Trying to explain we need to develop an economic model better than market economy or else earth will become a big waste dump. Ie we need to prize the waste.
Tragedy of the commons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common
Environmental economics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics
And I guess it is an example of market failure in the technical sense but I don't think I would phrase that as "when a market economy fails" as it is not clear whether you are talking colloquially or technically.
EDIT: Just to clarify why it is critical to be specific, positive externalities are also market failures. Caring about a technical market failures is a bit abstract, I would not lose sleep over it, they happen.
Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper.
You will have more practical disagreements though because it is unlikely that microplastics being used in say Denmark has the same environmental impact as microplastics being used in say Asia or Africa: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... and applying a tax to people in Denmark won't result in the externality being internalized in Nigeria.
Nobody would let you write it down on paper. But a lot of corporations put a lot of money and effort into preventing this from happening. I believe almost all of our economic woes could be fixed with an economic approach that treated negative externalities as an expected and common case in a free market and actively pursued policies to mitigate them (as opposed to idolising the free part of "free markets" and treating regulation to fix externalities as a last resort).
Did you ever wonder why Asia and Africa are responsible for so much pollution ? I'm asking that because any amount of research will show you that first world countries are sending hundreds of tons of appliances, computers, smartphones, &c. per day over there for them to be "recycled", and by "recycled" I meant burned/melted in open air dumps. (And also because they're manufacturing all our shitty ultra short lived gadgets, cloths, &c.)
It's literally like throwing your shit on the neighbours lawn and blaming them. Actually it's even worse now that China told us to fuck off with our trash.
> Until recently, half of the collected plastic – especially low-grade plastic – was exported to China, but China has completely stopped its [used plastic] imports. Therefore the majority of plastic will likely end up burnt while just 15 percent will be recycled”
Are we talking about the future of Humanity or about "it's not my problem it didn't happen in the country I was born in" .... we're doomed. The world is a closed eco system so of fucking course the European plastic and the African plastic will eventually end up in your plate (especially if the Europen plastic is sent to Africa for "recycling")
https://www.thelocal.dk/20180910/danes-are-sorting-more-plas...
It's less concrete and actionable than you'd think, because measuring (and therefore identifying and internalizing) externalities requires utility assessments, and experienced utility is subjective and immeasurable and it's very, very easy for ones preferred outcome to influence one’s choice of utility estimator. (And even easier for it to lead you to find an excuse to dismiss someone else’s.)
> and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper.
I think the general opinion of both the Chicago and Austrian schools is that efforts to internalize externalities are generally a bad idea, and in the Austrian case specifically wrong on principal.
Public figures adhering to those viewpoints are likely to couch them in circumlocution outside of addresses to selected audiences because they are very large groups with which they are dealbreaker positions, but they aren't exactly obscure positions.
"The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action."
In this case, given that everyone else is going to use plastics, it is in my interest to use them too. But I would be better off (maybe) if noone used them. Does that not fit the definition?
What if Denmark imposes a tariff equal to the tax on imported plastic goods from any countries not implementing such a tax?
The plastics production before the late 60's had virtually no impact compared to what followed. Quality of life when i was a child was just fine.
It doesn't seem immediately obvious how we could change a market economy to resist negative externalities, but I think it's the best solution (especially when the system is well studied).
Funny, this immediately came to mind:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/volks...
> “The Kombi was designed 60 years ago so it would not be possible now to put an airbag and ABS into the car. That’s why we now have to stop production,” said Jochen Funk, director of sales for VW Brazil.
So yeah, maybe we've been driving a (now 70)-year old Kombi and trying to convince ourselves one day we'll be able to just bolt ABS brakes on it.
clearly there's more to it than that, but assuming that the market can address any negative externalities just with taxes is pretty naive IMO
Also note two major flaws in your reasoning about trying to blame pollution as a "market economy" failure.
1. The US military is the biggest single polluter around [0], outside of perhaps some "non-market-economy" country's militaries like China and Russia. It's hard to know exactly how much damage they do and impossible to hold them accountable for it. The substances they leak into groundwater tend to be worse than plastics. Good luck finding a government model that doesn't have a military.
2. Most of the microplastics in the ocean are coming from third world countries, where there simply isn't enough wealth for there to be political willpower to reduce externalized pollution.
The real solution we need is more futuristic waste management technologies that can break down harmful pollutants and turn them into usable material, and I expect they will come from the "market economy."
