“Did you ever hear of a solar panel?” she recalls the Uber driver asking her and her friends.

BASED DRIVER

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Plastics are not that important, we could have good lives without plastics.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Depends on your definition of a good life, I guess. Mine involves L5 colonies.

        • Mardoniush [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That would be nice, yes, absolutely we don't need polyester clothing or microbeads or all the plastic junk that clutters modern homes, but that's a very small subset of plastics. And I'd like to not have to use lead piping.

          I'm including things like...say...non-plant based rubber, the essential high end composites we absolutely need for things like electronics and machinery, you know, CO2 scrubbers.

          Much of this can be gotten from plants, but climate change looks to lower global agricultural yields by at least 60%, so a very very small percentage of oil extraction will have to continue or we all die.

          • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I'm with you that we will need a bit of the chemical technologies we've developed since the mid-20th century. But we'll only need a small fraction of what we produce/consume/demand today.