All of these industries have to be looking into alternatives in parallel, if they are even aware.
Why?
I mean, I think it would be good, but why would they have to be looking into alternatives? Why couldn’t we phase out fossil fuels for burning purposes, and then whenever that’s done start thinking about phasing them out for use in other products?
Plastics are a waste product of converting oil to useful fuels. That’s why they’re so cheap and used in the most unbelievably wasteful ways. They’ll remain inextricably linked. Fuel is expensive, plastics are incredibly cheap. If we ban the use of fossil fuels but still rely on oil based plastics, plastics will become very expensive and we’ll still be creating the fuel. We’ll just have a growing supply of worthless energy sitting around and decaying in storage.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea as I’m not an expert by any means, but to keep plastics for essential uses like in medicine will likely require a heavily subsidized plastic industry at least. But hey we already subsidize the fossil fuel industry directly and by externalizing the planet destroying effects of their use…
Why?
I mean, I think it would be good, but why would they have to be looking into alternatives? Why couldn’t we phase out fossil fuels for burning purposes, and then whenever that’s done start thinking about phasing them out for use in other products?
Plastics are a waste product of converting oil to useful fuels. That’s why they’re so cheap and used in the most unbelievably wasteful ways. They’ll remain inextricably linked. Fuel is expensive, plastics are incredibly cheap. If we ban the use of fossil fuels but still rely on oil based plastics, plastics will become very expensive and we’ll still be creating the fuel. We’ll just have a growing supply of worthless energy sitting around and decaying in storage.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea as I’m not an expert by any means, but to keep plastics for essential uses like in medicine will likely require a heavily subsidized plastic industry at least. But hey we already subsidize the fossil fuel industry directly and by externalizing the planet destroying effects of their use…
Which will mean people will switch to cheaper alternatives whenever possible.
They can’t when it means their sleep mask doesn’t exist anymore and they die in their sleep, for example.