This is one aspect of the tech world (and more broadly the "comfortable knowledge worker" class) that irritates me. There are so many aspects of sustainable development that are only considered from a perspective of NIMBYism mixed with orientalism. The one that bothers me the most is the portrayal of overpopulation as something caused only by people in developing countries, as if the first world wasn't part of the total count.

FWIW if you ignore immigration, nearly all first world countries are gradually depopulating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Of course, that doesn't mean for a second that the solution to the world's problems somehow involves population control in developing countries.

So the solution is probably to help them develop ASAP.

There are two kinds of mythologies that have been the cause of reckless and thoughtless procreation leading to overpopulation: 1. Religion 2. ‘Abundance’ mythologies penned by the Peter Diamandis/Steven Kotler ilk.

Regarding "religion": do you think "religions" came up with the concept of having a lot of children?

You don't think it's simply a natural instinct, like in all other animals? And that in a world where few make it to adulthood, people tried to have more children?

It's pretty well-established that it isn't poverty per se but gender equality that predicts birth rates.

Here is a blog post of the author in case the above is not readable for you: https://www.niussp.org/article/gender-equality-and-fertility...

This study is in the context of previous assumptions of a U-curved relationship: low equality == high birth rates, medium equality == low birth rates, high equality == high birth rates. That study shows that the last part doesn't seem to be true.

The macro trend of poverty <> birth rates points in the opposite direction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

Data points on the very poor end are all over the place, though.

The high workforce participation -> low birth rate correlation is definitely visible over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertility-and-female-labo...

Why not? A lot of people on the left are saying that having children is bad for the environment, why shouldn't this be true in poor countries?

Fewer children is better for the environment; that doesn't mean one has to favor population control. It's easier, more democratic and probably at least as effective to enforce equality for women in education and economics, and the lower birthrates follow automatically.

Not that there's anything particularly democratic about "enforcing equality" in foreign countries.

That would be wonderful because it would mean that workers get fair wages. Lack of productivity can be compensated by automation.

>How do you reverse it when it becomes a problem?

That's biologically impossible. Even if you sterilize every human with a birth certificate on earth.

Of course, this is the average American, which is a deceptive number when talking about countries with high levels of wealth inequality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

I’m not an advocate for population control, but if I were I wouldn’t exclude poor countries from my scope. Many poor countries are “developing” and it seems more reasonable to ask people that were planning to have 8 children to instead have 4 rather than targeting people that were aiming for one or two. Especially when the 8 kid family to be is already poor.

As this article [3] (unfortunately not in English) aptly puts it: "Air travels represents around 5% of the emissions of humanity [4], but 90% of humans have never taken a plane." (the 90% figure is arguably difficult to assess [5]. It comes from an article in French behind a paywall, but other sources [6] show similar numbers).

Finally, CO2 is of course not the only source of pollution. But this map [7] showing meat supply per person shows a similar direction.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/CO2_emis...

[2] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2014;&mar...

[3] https://medium.com/enquetes-ecosophiques/d%C3%A9mographie-et...

[4] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/30987495.pdf

[5] https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-the-worlds-population-...

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/17/people-caus...

[7] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Meat_sup...

The rest of the world is catching up faster than most people are aware.

Here's a link for daily plastic waste generation per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita

I don't see an obvious correlation between first world and amount of waste: the #1 country is Guyana, China and Russia are well above Canada, etc.

Similar with CO2 emissions: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... The #1 is Qatar, we in Montenegro are on the second place.

I'd like to see a period in which China, India, and smaller nations are able to use more than their share of the global quota while the wealthier countries in western Europe and North America use less, per capita and in sum.

I don't think this is obviously wrong at all. Dispersing a fine mist of micro plastics into the environment, where it can enter the air and water system, is very very different than sticking a piece of plastic into the ground, where it will comfortably sit for a thousand years with minimal decomposition.

For a good example, here's [1] a study about how car tires, which slowly disappear into the environment, are a major contributor to micro plastics in the ocean.

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/tires...

Huh? I don't see anything in the article to suggest this is happening...?

Similarly, if rain is expected, I don’t need the forecast to tell me that rain makes clothes wet.

That's the thing - does it actually decompose at the same rate or slower than eg. concrete or brick?

The rate of decomposition is not the correct metric to look at, in this context.

