We Won't Stop Using Plastics, and That's the Real Climate Problem
Replacement of petroleum based products with plant-based materials (2025)
A Hacker News commenter argues that demand is infinite and driven by desire, so blaming business greed for plastic use misses the point. People choose convenience—driving to the store, living in houses—over environmental efficiency. These small choices, plus polymers needed for insulation and cabling, mean individual action won't meet CO2 goals and plastics aren't going away.
We're not going to hit CO2 reduction goals on the basis of individual action, and we're not going to stop using plastics.
- zkmon
Some great soul said something like "God has given everything to meet your need, not your greed". As long as the greed continues to increase exponentially, no amount of innovation is going to support it.
The amount of energy and material wastage in developed countries is enormous and abominable. Large screens being on 24x7 without anyone watching, cities explicitly designed for forcing the use of vehicle, consumer life-style requiring huge supply chains, powerful cars carrying just one person, ... and so on.
Business drivers will continue to drive the greed of people and nations and act against any measures to fix the problem. A business knows nothing about climate or human good.
- wewewedxfgdf
I vaguely recall reading that biofuels have been debunked as being insanely inefficient as a fuel source and consume land that would be better used to grow food.
- boustrophedon
I recently learned that nylon 11 (sometimes aka PA11) is made from castor oil, which (I also learned) is just the vegetable oil extracted from the castor bean.
- rajnathani
Why is this on the front page? It just seems like a meta-analysis on biofuels.
- spiclk
Petroleum is plant-based (just to nitpick).