Comment by pfdietz
19 days ago
> Also, what you said isn’t necessarily true even with plant based resins. What is the carbon cost of producing new resin vs recycling old?
In the post-fossil fuel age, where is the net carbon supposed to be coming from? Unless we're using limestone, it's from the air, so there can't be net emission.
In the not-yet post-fossil fuel age, what matters is displacing fossil fuels as quickly as possible, not the relatively very minor amount of carbon embodied in the renewable energy machinery.
It seems to me you’re thinking of this in wayyy to much of a binary. It’s not pre-fossil fuel vs post fossil fuel - it’s how do we transition each thing we use fossil fuels for.
Like if we end fossil fuels for energy, the cost of plastics will skyrocket. They maybe don’t contain enough carbon on their own to drive global warming, but we still need alternatives because otherwise that’s a many-billion dollar industry that is going to oppose stopping burning fossil fuels for energy.