[0] https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than...
Plastics are undeniably useful, but it does seem like the unforeseen consequences might be too large to ignore at this point. I just hope that it doesn't have neurological problems.
Some plastics like PLA and PHA are highly unlikely to cause problems 50-100 years in the future because they don't last that long unless carefully preserved. California funded a study of how long it takes PLA and PHA to break down in the ocean and figured out that PHA is basically gone in six months while PLA will last about 3 years:
https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/Publications/Download/1006?op...
Plastic straw decomposition:
200 years [0]
Plastic bootle decomposition:
450 years [0]
PLA is a fraction of the world's plastic pollution. Mixing in this marginal example is misleading. We shouldn't downplay the decomposition time of _most_ plastics. Plastics and fossil fuel emissions are the asbestos of our time.
Single-use plastic, outside medical applications, should be banned worldwide.
[0] https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/the-lifecycle-of-plastics
the way I see it is it's much faster and easier to ruin something than to fix it.
It's irrational to assert that "unknown" risks are outweighed by known/"proven" benefits.
By definition, the risks are unknown.
You have to integrate over a period of time that includes the future, so it's impossible to tell (without a reliable oracle.)
We could have a world where all cheap plastics that are not expected to last (e.g., water bottles, cutlery, packaging, bags) are compostable, and the expensive high performance long lasting plastics (e.g., those that are part of cars, computers, etc.) are made of traditional plastics. The latter will not create waste because they are expensive and would not be discarded willy nilly in large quantities. Hopefully they will be thrown in a proper landfill. The former will simply decompose regardless of how they are discarded (although for purely aesthetic reasons it is preferable they be discarded in a designated compost bins).
At this point the barrier is not technological, it is purely political. We just need to address the externality and force everyone to use compostable plastics for things that are expected to be discarded quickly.
These bags aren't breaking down quickly simply because they are big. Decomposition is like any other kind of eating; you keep breaking the stuff down into smaller bits until it's gas and biomass. But with plastic, where biodegradation can't happen, the tiny bits (nanoplastics) accumulate.
Fun fact about nanoplastics: we can't reliably measure them! We can make a reference solution and apply it to arabidopsis, but we can't count nanoplastic particles in wastewater. I'm told they can be as small as a protein molecule.
So if you are looking at a biodegradable product, you should check whether it complies with the above standards. It is better to look for "compostable" as that implies compliance with those standards (at least if sold in the US or EU).
The standards have been criticized because they assume an industrial or municipal composting environment (which mostly differs from normal environments due to relatively high temperatures). So even if you have a compostable plastic it is better to put it in a compost bin and have your municipality compost it in an industrial manner.
But the compostable plastic under those standards will degrade under normal environments too it will just take longer. Even in your article, the compostable bag disappeared in the underwater test and disintegrated in the open air test. It only survived the under ground test, probably because of lack of oxygen.
So in summary compostable plastics should be composted and not just tossed away anywhere. But even if they are tossed away at random places they will degrade much sooner than actual plastics and thus present much less of a problem for the environment.
Do you really think they'll continue to use non-biodegradable plastics if they become more expensive?
I've long held the belief that "biodegradable" is really just another euphemism for "forced obolescence". The real problem is with people not reusing plastics that can theoretically last a long time, and the encouragement to not do so.
Things that biodegrade will break long before they biodegrade.
Don't see why we can't just go back to that.
You ever notice how your lint trap doesn't quite catch all of the lint, and your dryer hose slowly fills with lint? What is lint from synthetic clothing made out of? And where does it go?
(It isn't yet that popular: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sci-hub.tw)
The data is all on Library Genesis (currently https://libgen.is/) which is very firehose-friendly (eg, the download section has top-level links to mirrors, torrents, and database dumps). And IIUC the ~35TB of data is actively mirrored fairly widely, which is awesome.
Chances are the Sci-Hub project has alternative domains lined up, and probably more than enough ideas for how to manage if all DNS failed.
If it turns out that existing enzymes just need to be in the right place at the right time, then who knows. 100 years of trash could pile up pretty high.
It's not when it's in the water that it's a problem. It's when it enters the food chain. Plastic in plants means plastic in ruminants. Does it stop there, or does the plastic degrade and enter the bloodstream?
Yes they may be associated with certain cancers or endocrine disruption but the effects seem to be rather tiny in comparison to the myriad of ways in which plastics improve our quality of life.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282521...
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?