The nightmare story behind the explosive growth of single-use plastics and the petrochemical industry...
Fossil fuel companies are staring down a time when their signature product will no longer be so critical in our lives. As the world transitions slowly but surely away from fuel-guzzling cars, gas-powered buildings, and coal-fired power plants, industry execs must count on growth that comes from somewhere else — and they see their savior as plastics.
In the last decade, petrochemicals have moved from a sideshow for the oil and gas industry to a major profit machine, and the trend is expected to accelerate: The International Energy Agency predicts that plastics’ consumption of oil will outpace that of cars by 2050. In a recent report about its 20-year growth, ExxonMobil executives assured shareholders that the company could offset losses from the transition to electric cars with growth in petrochemicals.
There are climate impacts at every point of the lifecycle of plastics. The production process consumes fossil fuels both to make the plastics and maintain the high temperatures for refining and manufacturing. Methane, which is both a fuel and a potent greenhouse gas, tends to leak during drilling, transport, and refining, making it an underestimated source of pollution from the oil and gas industry.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) estimated that last year alone, plastic production contributed the equivalent emissions of 189 large coal plants. If plastics production continues apace, the sector is on track to reach the equivalent annual pollution of 295 large coal plants in the next 10 years, and double that by 2050, according to CIEL.
An International Energy Agency report from 2018 indicated that carbon pollution from the petrochemical sector will increase 30% by 2050 over the sector’s current rate.
Our future — unless we do something to change it — is plastics. More and more and more plastics.
The fossil fuel industry will never stop on their own. So-called "democracy" like we have in the USA, where money controls everything, will not stop them.
We urgently need system change, the elimination of capitalism and a shift to eco-socialism.
And the hell of it is, it's not like there's not alternatives. If the FFI would just shift their focus a leeetle bit, they could be extracting profits from renewables & sustainables.
But for whatever reason, they're locked in to <font=conspiracy>It Has To Be Fossil Fuels!?<font>
@breadandcircuses what kinda forecast is this? I guess i shouldn’t expect us to not develop new methods of working plastic or new plastic types, but i think it’s hard to make a case that we aren’t already at the tail end of finding new uses for plastics. I don’t really see how we are likely to be using 3x the amount of plastic in 25 years. In all likelihood we’ll be using something worse like carbon fiber
@breadandcircuses i work with plastics. Most things made out of metal are made of metal for a good reason these days. every material has limitations and best applications. That’s why i said i worry that we’ll see a rise in more environmentally difficult materials like carbon fiber. It’s a really good metal replacement in a lot of cases, but has been difficult to automate making it rarely cost effective. The rise of plastic use isn’t some grand conspiracy, it has advantages that people wanted to tap into (and externalizes many of its drawbacks to be problems for people not making those decisions). But without some kind of paradigm shifting technology, plastics use cannot grow exponentially for the next 25 years because we simply already use an absolute shitload of the stuff
If it could be gathered and pulverized it can be classified as "bio-mass" since it came from dinosaurs, then it can burn to produce electricity, and be bundled up with a little wind and even less solar power, as alternative "green" energy, that can power electric vehicles.
It doesn't matter what it actually does to the environment, how much it contributes to the problem, as long as it justifies government to be funneling money to fuel, coal, and electric multinationals.
@breadandcircuses There is a fixed quantity of fossil fuels in the known universe, all on earth. There's not a lot left. Never is really like 50 years, but we need them to stop now.
@breadandcircuses
Interesting in this context:
When the first machines for the production of #hemp fibers and paper were developed in the 1930s, the petrochemical company #DuPont was one of the most important financiers of the #cannabis disinformation campaign that led to cannabis prohibition in the USA and almost worldwide - alongside companies in the timber and paper industries (Hearst).
At the time, DuPont had just patented processes for producing plastic from oil and coal. #plasticpollution
@breadandcircuses plastic is killing us, just like oil. That's all capitalism has to offer-- Which way do you want to die so that wealthy people can get wealthier?