The biggest WTF moment of my life was when I found out plastic was made from fossil fuels
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I had no idea, never thought about it before. I learned about it in a college geology class and it just blew my mind.
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amazing; i have no real bearing on what fraction of fossil fuels go to plastics and i know there's been a lot of work around making it out of biomatter (but obviously it's way more expensive/crappier quality or it'd all be made out of algae or mushrooms or whatever by now)
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As fossil fuels (oil in particular) are phased out of energy uses (cars, home heating, etc), the industry is going to ramp up plastic production as a way to continue to make money. The shift has already started.
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that makes sense; i haven't been tracking it. who's the person to follow for that?
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It doesn’t really. Crude alone is $5t a year not counting further refining etc. Plastics is $600b, an order of magnitude less and no longer growth. Nobody thinks materials $ will make up for lost energy $, and there’s as much pressure on decarbonizing materials as energy.
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There’s other moving parts too… like natural gas —> ammonia —> fertilizer which are probably more important than plastics. And lots of other materials and industrial materials. Whole thing is super complex. Recommend and newsletters for the play-by-play
fertilizer itself is very complex!!! been reading about it for a month
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