Comment by natex
4 days ago
This author does what other pro-industry mouthpieces do: 1. Reference a real scientific study with a genuine but conditional result, 2. Remove the qualifications associated with the study, so they can 3. Make a much stronger rhetorical conclusion.
Or they simply willfully misreport the results.It's exhausting exercise to have to continuously fact-check these shills. Here's just one example from the article:
"Approximately a hundred rivers, mostly in South and South-East Asia, account for half of ocean plastic."
That is not supported by the cited study. Earlier models estimated highly concentrated emissions; the cited paper concluded that emissions were distributed among far more rivers than previously thought.The cited paper actually helped overturn the older “a handful of rivers cause nearly everything” story. Yet the article uses it to tell essentially that same concentrated-source story.
Also, not "Half of ocean plastic." The paper actually says: “More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global _riverine plastic emissions_ into the ocean." They did not measure half of all plastic in the ocean. The paper modeled annual floating macroplastic (not microplastics) emissions from rivers to ocean. That is different from: "all plastic already present in the ocean or "all plastic entering the ocean from every source".
I think their use of that paper is a bit sloppy, but you're sort of doing a similar thing by making a strong rhetorical claim "This author does what other pro-industry mouthpieces do" while ignoring the point of the paragraph, "Richer countries have near-universal refuse collection and almost none of their waste winds up in the ocean", which is broadly true[1]. North America and Europe account for 5.1% or ocean plastic. India alone accounts for nearly 13%, and the Philippines nearly 37%.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
Worth noting that according to the data in that article, India is below the world average on a per capita basis, roughly 0.7x the world average. The Philippines is 25x the world average per capita.
I almost think the per-capita lens is less useful here, because the issue isn't consumption/use per se but the state capacity to collect trash and dispose of it properly. I also suspect that within India the majority of people produce little to no plastic trash that enters the ocean.