We’ve known this for over 100 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality). And solutions to the problem have been proposed for as long (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax).
The problem with implementing these taxes are political; people with vested interests will argue long and hard against any new taxes, and any working solution needs to be global.
It looks to me like outside this we there is a significant bunch of people who do not know or accept this. Actually, at some point I was pondering whether the main distinction [1] between conservative-populist movements and "the elite" these movements are against is exactly the point that "the elite" understands and acknowledges the concept of externality and wants to address this market failure with something, while the populists refuse to understand or accept the issue.
[1] At least we can be confident that the distinction is not wealth, money or political influence, what one could naively think elite has and non-elite not.
If the populists refuse to understand or accept the issue, the population refuses to understand or accept the issue.
It really depends on the population. Green parties are often pretty strong in wealthy European countries. Unfortunately, Greens also tend to be leftists that refuse whole idea of a free market. They'd rather ban things than handling externalities with prices.
The other problem is that externalities are hard to price. If the price is too low, the problem isn't solved. If the price is too high, people won't want to pay it.
In any event, the underlying problem isn't free markets itself, it's what the people want (or think they want).
The purpose isn't to make people stop polluting entirely, but to make it so they will only do so when it brings them a benefit larger than the societal cost of the pollution.
Why spend $$$ promoting and supporting recycling if a landfill tax is paying your wages?
The minimally logical conclusion (to me) is the public doesn’t want to pay for the externalities of X. Taxing X—assuming the tax levied is an appropriate amount to cover the externalities of X—makes actor Y who is doing X pay for X and its externalities, alleviating the burden on the public while avoiding taking an actual stand and/or engaging an effort to reduce X. Y does X? Y pays for it, not the public.
How much taxes on X adds to public revenue is mostly irrelevant, so long as it is enough to cover the costs of dealing with X without shifting that burden onto the general public via other taxes. If the revenue from X is enough to cover the costs of X’s externalities and also pays for wages and/or other public needs, that’s a net win for the public. You likely won’t see a city starting up a campaign to increase undesirable thing X just because it’d increase revenues.
Now, if the public really wants to reduce X by means of taxing X, it will likely choose to levy heavy, punitive taxes on X as doing X increases/continues, hoping to make it financially painful to those doing X to have to pay for X—for example, look at cigarette taxes. That can only go so far, though, before you encounter those for whom the added punitive tax is not a sufficient deterrent. Then it’s either a choice between more increases to get X to zero, or some other type of concerted public or legal effort to curtail X.
The act of taxing X isn’t enough of a signal to conclude the public is using the tax as a reduction effort. But it’s certainly a signal that the public doesn’t want to pay for X via standard revenues—and the public absolutely should not bear the burden for the negative externalities of any X. There’s no doubt a built-in hope that, assuming the costs of X’s externalities are known, taxing Y to pay for X will encourage reduction because—especially if Y is a company—Y wants to keep their expenses low, and really doesn’t want to pay for X. A city levying such taxes, assuming it is even moderately well-managed, will hope to see that the tax revenue for X will hit zero in tandem with X itself hitting zero—the success state[0].
[0]: I’m going to ignore the real-world chance that revenues from X get allocated to previously non-existing programs that then need to find a new source of revenue—but that’s a different problem.
In that case, X=car accidents - any public red-light-camera advocacy will say they reduce X.
Of course, you're right to say that a tax on X doesn't prove people dislike X - a tax on income doesn't mean citizens hate income. You could even argue a tax on alcohol means citizens like alcohol too much! But a subset of taxes, such as fines and some sin taxes, are presented in the public discourse as about reducing X rather than making money.
[1] https://www.salon.com/2017/04/05/this-may-have-happened-to-y...
I’d agree that some taxes are presented in public discourse as at least partially being about reducing some X—though fines shouldn’t be lumped in with taxes. Fines are worth considering as a different thing with their own reasoning and goals that often make them distinct from taxes—particularly because fines are punitive and come after known legislated/regulated behavior has occurred.
Inertia dictates that the tax will be permanent. But I hope you're right of course.
Why not have these taxes and also have subsidies that cancel them? At least you're naming the problem then, which would be a great step forward.
> and any working solution needs to be global.
I suppose you could introduce import taxes to solve this problem.
Burning fossil fuels -> CO₂ emissions -> Climate change -> Widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying.
Disposable plastics under open sun -> Microplastics -> Unknown damage to the whole foodchain -> Possibly (we don't have good data to work off), widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying.
These two issues are frequently conflated together, to the detriment of the overall discussion. But it is true that they both ultimately are results of the same failures of market-based economy. If you do root cause analysis on both, you'll end up in the same place. But since it's (AFAIU) unpractical to address the root cause directly, we need to consider which of the two problems to focus on; I'd argue we should focus on the emissions first.
I do think part of the problem is that so many of our landfills are poorly managed. In high school I used to spend my summers working for the public works department in the rural community I grew up in. A few days out of the month we had to go out to the fields near the landfill and pick up plastic bags and other bits of trash that had blown out of the landfill before being covered.
I say this as someone who avoids single use plastics, drinks tap water, recycles, etc.
It's hard to say exactly which types of plastics do what, so maybe some are benign, but it's a large uncontrolled experiment at present.
For example this shows how plastics shed fibres that end up in sea creatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics...
Some info on plastic estrogen-mimicking leaching: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/
Bisphenol A is only one type. Plastics likely have other hormonal effects from other components.
Increased intersex births from endocrine disrupting chemicals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/
Testicular cancer rates are rising in the developed world, and it's linked to endocrine disruption in the womb.
