Thread by @mateosfo

I'm gonna be the stink at this party, sorry/not sorry

First, disclaimer/caveat: Plastic is bad and should be generally banned.

Now a science thread about waste management, plastic, and what's really killing our oceans. 1/

https://twitter.com/berkeleyside/status/1087932731529543680

A few years back, some of the world's leading ocean scientists did a big paper on a) how much plastic is in the ocean, and b) where it comes from. tl;dr: much more than we think, and mostly from fast-growing nations science.sciencemag.org/content/347/62… 2/

The paper didn't make as big a splash as a camera-friendly Dutch teen savant, who wowed TV audiences with his idea of scraping plastics from the so-called "gyres" with boats and booms and stuff.

Sexy story. Also, mostly bullshit. sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/s… 3/

Most plastic in ocean has already degraded into "microplastic" - pieces small enough to lodge in digestive tracts. That's not a problem solvable with elaborate swimming-pool nets.

Basically, gyres are like icebergs. They mask what lies beneath. theguardian.com/environment/20… 4/

So, of course, it follows that governments should ban plastics to save the oceans. Yes, indeed, this is objectively true. BUT. Like most things, that can't/ won't happen all at once, & there are fast, interim solutions that work - namely, investing in better waste management. 5/

Go back to that 2015 Science paper: "Investments in improved waste management practices on land, particularly in fast growing/developing nations, are critical & will lead to substantial reductions in the amount of plastic waste entering oceans." 6/

'Course, media attention spans and idealistic youth being what they are, it's rather a bit sexier to tell a story about re-ordering the entire global economy via a bunch of symbolic urban bans on plastic forks. Which - back to the disclaimer - this is a good thing. HowEVER. 7/

There's another force killing the oceans, faster and with more severe consequences (I know, it sucks we've found so many ways to kill the ocean. We're good at it!)

"What's driving our cars everywhere and pumping carbon dioxide into the sea for 450 ppm, Bob"

A daily double! 8/

Yes, when you drive your car you do, in fact, pump CO2 more or less directly into the ocean. Much of the CO2 we've created through burning fossil fuels is actually in the ocean, as is most of the extra heat absorbed by the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. seattletimes.com/opinion/co2-is… 9/

"Wait," you're wondering, "What does this have to do with Berkeley's plastics ban?" 10/

It turns out that the largest source of ocean pollution in Berkeley isn't plastic - it's ... (wait for it) ...

CARS! Yes, Berkeley, California is pretty good at waste management, so very little of our plastic waste - including those evil cups/forks - ends up in the ocean. 11/

In fact (2015 numbers, so may be wrong now ...), Turkey - a country w/ large coastline & population similar to California - dumps twice as much plastic in ocean as entire United States.

But each Californian pumps ~ 10 metric tons of CO2 per year; in Turkey, it's 4.6 tons. 12/

(A Columbia EI student had a nice little riff on this recently: "According to the World Bank, in 2014, the average American released approximately 36,700 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) and 1,600 pounds of trash." blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/01/09/oce…) 13/

So, surely, Berkeley, California - city that "should be the environmental pace car for the nation" - is gonna actually turn that pace car into a low-carbon bicycle?

Surely. Any day now. With an emergency City Council resolution, backed by Greenpeace, no doubt. cc @Hyper_lexic