We're winning the war on coal as more and more coal-fired electrical generating plants close or switch to natural gas. At last count, since President Trump took office, a coal-fired electrical generating plant has closed roughly every 15 days.
The president is very coal-friendly. But basic economics have prevailed in spite of political pressure, and with plentiful low-cost natural gas and renewable energy flooding the market, even more plants will close during the next few years.
As liquefied American natural gas, carried in huge tankers, penetrates more European and Asian markets, coal-fired plants will be closing all around the world. Coal is slowly becoming the fuel of the past, and as coal mines close, the net amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere will drop precipitously. It won't completely solve our global warming problem, but it will make a dent in it.
The death of coal-fired plants is American capitalism at its best, as a switch to a cleaner fuel is also a switch to a less expensive fuel. Everyone is happy except the coal miners, but there are only 55,000 miners with the desire to make money and ignore environmental reasons remaining.
Switching from coal will bring in more money and make fewer enemies. Money drives the wagon in the USA, and our president can love coal, but money talks, and it says, "Shut that coal-fired plant down. We can make a lot more money buying cheap natural gas, and we'll look like the good guys."
The situation with plastic is a lot tougher to handle, because we use plastic in almost everything, and economically we don't have the financial reasons to switch. However, there are plenty of other reasons to switch from plastic one-use bottles and other one-use items such as plastic sacks, and it boils down to the basic composition of plastic.
Plastic is non-biodegradable; that means it will be with us for centuries. But the problem is not just the use of plastic, it is its extensive use since it was invented. Today plastic is connected to almost every part of our lives.
Since so much of the plastic manufactured goes into the one-use category, and since the plastic in these items is relatively an inexpensive part of the packaging, the cost is built into the product, and the difference between reusable products and one use is minimal. There is very little financial incentive to switch to reusable containers or to use biodegradable substitutes.
There are a huge number of items made of plastic that we use on a daily basis, and as we continue to use and throw away these same items day after day, we become part of the problem.
Throwing away one-use items such as paper bags, newspapers, and other items not made of plastic is certainly not an environmentally positive thing to do, but these will degrade and disappear in a few years. Plastic--especially one-use items--becomes a disposal problem because it continues to grow year after year.
The United Nations has declared a war on plastic, and other organizations, cities, and countries have joined in the overall goal to reduce its use. The reasons why the use of plastic needs to be reduced or eliminated for some products is evident. As the world's population increases, the use of plastic becomes a greater problem. According to published reports, a garbage load of trash is dumped into the oceans every minute, and a big percentage of it is plastic.
An unbelievable 60 percent of all products use some plastic. Even some milk cartons are lined with plastic. When plastic goes into a landfill the toxins leach out, and since nearly all landfills leak, the toxins eventually end up polluting nearby water supplies.
If the landfill trash containing plastic is burned, toxic chemicals are released into the air, and breathing that air is unhealthy, to say the least. In the ocean, many animals mistake plastic sacks and other pieces of plastic as food, which they ingest. Since plastic won't digest in any animal, thousands of marine animals die.
The Mediterranean Sea is the most plastic-polluted large body of water on earth. Each year, on beaches from Greece to France, there are scenes of dying beached whales and other marine creatures. When an autopsy is done they find the animals' stomachs are filled with plastic, blocking all digestion; these sea creatures actually starve to death.
The cleanup of discarded plastic items such as water bottles, plastic straws, and other items costs everyone billions of dollar each year since federal, state and local money is used to clean up the litter in our cities and along our roads. Unless all that plastic is picked up, it will be there for hundreds of years.
There are many things we can do. One of the keys to reducing plastic is to shop friendly. Bring reusable bags and turn down those plastic bags, and stop buying one-use items made of plastic.
Restrictions on the use of plastic are beginning to occur. States, cities, and other municipalities are passing laws forbidding the use of plastic straws and other one-use items. Starbucks has a pilot program in London to reward customers who buy their coffee in a reusable cup. It's cheaper than a throwaway one-use cup, and Starbucks has placed containers around the stores where the reusable cups can be dropped off and be recycled. So get ready to use a second-hand cup when you visit Starbucks, because it will happen, along a host of other restrictions that will reduce the use of plastic.
Most of the new restrictions don't do away with things like plastic bags, but they hit you with a penalty, a code word for extra money. Some states have already placed an extra charge to use plastic bags, and that will ultimately be the way to cut down on the one-use items here in Arkansas.
Someday we will catch up to the national trend to do away with one-use items, and I know you are wondering how. Well, if Walmart charges you $1 to use a plastic bag, wouldn't you carry a reusable bag to the store? It's coming.
Some cities primarily on the west coast have already passed legislation to restrict the use of one-use eating utensils and others are following suit. In five years, plastic straws will be gone as well as most one-use sacks and eating utensils, and those will soon be followed by Styrofoam.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.
Editorial on 07/14/2019