I've seen
| this debated, I'm not qualified to figure out who is
| right). However they are more expensive and so rarely
| used except when someone wants to make a point about
| being green.
| wjnc wrote:
| Do you know if that metallic taste is considered
| (in-)healthy? I have no clue and actually like that taste
| and must admit that in the steel for everything
| department I'm following the trends as well (steel for
| cooking - no PFAS; steel for drink containers - no
| plastics).
| lapsis_beeftech wrote:
| It's harmless. The sensation is electrolytic in origin
| rather than caused by taste receptor activation; it's
| like when you put a 9 V battery to your tongue except
| much less potential and therefore weaker feeling.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Stainless steel has nickel and chromium in it which can
| leach out, but I don't think incredibly tiny amounts have
| been shown to be bad.
| mrpopo wrote:
| You need to stop thinking about bringing your own footprint
| ever closer to zero, you must also stop thinking that doing
| so is a powerful revolutionary act, and join or create
| organized groups vowing to bring about social change. Be it
| in your family, your neighbourhood or your municipality.
|
| Forget shorter showers
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TbrtCGbhQ
| hoosieree wrote:
| Framing climate change as a "consumer choice" problem was
| brilliant marketing.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately _the_ core item that more hardcore
| evangelists for topic XYZ seem to be unable to grasp,
| maybe due to being too close /deep in the subject. If I
| had a NFT every time somebody on HN stated 'we need to
| abandon cars, or abandon plastics altogether' and
| similar, I would be drowning in a lot of useless tokens.
|
| The thing is, the motivation for given topic is always
| fair and just, and so are the goals, so its normal to
| want to do more and more. But at one point they move so
| far from general population they are seen as extremists,
| and whatever good their push is trying to achieve is
| completely blocked by this extreme approach and negative
| emotions it sparks.
|
| Get engaged in politics, create groups, figure out who
| has real deciding power and apply soft pressure there...
| this is how good changes are done in timely manner. Other
| way is to wait till SHTF and there is reaction, but
| damage is already done like in this topic. Otherwise
| society just heads to division and conflict on many
| levels, and as for example covid showed us if you push
| big part of population hard/long enough they will
| eventually move to some outright non-smart positions that
| will be then very hard to abandon.
| Retric wrote:
| The secret is to aim for lesser goals. Don't try to get
| rid of all plastics just aim to reduce some specific kind
| of single use plastic etc. Setup an organization to ban
| cars in the central core of your city.
|
| The advantage to 'save the whales' over save every
| endangered species is it's much easier to gain traction
| and you can pick the easiest targets.
| oblio wrote:
| Plus if you can somehow get the numbers, everything is a
| 80-20 deal.
|
| 80% of the bang can be gotten for 20% of the buck.
|
| I'm reasonably sure Coca Cola and co should be the
| biggest targets in the anti-plastic campaign.
| eternityforest wrote:
| The problem is so many of the revolutionary groups are
| full of anarchoprimitivists and the like. I sure wouldn't
| want a revolution that put them in charge. It's getting
| scary out there with how many people openly want
| industrial society to end.
|
| Many of them don't even care about reducing resource
| consumption, they're goals are much more philosophical.
|
| We'd wind up with wood stoves instead of solar panels.
| Resources consumption would go down, maybe, but it might
| just be because a lot of people would die.
|
| Other than than that, obviously I'm all for improving
| society and all.
| tintor wrote:
| There are reusable metal water bottles. Don't be thirsty.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Calculate the hidden cost. Slap a proportional tax on the
| products that cause the cost. Then split the tax income
| evenly to the population.
|
| Is it really that hard or are we making it hard?
| concordDance wrote:
| Calculating the hidden cost isn't simple "hard", it's nigh
| impossible. We've spent billions trying to calculate the
| externalities of a single gas (CO2) and we're still
| incredibly uncertain with giant error bars even with a ton
| of assumptions.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| We have some idea. That's monumentally better than having
| no idea. And not acting on flawed data is still worse
| than acting.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Money is just a proxy here for the harm it does. Some
| people would rather not get a check for having lost body
| parts, a la that scene from _Erin Brockovich_. They would
| rather not endure the harm to begin with.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C029muI7bFw
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I mean it's hard in the same way as converting from a
| dictatorship to a democracy is hard. There's a huge
| political transaction cost. And then you'll wonder what
| took you so long.
| adrianN wrote:
| Calculate the hidden cost. Tell the companies that you'll
| either vote for a tax or accept a lucrative post in their
| board of directors after your term is over. Profit!
|
| Calculate the hidden cost. Spend half of the cost on a
| marketing campaign to sway public opinion against a tax.
| Profit!
