For the environmentally minded, it's almost always a tradeoff.
Electric car? Less pollution, more lithium mining (for now)
Avoid plastic? Glass jars are heavy (and added emissions to transport), and more likely to need replacing.
Avoid clothing with microplastics (like polyester)? Cotton is one of the most water-intensive crops, and production of bamboo cloth requires heavy chemicals usually, polluting the local environment
As gets pointed out semi-regularly, it was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in that order." I suppose it makes sense to consider "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Use less impactful materials and processes, probably in that order"?
To add to the complexity - for certain things region and location matters. There are lots of good places with plenty of water to grow cotton. There are lots of bad places to put solar panels.
Taxes and prices are the tools we are supposed to be using to deal with tradeoffs. Blanket bans or regulations generate lots of externalities. Where water is scarce it needs to be expensive. We need to tax carbon, not just subsidize batteries.
> We need to tax carbon, not just subsidize batteries.
Yeah, subsidies are incredibly clumsy/distorting compared to just taxing the problem directly.
I hold out hope that we'll someday see a uniform carbon tax, but as my wife likes to say, American politicians like carrots a lot more than they like sticks.
Places like Texas tend to equal out the taxes. For example, I have to pay an additional $200 fee on my registration to account for the fact that my EV doesn't contribute to gasoline taxes. I assume they'd do the same to any carbon taxes.
Are there any industrial processes where plastic containers get re-used? I know drink containers get returned where I live. But I doubt they get re-used.
Finland replaced those with the lighter ones that get crunched now... Then again it might have been sensible from microplastics perspective... Many of the recycled ones were pretty scuffed...
I think the best tradeoff is being more mindful of waste and overconsumption. we're buying cheaper, lower quality, goods more often, which increases waste and uses more resources in the long term.
Depending on what temperatures you'd expect where you live, fur could be a great option for the environment. Well made fur cloaks can last generations (source: I'm still using my grandpa's fur coat).
Compared to, say, a gore-tex jacket, it's great for the environment. But the life of a fur animal isn't always great.
Personally I prioritize keeping seas free of plastics over the quality of some goats' or minks' life, but I get that for some, that choice will be different.
I just wish everyone understood that that is the choice.A lot of people see fur and see red.
Same goes with "vegan leather" which my car's seats are made of. It's nice and all, and easy to clean which is great, but I do feel torn about the extra (and easily avoidable) plastic.
Our World in Data Argues the other way (https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales) in the first paragraph. With more scientific sources (I’m not saying science is perfect, but the Guardian and Washington Post also not.)
Pollution wise, I think the argument is pretty straightforward. The battery is about 200 liters. So about 200 liters plus some manufacturing costs. After this, there is a chance that the energy comes from renewable or nuclear sources. Conversely, at most 10% of the many hundreds to thousands of liters that go in a petrol car are renewable. And most people even avoid bio petrol because it’s bad for the engine. The biggest part of the oil is not renewable nor shipped to the destination via renewable transport methods. Anyone arguing that EVs are somehow more polluting in all kinds of ways, like tire pollution all of a sudden, are probably being bamboozled by the oil & gas industry.
> Anyone arguing that EVs are somehow more polluting in all kinds of ways, like tire pollution all of a sudden, are probably being bamboozled by the oil & gas industry.
This is reasonable, but the fact is, EVs are only slightly less polluting and should not be considered as a reliable replacement for the petrol cars and solution to all our problems.
Also tire pollution is a solvable problem without mass collective action, whereas climate change is going to require not just any solution but every solution in order to have a meaningful impact. It's the kind of problem where there's no silver bullet, just a lot of hard work ahead of us.
Electric car? Less pollution, more lithium mining (for now)
Avoid plastic? Glass jars are heavy (and added emissions to transport), and more likely to need replacing.
Avoid clothing with microplastics (like polyester)? Cotton is one of the most water-intensive crops, and production of bamboo cloth requires heavy chemicals usually, polluting the local environment
etc ...