Obviously many things not done for environmental reasons have environmental impacts, but the mere idea itself doesn't automatically invoke that perspective. You can read about a new fab without thinking about the environmental aspects, but you probably cannot read about somebody recycling plastic without thinking about the environment.

Thanks for bringing this up: Honestly, that thought has never crossed my mind when thinking about these initiatives. Much appreciated: You've changed the way I think.

Because the project is literally about plastic pollution solving?

Plastic is so cheap any recycling project faces either an environmental or an economical showstopper. I am glad this one is having some impact.

Iirc, plastic wastes are added to the tar mix to cover roads, to saw dust and glue to produce composite deck boards, etc. I am not informed enough to have an opinion on whether it’s a good or bad thing.

So yeah, any form of reuse/recycling seems better than that.

Traditional bricks first appeared in China and have been adopted and used by humans across various civilizations for thousands of years.

As engineering advanced globally, the pros and cons of bricks have been well explored and well understood. Plastic bricks are a new contender to this problem.

That said, when you have a new contender to a centuries established and globally adopted solution, it might be more likely to prompt exploration of its potential cons.

Starlink is a new engineering solution with several of its own cons that have been reported in HN. It is difficult to compare Starlink against other alternatives when Starlink has a narrow use case that it particularly excels in (high speed Internet to unserviced areas of the globe)

If the starlink article involved how much plastic waste they caused the discussion would be around that, if it involved privacy and surveillance we would talk about that, if it involved how fast the speeds are we would talk about that...

Manority of plastic waste is NEVER recycled. Lets not spread myths.

"Officially, Japan recycles 84 percent of the plastic it collects, one of the highest rates in the world, but the government designates three types of recycling processes: material, chemical and thermal. Material recycling means the plastic itself is reprocessed into new plastic — PET bottles, for instance, are made into new PET products. This is probably the image of recycling that most people have. Chemical recycling means that plastic waste is broken down into its constituent components, which are then recombined to make new plastic materials. Thermal recycling means that the plastic is burned in incinerators to produce energy."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/06/national/media-...

Incidentally, in Japan, PET recycling is a very small minority of all plastic collected, so it hardly moves the mark even if that part is recycled in plastic-loving Japan.

The others aren't claiming to be an environmental solution so it doesn't get looked at under that lens first. Plastic as well strikes a nerve by hitting upon other issues like microplastics and past deception of recyclability.

I think it essentially hits a lot of "bad idea flags" combined with a cognitive bias I noticed. A company which casts itself as "pro-worker" company paying $12/hr for say sign-turner jobs when most in the field/area pay only minimum wage getting more backlash than everyone else. didn't "betray them" in spite of paying higher than everyone else. It seems everybody hates hypocrisy in which they are not a participant.

Quite the opposite actually. Tires are already a huge source of microplastics pollution. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/

> because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse.

The problem is that landfills aren't living up to their names. They aren't being filled in and buried. Burying plastic is the best thing you can do to dispose of it. It's only when they're left in the open air to break down and be spread all over the oceans by wind that you have a problem.

Is it, though? Or was that just a scam to keep us buying plastic shit and to keep packaging unregulated?

It is not trivially and obviously wrong that it might be better to throw plastic into big holes than to spread it all over the surface of the planet. It's not true for nuclear waste. Not to be preachy, but the "at least they're doing something" common sense argument is not good. You have to do the math.

How so?

There is a lot of demand to be told that when you separate your plastic out, it gets recycled. There's no demand for the recycling to actually happen, so mostly it doesn't.

Why is that worse?

Plastic is made out of oil. It belongs in the ground.

"Former data analyst and engineer creates startup to develop award-winning material over five times stronger than concrete from waste, following scholarship in US university materials lab."

This is the oldest internet comment phenomena in the world, so why do you only notice it here and not every other time?

People always have the nature to attack and knock down, and stories of an individual building something on their own is a far more accessible punching bag than anything else you mentioned. We get to roleplay as critics, scientists, environmentalists, bureaucrats, and we love it.

pg's "middlebrow dismissal" was coined from watching HNers attack the guy building something in his garage.

This is obvious and very easy to see, while the other examples you brought up aren't. Your examples might even be doing more damage, but because the end result is shiny, people are distracted.

Plus, I'm sure there's a part of first world vs third world prejudice: "she's probably uneducated and doesn't know what she's doing, plus her accent sounds that way".