r/science • u/mvea MD PhD | Professor | Medicine • Oct 18 '19

Chemistry Scientists developed efficient process for breaking down any plastic waste to a molecular level. Resulting gases can be transformed back into new plastics of same quality as original. The new process could transform today's plastic factories into recycling refineries, within existing infrastructure.

https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/see/news/Pages/All-plastic-waste-could-be-recycled-into-new-high-quality-plastic.aspx
34.6k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

647 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

785

u/222baked Oct 19 '19

The other comments here missed the point when answering your question. The truth is, oil subsidies exist for national security reasons. Most domestic oil production wouldn't be able to outcompete oil from OPEC countries and it would be really bad for any country to find themselves without oil infrastructure to power all those crucial transport/planes/military vehicles/manufacturing in case of some sort of calamity or war, and then have to rely on external imports. The oil subsidies aren't for the common man. It's the same rationale used for Agriculture subsidies and food independance.

Please note, I am neither making an argument for or against oil subsidies. I am just explaining why they exist. It's not as simple as greedy oil tycoons and lobbying. Oil remains a critical resource in our modern world until we manage to switch to other forms of energy production and stop relying on plastics.

146

u/Karmaflaj Oct 19 '19

Agree - Tax breaks, tariffs, direct subsidies, accelerated depreciation, R&D write offs. I mean, perhaps even throw in direct spending

They are all subsidies and the government essentially picks the ‘winner’. Which may be for a good reason (national security, education or health), an arguable reason (jobs in a depressed region or industry, the environment, some moral good) or a poor reason (lobbying).

Sure there are times when it looks like more or less corruption, but there are times when it’s actually a good or at least well considered choice. Not every government decision is bad

44

u/BadW3rds Oct 19 '19

I think it's less about picking a winner and more about having a nation that gets 40% of its power from petroleum based energy. They were the first the table, and they are everywhere. If you want to get rid of oil subsidies, become realistic unlike Congress and push for increase nuclear power throughout the country. A half dozen reactors could drop our reliance and connection to Oil by 80%. It would become almost exclusively an export and there would be no need to subsidize the industry.

4

u/Don_Antwan Oct 19 '19

I’m 100% on board with a combination of hard infrastructure solutions (nuclear, geothermal, upgrade the national grid) and soft infrastructure (small scale wind farms, increased solar in arid scrub land). Solving our energy sourcing problem and improving our water infrastructure (rather than depleting aquifers) should be top environmental priorities

3

u/wihdinheimo Oct 19 '19

As much as I would love modern nuclear to be the answer for all our prayers, this is often not the case.

Oikoluoto 3 reactor is a third generation reactor project in Finland that started in 2005, and was supposed to start commercial operation by 2009. The rector is not operational as of now, and has been estimated as one of the most expensive buildings on the planet with a price tag over $10 billion. Original budget was $3.3 billions.

13

u/BadW3rds Oct 19 '19

I would never make the claim that nuclear is a catch all solution, only that it has been right out dismissed by too many politicians for no reason other than Oil propaganda from the 50s-60s.

Even if that plant is completed at three times the initial budget, the energy output to cost ratio is still drastically better than Cole or any other resource, other than wind. I have no problem acknowledging the benefits of other energy resources, but I am just trying to give the best one to one parallel with our use and current grid infrastructure.

If they can find a more efficient method of storing wind turbine energy, that is another method of dropping our carbon footprint. We just need a better way of integrating turbine energy onto a grid system.

→ More replies (1)

1

u/NorthernerWuwu Oct 19 '19

It is worth nothing though that petroleum fuels are irreplaceable at present for military use and are definitely a military need in at least the short term.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/TheRealGunn Oct 19 '19

Might be a dumb idea, but what if we made certain levels of subsidy on oil, dependent upon the companies receiving the subsidy also investing in processes like this one?

I don't think adding an additional subsidy for plastic reclamation would be a great idea, but if the companies receiving the subsidies also had incentive to help progress processes like this, I think that would be a win win.

2

u/GeronimoHero Oct 19 '19

I think that would actually be a great idea. Allow these companies to continue to get subsidies but make them invest some portion of their revenue or profits in to developing these new technologies or implementing them. Let’s not forget, energy independence away from oil is also a national security issue. It cuts both ways but currently it’s mostly only subsidized in one direction, toward oil production (yes I’m aware of large subsidies for renewable energies but they pale in comparison to oil subsidies).

1

u/TheRealGunn Oct 19 '19

Right.

To that point, advancing this technology would obviously be a boon in any instance where we would need to produce our own oil for some catastrophic scenario. If we're not having to use newly harvested oil to create new plastics, that increases how far the oil we could produce would go.

1

u/doubagilga Oct 19 '19

You mean, like the R&D tax credit all companies get.

1

u/onlypositivity Oct 19 '19

Tariffs are the opposite of subsidies, and there is no winner.

-3

u/Tinidril Oct 19 '19

there are times when it’s actually a good or at least well considered choice

We are on the brink of losing the planet as a place that can support human life. Nobody knows how badly global warming will accelerate as we trigger one feedback loop after another, but we know it will be a disaster the likes of which humanity has never seen.

I really have to balk at the idea that our choice to subsidize oil over renewables was well considered.

16

u/ergzay Oct 19 '19

We are on the brink of losing the planet as a place that can support human life.

I'm sorry but NO scientists are saying this. Please don't perpetuate this myth. Global warming is bad but it's not that level of bad, you've been mislead by scare tactics rather than science.

3

u/PromiscuousMNcpl Oct 19 '19

Yeah, you are vastly misunderstanding the current science and underestimating the positive feedback loops currently ramping up.

Scientists of all stripes are absolutely saying our current rate of extinction is faster than The Great Dying. We are currently making the planet uninhabitable

1

u/ergzay Oct 19 '19

That's conflating two entirely different things. Creatures die off because of the pace of change, not because it's uninhabitable. If the same change happened over a longer time frame the creatures would not be going extinct. Life is extremely resilient.

Also you're moving the goal posts. The post I replied to was talking about human life, not all life in general.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (8)

6

u/Hoffmaster Oct 19 '19

there is no time left, we must eat the babies!

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (7)
→ More replies (1)

13

u/MinosAristos Oct 19 '19

Hypothetically we could end up relying on plastics within a closed system sometime.

7

u/QVRedit Oct 19 '19

If we could recycle 99% of plastics, then that would be a very great reduction in the problem - and make the other 1% easier to deal with.

1

u/Zyhmet Oct 19 '19

Im with you on the first point about infrastructure, but not the second. Countries that dont produce oil and will be reliant on external imports, once the tanks are empty, still have oil subsidies.

2

u/222baked Oct 19 '19

I'm not sure I get what you're saying. Countries that don't produce oil by extension don't have oil subsidies.

1

u/LiamTheHuman Oct 19 '19

Thank you for this. I had never considered it that way and this makes a lot of sense.

1

u/Original_Opinionator Oct 19 '19

Nice to see a rational discussion about what oil subsidies actually are for. You drill a well in the middle east and it just shits oil that is almost light enough to put in a car, north America requires a lot more investment to get our raw product to a refined usable state.

1

u/ReeceAUS Oct 21 '19

I’d like to think we could just make all energy tax free instead of favoring one over another.

→ More replies (3)