New Research From MIT and Woods Hole: Nature Breaks Down Plastics in the Ocean - Granite Grok

New Research From MIT and Woods Hole: Nature Breaks Down Plastics in the Ocean

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You’ve heard the story. Convenience plastics must be banned in America (and New Hampshire) to save our oceans. That’s two lies in one. First, most of the plastic that makes it into the ocean comes from Asia. Second, a new study proves that once there, nature will break it down.

Related:  The Democrats Proposed Plastic Bag Ban is Bad for the Environment.

To the first point, as a refresher: as much as 90% of the plastic that gets into the ocean is not coming from the United States. Adding costs to force everyone to use replacements, many with larger carbon footprints direct money away from productive purposes like investment and job creation. It could even lower tax revenue (unless you want to add a tax to the replacements for good measure).

Second, new research from “the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology” proves the longstanding assumption about plastic in the ocean is incorrect (emphasis in original).

The study is “Sunlight Converts Polystyrene to Carbon Dioxide and Dissolved Organic Carbon” by Collin P. Ward, Cassia J. Armstrong, Anna N. Walsh, Julia H. Jackson and Christopher M. Reddy.   It is good basic science. … Here, we show that polystyrene is completely photochemically oxidized to carbon dioxide and partially photochemically oxidized to dissolved organic carbon. Lifetimes of complete and partial photochemical oxidation are estimated to occur on centennial and decadal time scales, respectively. These lifetimes are orders of magnitude faster than biological respiration of polystyrene and thus challenge the prevailing assumption that polystyrene persists in the environment for millennia.”

The leftist narrative that plastic is forever is incorrect. 

As the linked article notes, plastics are hydrocarbons. Left in nature, the earth, soil, water, wind, and sun will break them down to their original bits.

It’s not a rapid process. It is fair to consider an academic and scientific discussion about the consequences if any to having it around for a decade or a century. But it’s not an insoluble problem that won’t solve (or dissolve) itself.

It’s also not a problem created by Americans or one that will be solved by knee-jerk virtue-signaling plastic bans that drive up costs and impacts.

If the Climate Cult were genuinely interested in addressing this matter, they’d be calling for sanctions against international polluters as an incentive to get them to clean up their act. 

Instead, we get regulatory overreach, regressive taxes, fees, and fines, and bigger government.

Which, as we’ve long suggested,  is the goal. Environmental policy is just a vehicle for frightening people into handing over their money and their liberty to the State.

Don’t do either. The biggest polluters are the nation-states whose government is the sort the Left is after, here in America.

If you want to Green the planet, don’t vote blue.

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