{"id":207887,"date":"2025-11-30T11:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T11:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/207887\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T11:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T11:02:09","slug":"recycling-plastic-doesnt-solve-the-plastic-problem-it-just-tells-people-its-okay-to-use-plastic-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/207887\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Recycling plastic doesn\u2019t solve the plastic problem. It just tells people it\u2019s okay to use plastic\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Numerous climate bombshells exploded at the Cop30<\/a> talks in Brazil<\/a> \u2013 but none quite so quietly devastating as the remarks from the governor of California. <\/p>\n

Midway through a summit where heart-stopping scientific reports showed relentlessly rising temperatures, rapidly depleting carbon budgets and fast-approaching tipping points, Gavin Newsom<\/a> delivered a head-spinning dose of reality. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith respect to the global audience, the vast majority of my audience doesn\u2019t know what Celsius is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re talking 1.5 degrees Celsius. How many more degrees is that in Fahrenheit? <\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about greenhouse gas emissions. Where? Do they float in the sky. Where do they land?\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Despite the fudges and bickering, Cop is still the best hope we\u2019ve gotOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

So, most of the people in the richest, most powerful and most climate-polluting country in the world don\u2019t understand the basics. <\/p>\n

And 1.5 degrees Celsius? The binding pledge, the protest slogan, the holy grail of climate mitigation? <\/p>\n

They don\u2019t know what it means because Americans sweat and shiver in Fahrenheit. Oops. <\/p>\n

\"IndigenousIndigenous people at a meeting at the Cop Village during Cop30. Photograph: Aline Massuca\/Cop30 <\/p>\n

So what\u2019s to be done? \u201cWe have to use a different language,\u201d Newsom said. <\/p>\n

It was a theme that ran throughout Cop30. Communicating the climate crisis has become all the more critical as tackling the crisis becomes all the more urgent. <\/p>\n

Yet it has also become more difficult, because in every unguarded nook and cranny of social media, disinformation is deliberately deployed to undermine efforts on both fronts. <\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s president, Lula da Silva, had this on his mind in his opening speech to world leaders gathered in the host city, Bel\u00e9m. <\/p>\n

He spoke of the \u201cdisconnection between the halls of diplomacy and the real world\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople may not understand the meaning of emissions or metric tons of carbon, but they feel the pollution,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey may not assimilate the meaning of a one-and-a-half degree increase in global temperature, but they suffer from droughts, floods and hurricanes.\u201d <\/p>\n

Exploiting the disconnect were \u201cextremist forces\u201d who \u201cpeddle untruths to obtain electoral gains\u201d.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not easy to build connections when the \u201challs of diplomacy\u201d keep getting bigger and the \u201creal world\u201d ever more distant. <\/p>\n

Holly Kaufman was at her first Cop in years and found the sheer scale of it astounding. As part of Bill Clinton<\/a>\u2019s climate team when he was US president in the 1990s, the environmental adviser had attended some of the earliest Cops. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember when the whole thing took place in one hotel,\u201d she said, arriving at an entrance where 50,000 people passed through.<\/p>\n

Size brought opportunities and challenges. <\/p>\n

Haufman researches plastics and climate change, gathering evidence that plastics, which are made from oil, are not only undercounted as a source of carbon emissions, but their impact on natural carbon sinks is ignored. <\/p>\n

\u201cMicroplastics are in the soils and the seas and they affect the ability of these natural sinks to absorb carbon,\u201d she explained, repeating the lines she hoped to use on official delegates. <\/p>\n

With so many people in attendance, she had a good chance of bumping into some. But again, with so many people in attendance, she would be competing with others also trying to communicate their concerns. <\/p>\n

She also worried about how to communicate the problem to the wider public. \u201cPeople are told they\u2019re doing a great job if they recycle, but recycling doesn\u2019t solve the plastic problem. It just tells people it\u2019s OK to use plastics.\u201d <\/p>\n

Anand Ethirajalu has also grappled with how to communicate climate issues, but thinks he may have cracked it \u2013 at least for his target audience. <\/p>\n

A leading light in regenerative farming from the Save Soil movement, he\u2019s spearheading reform of agricultural production in India<\/a>. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Eamon Ryan: At Cop30 I ask myself, is this really working?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Soils exhausted by intensive monoculture farming, by artificial fertilisers and by heavy pesticide loads become weak, parched, depleted of nutrients, starved of biodiversity<\/a>, useless as carbon sinks, and prone to being washed away in heavy rains or devastating landslides. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe president of Cop30, Andr\u00e9 Correa do Lago (centre) listens as Sonia Guajajara, minister of indigenous peoples of Brazil (in white), speaks at a meeting with indigenous peoples at Cop30. Photograph: Hermes Caruzo\/Cop30 <\/p>\n

Ethirajalu says he rarely mentions any of this to the subsistence farmers Save Soil works with to develop small holdings into organic, multi-crop, tree-bordered, nature-supporting hubs of healthy production. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe farmer doesn\u2019t care about soil, he doesn\u2019t care about nature, he only cares about his survival,\u201d he claimed. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo we stopped talking about soil and nature and climate change, and what we started saying was, \u2018If you do this kind of regenerative practice you will save 40 per cent of your production costs\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018If you forgo 10-15 per cent of your land to plant trees on your boundary, you are building an asset worth good money in 15 years so it\u2019s a life insurance for you.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are taking regenerative practices and packaging it and selling it as an economic plan, and that is why it works.\u201d <\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s message was much the same. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about electric power, it\u2019s about economic power,\u201d he said, referring to the concerns of the average US household. <\/p>\n

He pointed to analysis that showed Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s abandonment of Biden-era clean energy initiatives would add 10 per cent to domestic bills this year. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a kitchen table issue,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just how climate action is packaged that matters, but how it\u2019s delivered. <\/p>\n

Dr Clare Noone from University of Galway<\/a> says discussion of the subject needs \u201curgency without despair, optimism without denial\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are difficult conversations that we have to have,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019ve been working in this field for a long time and, say 10 years ago, there was an awful lot of denial out there. Any time I told people I was a climate scientist they would hate you, they went straight for you. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really changed. I don\u2019t really meet that many people who are climate-deniers any more. Now when I tell people I\u2019m a climate scientist, they want to hear more. They want to know how can we change things.\u201d <\/p>\n

Her time at Cop30 tipped her towards more optimism. \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing achievement that we can all come together and not kill each other. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can keep talking to each other, we\u2019ll find we have a lot of common concerns and everything to gain from working together to solve them.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Numerous climate bombshells exploded at the Cop30 talks in Brazil \u2013 but none quite so quietly devastating as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[442,47570,356,18,440,16141,19,17,133,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-207887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-cop30","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-gavin-newsom","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-weekendreview"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115638314562965768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}