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Maybe one way to mitigate is to have a separate branch of
| the political system dedicated to calculating the costs.
| Then make the methods for calculating as publicly
| available as possible so that they can be reproduced by
| non-profits.
|
| We have managed judicial systems. We can manage this too.
| sitkack wrote:
| You used to be able to trust the GAO and NIST to
| calculate these things.
| adrianN wrote:
| I don't see how that helps. For example there are many
| publications available that calculate the cost of CO2, eg
| [1] from the German government. Yet global warming is
| still a problem.
|
| [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/me
| dien/14...
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Dictatorships are still a problem too. But it's not
| because we don't know what the alternative looks like.
|
| Figuring out what the alternative should look like is a
| big challenge but let's not pretend that that is the main
| issue here.
| marssaxman wrote:
| The idea of the "tragedy of the commons" is an ahistorical
| myth, promulgated quite recently by a racist, eugenicist,
| nationalist fearmonger:
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-
| of-t...
|
| History offers many examples of human communities
| successfully managing their common resources, over
| generations.
| mistersquid wrote:
| Along with a sibling, I agree that the concept of "Tragedy
| of the Commons" can be useful while its original author is
| a deeply flawed human being whose other arguments and
| extrapolations are insupportable and morally reprehensible.
|
| Still, I'm grateful for your linking to this excellent
| critique of the source article which, among other things,
| provides a handy label for an ethically and morally dubious
| extrapolation the critique labels "lifeboat ethics" which I
| often seen deployed by the wealthy against the
| impoverished.
|
| > an idea [Hardin] called "lifeboat ethics" [0]: since
| global resources are finite, Hardin believed the rich
| should throw poor people overboard to keep their boat above
| water. [1]
|
| [0]
| https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1100/Hardin.pdf
| (link in OP)
|
| [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-
| tragedy-of-t... (OP)
| tomrod wrote:
| This article is both an illuminating critique of the author
| but also an ad hominem to the argument.
|
| Terrible people can be absolutely correct. In this case,
| the tragedy of the commons both exists and affects many
| things (like international fishing).
|
| It is true that history shows examples of communities
| managing their common resources over generations. This need
| not be the default; when it isn't you get the tragedy of
| the commons. That is why its important to both understand
| it and to build community norms that encourage respect for
| common resources.
|
| Would I be correct in my read of your take that you don't
| believe the tragedy of the commons exists? If it does, do
| the original author's other beliefs matter when discussing
| it?
| Xelynega wrote:
| > It's true that history shows examples of communities
| managing their common resources over generations. This
| need not be the default; when it isn't you get the
| tragedy of the commons
|
| It looks like you're agreeing that counterexamples to
| "tradgedy of the commons" being a default state exist in
| history yet your conclusion is "tragedy of the commons is
| the default if a better option isn't employed".
|
| Why can't it be true(based off your same evidence) that
| tragedy of the commons is an unnatural state, and respect
| for common resources is the default?
| marssaxman wrote:
| > Terrible people can be absolutely correct.
|
| The author of this article agrees with you, and says so;
| I was more interested in the latter half of the article,
| where he explains why "the facts are not on Hardin's
| side".
|
| > Would I be correct in my read of your take that you
| don't believe the tragedy of the commons exists?
|
| The privatization of the commons seems to me the much
| greater tragedy, leading to large-scale exploitation and
| irresponsible environmental degradation. From what I see,
| distributed networks of human-scale communities tend to
| manage shared resources in a sustainable way; to fuck
| things up on a grand scale, you need centralized power
| and a managerial distance from consequences.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Those communities are usually around Dunbar's number,
| 100-300 people, or organized around such. It's easier if
| you know the people you live with.
| silisili wrote:
| It's hard to solve in our system, which implicitly encourages
| it to happen.
