Plastic pollution is the pollution that is causing climate change. The process of producing plastic emits huge amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that's nearly 300x more potent than CO2.

"Greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic lifecycle threaten the ability of the global community to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C. By 2050, the greenhouse gas emissions from plastic could reach over 56 gigatons—10-13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget. "

- https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Plastic-and-...

You can't evaluate plastic production in a vacuum because it's numbers are enormous and will scare anyone. There is a reason though why that article makes no comparisons though.

For reference, the two plastic plants mentioned in the article you linked can emit 3.65 million tons of CO2 per year (about 30% of the nations plastic production annual total). This is a little less than what the average natural gas power plant produces in a year.

And there are about 1000 gas plants in the US. And gas is the least emissive of the power fossil fuels.

So while strictly speaking plastic production does create greenhouse gases, you can basically offset an entire years worth of plastic production emissions with only a handful of wind and solar farms displacing fossil fuel power plants.

Also I don't count burning plastic in lifecycle assessments. That is trivial to outlaw and dramatically pumps emissions figures.

> orders of magnitude more manageable

Nope, not true. Easy to say you can regulate the heck out of enforcing it, but if it was easy it would have been done long ago. Besides there not being a feasible and cost-effective way to track all the plastic in circulation, trust people would be quick to protest about government overreach on their right to pollute

It's more manageable because the impact on the climate is very small. Oil that is burned is far more harmful to the climate than oil that is turned to plastic.

I agree with that. The weird part is suggesting that producing plastic is good because it drives up the cost of oil.