It’s not problematic at all if you mine for minerals in Cobalt, Ontario 
. The name of the town kind of gives it away, eh? There’s been an inflation and cost related slow-down getting the refinery up and running, but the target is 19,000 tons of cobalt a year from mining and recycling.
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Hmm… I’d argue that in general, extractive industries are always problematic with regards to the environment, though.
I do think the point about the role of recycling might be important, except, that depends on how the industry views it from a “cost effective” stand point… we could also have more recycled materials in plastics, but the industry considers it cheaper to make products from new products. As long as the goal to profits over people and the environment, then they’ll do what’s cheaper and more profitable rather than what is good for us and the environment…
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plastic(s) are notoriously difficult to really recycle (as having the same proberties as new). almost every “recycle”-process for plastic means significant more energy than making new one and scaling is a real problem.
I know my opinion on this matter is very unpopular, but -besides just producing much less-; just fucking burn* it under controlled conditions and get the energy out of it (its fossil-fuel after all). compared to what is burnend for energy from fossil every day, this would be almost nothing (as in emitting co2).
and stop exporting this shit to africa; there is no “recycling” of plastics there!
e/ * around 400 million tons were produced 2022 - ca 150 million tons were waste. say 1 kg burned plastic emits ca 3 kg co2 (equivalent to gas/coal in between), that would be around 450-500 million tons of co2 - thats about 1-1.2% of the global output of co2. (e2/ changed %, remembered global output wrong, apologies.)
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aaaand here we go;
The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
well, we knew something like this would bubble up the oily surface, didnt we?
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“Recycled” plastic is mostly burnt here. I assumed that was the same in most places once they couldn’t hide from themselves what actually happened with the previous “recycling” process.
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I know people are looking at pyrolysis to try and generate useful feed stocks for making more plastic; I wish rousing success to them and every other such process improvement effort.
However, in the short term, I’d love to see plastics burned, carefully of course. Getting plastic out of the waste stream would mean cleaner streams for real recyclables, and probably better organic streams for composting as well. It would also send a clear message that plastics recycling as currently constituted has failed completely.
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Yup. COP has always been a Potemkin Village, designed to make it appear that meaningful change is happening while obscuring business as usual. 'Twas ever thus.
Okay, I was just going to reblog this without commentary, but I can’t keep this to myself. I’m a PhD student in environmental science and this is my fucking highway.
The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of– feel free to point out if there’s an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.
Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.
Just in case anyone thought that climate change was a “recent fad” in research.
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The article refers to local objections to the site being close to some “generational farms” and having “safety concerns”. The written submissions to council seem to be more thoughtful and moderate than what was reported at the open house meeting.
Sigh… this is exactly what we need in Ontario to wean ourselves off the last of our fossil fuel power plants.
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The Old that is strong does not wither:
https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-redwoods-recover-fire-sprouting-1000-year-old-buds
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… 64°F in December, what state am I even in 
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