{"id":67532,"date":"2024-04-24T14:53:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T19:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67532"},"modified":"2024-04-24T14:53:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T19:53:19","slug":"plastics-industry-heats-world-4-times-as-much-as-air-travel-report-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67532","title":{"rendered":"Plastics industry heats world 4 times as much as air travel, report finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plastics industry heats world 4 times as much as air travel, report finds<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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Greenpeace activists display a giant art installation called \u2018Perpetual Plastic Machine\u2019 ahead of Global Plastic Treaty talks Saturday, May 27, 2023 in Paris. (AP Photo\/Aurelien Morissard)<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Pollution from the plastics industry is a major force behind the heating of the planet, according to a new report from the federal government.<\/p>\n

The industry releases about four times as many planet-warming chemicals as the airline industry, according to the paper from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.<\/p>\n

Its emissions are equivalent to those of about 600 coal plants\u00a0\u2014\u00a0about three times the number that exist across\u00a0the U.S.<\/p>\n

And if plastic production remains constant, by 2050 it could burn through nearly a fifth of the Earth\u2019s remaining carbon budget \u2014 the amount of carbon dioxide climate scientists believe can be burned without tipping the climate into unsafe territory.<\/p>\n

The report from the national lab comes out as civil society and public health groups, plastics industry representatives and members of national governments prepare to travel to Ottawa, Canada, for the fourth meeting of the International Negotiating Committee, which seeks to create a legally binding treaty to reduce plastics pollution.<\/p>\n

Those negotiations are likely to be split by stark divisions. Representatives of environmental groups and countries across the Global South have called for limits on production of plastics, while the plastics industry insists that plastic pollution can be eliminated\u00a0by stricter rules around recycling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In last fall\u2019s negotiations in Kenya, public health and environmental campaigners\u00a0focused on the dangers<\/a>\u00a0posed by plastics \u2014 including microplastics and nanoplastics \u2014 in the human body and environment.<\/p>\n

But these negotiations left out a key part of the plastics problem, the Lawrence Berkeley researchers note: the role of plastic in climate change.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plastics industry heats world 4 times as much as air travel, report finds Greenpeace activists display a giant art installation called \u2018Perpetual Plastic Machine\u2019 ahead of Global Plastic Treaty talks Saturday, May 27, 2023 in Paris. (AP Photo\/Aurelien Morissard) Pollution from the plastics industry is a major force behind the heating of the planet, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,34338,34337,638,34336,15519],"class_list":["post-67532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-plastic-production","tag-plastics-industry","tag-pollution","tag-saul-elbein","tag-the-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67533,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67532\/revisions\/67533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}