I’m old enough to remember people losing their shit at China over the 2008 Beijing Olympics drowning in a toxic cloud. The international outcry was such that the state spent a decade cleaning all that shit up (which produced its own wave of “Has Chinese Eco-fascism Gone Woke?!” screamer articles in turn).
But their rate of pollution has been falling steadily for the last two decades, in no small part because the state wasn’t fighting an uphill battle against corporate slobs in white doctor’s coats trying to tell everyone that smog wasn’t happening/was good aktuly.
Meanwhile, US expenditures on lobbying, denialism, and greenwashing stretch into the billions of dollars annually. And its not hard to understand why, when the ROI is $7T/year on the international stage.
ROI is continued existence for some. It’s a similar reason to why the leadership of the west is so against communism and socialism: because the best path forward doesn’t include them.
the leadership of the west is so against communism and socialism
That’s far more just a historical boogieman. Nixon spent half his career insisting every institution from Harvard to Hollywood was infested with Communists, then made the high point of his career a photo-op with The Great Helmsman himself. To say “the leadership is against communism” you really need to blinker yourself to decades of amicable international cooperation.
Its only when local communities begin to express a bit of self-determination that western leadership remembers “Communism” is a dirty word.
nothing is perfect. we need imperfect things that don’t emit co2. windmills have many detractors but at the moment represent mostly co2-free power if we’re willing to take it. and recycling industries for solar and wind are coming, they’ll never be perfect either, but when the waste stream becomes lucrative enough they’ll find a way.
Problem is it’s so freaken labor intensive right now. You could tool your way around it but you need serious volume of standardized units. Plus you need people willing to take huge risks which is difficult to justify given that the recycling industry as a whole is a license to print money. Why risk an explosion when you can turn out yet industry specific process? Also you know the tradeoffs. Basically the less chance of an ignition the less material recoved.
So you go the fully automated route or a low income workforce, which to be fair to the Western world, they are working really hard to produce.
At first yeah, it would be fairly insignificant, but if you ever stood close to these things you know how huge they are… It’s not easy to move them around and I don’t think we’ve found much use for the materials they are made of to recycle them. Also we are supposed to reduce these mountains of waste not use them as a justification to waste even more.
But regardless, I am sure one people will realise how much we already fucked the climate as more and more extreme weather events pop around, we’ll see more focus on renewables or at least carbon neutral sources. I think the most appealing source atm is nuclear which, although not renewable, it has a fairly small CO2 footprint, tiny size, huge and stable output and there are even reactors that can “burn” their waste to further increase their efficiency.
rich bastards claiming that windmills would harm them through visual pollution.
you fucking fuckwits, smog is visual pollution. But they don’t care.
I’m old enough to remember people losing their shit at China over the 2008 Beijing Olympics drowning in a toxic cloud. The international outcry was such that the state spent a decade cleaning all that shit up (which produced its own wave of “Has Chinese Eco-fascism Gone Woke?!” screamer articles in turn).
But their rate of pollution has been falling steadily for the last two decades, in no small part because the state wasn’t fighting an uphill battle against corporate slobs in white doctor’s coats trying to tell everyone that smog wasn’t happening/was good aktuly.
Meanwhile, US expenditures on lobbying, denialism, and greenwashing stretch into the billions of dollars annually. And its not hard to understand why, when the ROI is $7T/year on the international stage.
ROI is continued existence for some. It’s a similar reason to why the leadership of the west is so against communism and socialism: because the best path forward doesn’t include them.
“Makers” versus the “Takers”
That’s far more just a historical boogieman. Nixon spent half his career insisting every institution from Harvard to Hollywood was infested with Communists, then made the high point of his career a photo-op with The Great Helmsman himself. To say “the leadership is against communism” you really need to blinker yourself to decades of amicable international cooperation.
Its only when local communities begin to express a bit of self-determination that western leadership remembers “Communism” is a dirty word.
Windmills are a whole lot better than burning coal, but aren’t perfect. Recyling the blades after their 20 year lifespan is a nightmare.
nothing is perfect. we need imperfect things that don’t emit co2. windmills have many detractors but at the moment represent mostly co2-free power if we’re willing to take it. and recycling industries for solar and wind are coming, they’ll never be perfect either, but when the waste stream becomes lucrative enough they’ll find a way.
The problem with capitalism in a nutshell.
Because mercantilist wind turbine blades recycle themselves? Or did you mean to imply that communist wind turbines recycle themselves?
I mean to say that when financial incentive is the only incentive then a lot of things that would make this a better world end up on the scrap heap.
Hey keeps me employed. You people keep finding new types of waste and I keep finding ways to deal with it.
Problem is it’s so freaken labor intensive right now. You could tool your way around it but you need serious volume of standardized units. Plus you need people willing to take huge risks which is difficult to justify given that the recycling industry as a whole is a license to print money. Why risk an explosion when you can turn out yet industry specific process? Also you know the tradeoffs. Basically the less chance of an ignition the less material recoved.
So you go the fully automated route or a low income workforce, which to be fair to the Western world, they are working really hard to produce.
I doubt it’s any worse than the other mountains of waste we produce. I’d wager it’d barely even register.
At first yeah, it would be fairly insignificant, but if you ever stood close to these things you know how huge they are… It’s not easy to move them around and I don’t think we’ve found much use for the materials they are made of to recycle them. Also we are supposed to reduce these mountains of waste not use them as a justification to waste even more.
But regardless, I am sure one people will realise how much we already fucked the climate as more and more extreme weather events pop around, we’ll see more focus on renewables or at least carbon neutral sources. I think the most appealing source atm is nuclear which, although not renewable, it has a fairly small CO2 footprint, tiny size, huge and stable output and there are even reactors that can “burn” their waste to further increase their efficiency.
Smog is like vaccines. People don’t see the smog/disease anymore, so they think they don’t need the protections/vaccines.