Waste is the focus, but I think it's misplaced. Our materials are everywhere in the environment.
Even synthetic clothing sheds fibers everytime it's washed, and the same for microfiber clothes.
(Note of course that plastics are not the only source of endocrine disruption)
Disentangling those factors would be exceedingly difficult, although longitudinal cross-cultural studies (possibly widely separated twins) might get you somewhere.
Animal model populations' medical institutional bias is somewhat lower.
There aren't just the social factors with coming out, but also the education around being being trans. Some people live their entire lives not knowing and only find out after watching youtube, meeting people in the community, or going to therapy (which is also becoming more commonplace and acceptable). The stigma attached to trans people as mentally unwell 'others' prevented people from even considering it for most of their lives.
Also, I do not believe there is an unbalance of trans woman to trans men. Trans women are more controversial (bathrooms) than trans men, which puts them in a public spotlight. Trans women often present themselves as stereotypical women, and if they've not fully medically/surgically transitioned yet, it makes them easy to pick out in a crowd. Trans men, on the other hand, wear men's clothes, which happen to be gender neutral if worn casually. They are often seen as 'butch' women if not fully transitioned, not trans men. You oftentimes probably wouldn't notice or identify trans men when you see them.
Disclaimer: I'm a trans woman.
So much of our identity is special to us. How would you feel as a gay man if someone told you that the reason your sexuality was not standard heterosexual was because your mum's womb was knackered from having seven kids and you were last in the line?
This is a thing, but, after spending a teenage coming out, it is just a bit of a harsh thing to be told.
Since we can't even discuss this yet, what chance is there that we will have the conversation about how pollution is messing up our fertility and gender?
Trans people were known in ancient Greece ffs, it's mostly thanks to the Catholic church and its "morals" that we ended up with imprisoning people for being gay or trans.
And I never said they didn’t exist, so I’m not sure why you seem to have an aggressive tone. I know they’ve always existed. But with research showing intersex births becoming more common than ever, I have to wonder if there’s a connection to rates of being trans as well.
That said, I think it's worth investigating. Here's a paper from Scott Kerlin, showing the results of survey from DES sons. It's a group of people born as male to women given DES, an estrogen affecting drug.
http://worldaa1.miniserver.com/~gires/assets/Research-Assets...
"More than 150 network members with “confirmed” or “strongly suspected” prenatal DES exposure status indicated they are either transsexual (pre- or post-operative, 90 members), transgender (48 members), “gender dysphoric” (17 members), or intersex (3 members)."
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A strong caveat to this would be that people don't just join a group called DES sons on a whim. A large number of women were given DES. Many more than 500 sons were born to them. People who joined the group are self selecting as having had some sort of problem or concern to discuss.
And that's almost all I could find on the topic. The only other thing that seemed notable is that the brains of transgender people resemble those of their chosen sex, not their birth sex. I.e. a MTF person had a brain typical of a women, not a man. But, this difference may only appear in adulthood, so it isn't clear if it is physiological or social.
If someone wanted to investigate this, investigating the testicular and endocrinal health of MTF people before transition would be a good start. If endocrine disruption had anything to do with it you would expect to see much more testicular cancer. The DES group had 5 out of 500 with this cancer, incidentally, while having a low cancer incidence overall.
I would categorize the published research on this topic as extremely slim. It's not even at the hypothesis stage, and your question isn't answerable without much further research.
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Oh also, while traditionally there were more MTF, recently gender dysphoria clinics are reporting more FTM.
Here are some numbers from the UK: http://gids.nhs.uk/number-referrals
The year on year referral increase is very large. So social acceptance/awareness must have a sizeable role. Endocrine dysruption can't explain a ~4x increase in 5 years.
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Edit: I should have included this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexuality
Doesn't touch on endocrine disruption in terms of estrogen exposure though.
I haven't researched it further, but I heard a theory that female hormonal contraception is a contributor to people identifying as LGBT.
Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Austria all put less than 5% of their trash directly into landfills.
Functioning trash handling is far more effective at reducing the ecological impact of plastic than any attempt to reduce plastic consumption.
Personaly I think Switzerland is the best model on how to handle trash properly.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-w...
More and more polyethylene plants are being set up all the time.
I do take advantage of these almost-free flights, but often wish they'd be more expensive -- to make rail travel more competitive if nothing else.
It's up to the political system to to produce those, and it's proven incapable.
For example, we've known for a long time what will solve global warming most effectively: Carbon taxes. Preferably global ones, but local ones are the correct regional step.
And our political systems have spent decades doing everything except this simple thing that will actually work.
Markets only function because there are rules, we just argue about what they should be.
This is exactly why I see a ray of hope since Canada announced she will ban single use plastic in near future [0].
I hope international cooperations grasp this chance to abandon as much plastic as possible altogether in the global supply chain, not just to cater to Canada's upcoming regulations.
[0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/canad...
Not necessarily. Just thinking about total CO2 released, it should be better for the environment to release the energy in the oil you have currently (in plastic form) than burn extra CO2 extracting an equivalent oil from the ground, refining it, transporting it, etc.
The equation might be different if you're getting your energy from non-fossil fuels. In this case, the correct answer is probably to recycle it properly rather than ship it to a third country for an unknown fate.
EDIT: I'm assuming here that your incinerator is a modern one that generates energy and that you're not just burning things because they're inconvenient.
It will be as soon as plastic recycling becomes economically attractive. I think it'll take a ban on new plastic production and consequent shortage for that to happen. Until then, I'm sure there's a few of these dodgy "recycling" businesses that put plastic in landfills with the intent of mining it for resources again in a possible future.