An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production, according to a 2018 study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That equates to daily use for 54 years — for just one bag.
Although… don’t forget about plastic in the ocean so do use cotton totes. Although... many cotton dyes are made of plastic so don't use them…. Anyway, be wary of simple solutions! The world is complex and almost nothing is driven by a single variable. Tweaking variables in a complex system will have offsetting reactions that dampen any movement you create downstream.
Anyway, since nobody asked, here's my condensed list of things I personally believe would actually make a difference. These are my priors, as the Bayesians say, and I hold them loosely and could easily be convinced what I believe is stupid.
We should do these things, globally, and not much else:
Almost anything else you can think of doesn’t seem to matter much or has negative externalities and or knock on effects. Or that's my ignorant take based on what I know now. -B
Editor's Note: Since Brian tends to overconfidently shoot his mouth off about stuff, we've asked someone who actually knows something about these things, technically, to chime in with a "counterweight". Welcome guest author 'Wes B'.
I'm going to start with the bullet about developing the developing world. Because I wholeheartedly agree. But the thing is, the whole world is developing all the time, places are just at different points on that curve. Here in the US, we are on the cusp of an explosion in renewables and storage (batteries). Prices for Solar PV panels and Li-ion batteries are projected to fall precipitously in the next 10-15 years. That is in large part because we have subsidized the heck out of them for a decade or more. They're all grown up now and are ready to stand on their own.
So if I were making long-term planning decisions for electric utilities, I would put a ton of value on retiring old, uneconomic generating units and replacing them with solar and storage in that 10-15 year horizon. I would not want to be making 40-60 year decisions today. A Nuclear plant will provide you with cheap, carbon-free energy for at least 60 years. The upfront price tag for nuclear is HUUUUUUUGE and they take about 10-15 years to site, permit, and build. For me, that's just off the table. If I was making capital investment decisions today, and renewables and storage were just a little too uneconomical, then I would be making short-term (10-15 year), low-cost bets. Either that's retrofitting old coal units to burn gas, or dumping more money into existing nukes to get a few more years, or buying existing investor-owned assets at a discount that are nearing the end of their lives, or whatever I can do to get to that future where renewables and storage are economic.
Today is the time to be reaping what you sowed with all those subsidies on renewables and storage. It is not the time to double down on new versions of old technology, and it's not the time to be making big bets on the next big thing (advanced nuclear, direct air capture, hydrogen fuel). There's a future for nuclear and DAC and CCS and H2, but we have to develop those technologies more. They're 10-15 heavily-subsidized years behind renewables and batteries. If we play our cards right, we'll be ready for those problems that start popping up 20-30 years from now because we over-built renewables. -Wes
Louis CK Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy
A classic! -B
OoOh are we allowed to like Louis CK again?! But also yes, agreed, so many things are actually awe-and-wonder-inspiring and if I just take a second, it's not so hard to appreciate. -C
The 10 Most Convincing Bigfoot Sightings
Bear, Gorilla-Suited Bob, or actual Bigfoot? Only you can decide.... -B
There are few things I love more on the Internet than listicles gathering large amounts of YouTube videos and/or articles about aliens, lost civilizations, or Bigfoot. Great find, B. - C
On the correlation between solar activity and large earthquakes worldwide
EvErYThiNg iS ConNecTed Maaaannnnnn - C
What's up with Armenia and Azerbaijan?
I knew absolutely zero about this conflict and was edified by this brief explainer of the history and current conflict that has been erupting recently. -Brian
I read this and still feel as though I know absolutely zero about this conflict. - Calvin
This week we are introducing a new content category which will loosely cover various aspects of all the bizarrely terrible things that have taken (are taking?!) place in 2020. To get us started here is a cerebral post by the often excellent Ben Hunt about how we tend to glamorize what it would mean to live in a post-apocalyptic society but how in reality that would really really be awful for everyone. I haven't read the particular Larry Niven book referenced but I have read Ringworld by him which I can tell you is quite excellent and worth your time. -Brian
My Dad has a copy of Lucifer's Hammer, and I tried to read it when I was eleven. My memory of this was that my Dad said nah and handed me Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I wasn't ready for either book and need to read both. - Calvin
Hundreds of Americans Planted 'Chinese Mystery Seeds'
Yeah if we could not plant the mysterious seeds sent to millions of Americans unsolicited by unknown Chinese senders that would be great.... -Brian
I actually LOL'd at this passage: "...communication from the general public is concerning. People planted seeds even when expressly told not to. Hundreds of people had no idea whether they had ever ordered seeds, or how to check. Some people called 911. Others ate the seeds." - Calvin