|
| In a non capitalistic, small enough community it isn't a
| worry.
|
| The real problem I think is how to scale that thinking to a
| world population.
| hoseja wrote:
| It's only hard if you care about individual rights. Otherwise
| your multicellular self is a good example of a solution.
| nwienert wrote:
| Japan
| fghjkewur wrote:
| the funny thing about your comment is that it is only a hard
| problem because you were fooled on the premise.
|
| the term itself was a fake argument against the commons, in
| favour of privatization of commons. every single word of the
| argument today is known to have been a falacy.
|
| so the answer to the tragedy of the commons is to not believe
| in it. property is the real issue. but even thinking that way
| will offend your sensibilities.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Are you familiar with the work of Elinor Ostrom, the first
| woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics, who won it for
| debunking the so-called Tragedy of the Commons in general and
| specifying where it applies in particular?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| We get it, but we don't care because capitalism / free market /
| small government / money / competition.
|
| Competition goes beyond just companies too, countries compete
| with each other, to the point of starting wars over e.g.
| natural resources, territory, and access to infrastructure. And
| one future scenario is wars over more basic resources like food
| and water, as climate change will cause droughts and famines.
| At the very least it will (and already is) triggering mass
| migrations.
| refurb wrote:
| I doubt it's capitalism when communist countries were some of
| the worst polluters to date.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Who are you referring to? You use the past tense, which
| means you're probably not pointing a finger at china -
| which is hardly communist, making huge strides in cleaning
| up their emissions, and their emissions are largely the
| result of making stuff for the rest of the world. Which
| means you're probably talking about now-defunct communist
| countries, i.e. the soviet union?
|
| So your argument against capitalism driving pollution in
| the hundreds of countries around the world where it appears
| to be driving pollution is a single example? A country that
| did most of it's polluting during a rapid industrialization
| with the stated goal of "catching up with the west".
| Meanwhile during that same soviet period not _one_ but
| *two* rivers caught on fire in a single year in the USA.
|
| Which is all to say that I'm unconvinced. It really seems
| like the driver of most of the pollution in the world has
| been capitalism. Perhaps communism is worse, but that
| doesn't let capitalism off the hook - it's not a two-choice
| binary system here.
| anonkogudhyfhhf wrote:
| Not really. Countries define property rights and solve
| problems. Domestic overfishing is countries removing
| externalities and making them part of the market
| fastball wrote:
| It's a difficult balance to strike though. Forcing companies to
| consider all possible externalities is very difficult /
| expensive to get right. And if you don't get it exactly right,
| you very quickly increase your surface area for issues like
| regulatory capture, etc.
|
| Just another in the long list of coordination problems where it
| is hard to arrive at the pareto-optimal solution given human
| selfishness and our lack of omniscience.
| jahnu wrote:
| These companies often know quite well there is a huge cost
| they are offloading on others. Evidence for this is seen in
| the huge sums spent on lobbying and politics in general.
| flownoon wrote:
| This essay suggests that the amounts spent on lobbying are
| not in fact huge sums:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-
| in...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Coal cheap, nuclear expensive.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Yeah, but the point is thats only if you don't price in
| externalities. (Sorry if this is meant to be a sarcastic
| comment)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Nuclear objectionable due to the highly toxic waste product
| for which no accepted solution has been implemented yet.
|
| I mean don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of nuclear energy as
| a CO2-less high potential source of energy, it's just that
| they're fucking around with the waste too much and umming and
| arring about it while it just sits near the nuclear power
| plants, instead of just burying it in a mountain like they do
| in finland [0]). They could decomission a strip mine and fill
| it back up with lead-and-concrete encased nuclear waste, then
| bury it in another few hundred meters of sand - nobody would
| be the wiser for the next millennia. In theory.
|
| [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-
| tomb-s...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's pretty safe being stored near nuclear power plants.
| The folks keeping it from being buried in a mountain are
| folks opposed to nuclear energy... ironically due to
| (overblown) waste concerns. They don't WANT the waste
| problem to be solved.
| iicc wrote:
| >Maybe someday humans will get that.
|
| That's what the litigation _is_.
| kennywinker wrote:
| The implication of your statement is that the people running
| 3M are acting in an in-human way. I would agree.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-21 23:02 UTC)