Confirmation that the person is tied to the account is not public; merely evidence. That said, parent is still completely wrong and I replied to him explaining why.
The general definition of a word doesn't mean shit. If you want to argue that what CNN is doing is blackmail, I'm fine with that. But if you want to claim that it's a felony, or an offense of any type, criminal or civil, then you need more than that. When crimes are committed across state lines, you usually stick to federal law, but, whatever, let's presume it happened to be intra-state. Going by state law, let's pick CNN's home state of Georgia. We don't know the state in which the victim resides, parent asserted full-stop that it was a felony, so he must have meant either federally or In GA. I doubt very much he bothered to look up the state the post was made from, or the state in which Turner/Time-Warner is incorporated. Georgia requires the demand of property in order to fall within violation of extortion law (Section 16-8-16). Property means ownership. CNN does not own anything as a result of this. And you're welcome to argue that the speech-act of making an apology and promise to be good has value, but I'm pretty sure most judges upon hearing that would tell you to go fuck your hat. And even if they agreed, there's this clause: "It is an affirmative defense to prosecution...that the property obtained by threat of accusation, exposure, legal action, or other invocation of official action was honestly claimed as restitution or indemnification for harm done in the circumstance to which such accusation, exposure, legal action, or other official action relates or as compensation for property or lawful services." So CNN lawyers would be able to argue down that path.
Blackmail law in the US is about threatening to reveal that a person has committed a crime (18 U.S. Code 873). CNN is threatening to reveal that a person designed a gif, which is not a criminal act. Since it's not in regards to a crime, it is not a felony. Extortion law in the US is about threats of physical violence (18 U.S. Code 876).
I wish they didn't feel the need to be so deceptive. If you're organization was created to promote nuclear, just say so. It's like they specifically designed themselves to immediately set off the bullshit detector for even slightly skeptical people so their stuff would only spread among people who take "studies" at face-value. Their arguments, their name, their background-info pages, the website styling, it's all disengenuine. And it's weird to need to act that way when there are indeed lots of good arguments for nuclear acting in tandem with solar and other clean energy sources. It's like it's aimed at people who aren't clever enough to research and see why modern nuclear is safe; they're targeting people who are silly enough to think that solar will solve all our problems so it's OK to keep fighting against that plant they want in my backyard.
Metalworker here. It's massively more complicated than that. Thin films must be separated from the plastic substrate, meaning a whole nasty solvent process; or a filthy incineration process, chromium is extremely difficult to melt with simple radiated heat, like in a crucible, chormium and cadmium need to be worked under special conditions to prevent evaporation and health risks, Lead doesn't just magically burst away from things like circuitboards; even when molten. That means you're doing things like grinding, and centrifuging, and then you got to deal with the leftover fiberglass resin mess. The big problem is that it's a process that currently costs more money than the value of the extracted materials; especially if you want to do it in an enviornmentally friendly manner. As a result, no one wants to do it.
It's a solvable problem. And there's no reason not to continue to roll out solar. By improving the specific process used, and improving the infrastructure needed to harvest the panels and transport them to a facility, and by implementing regulations regarding how dead panels must be handled, the costs can drop to a point where they can be factored into the purchase price of the panel.
They aren't required to say it, but if you dig through the website, it's pretty clearly almost certainly funded by the nuclear industry, yeah. It probably wouldn't take too terribly much googling to track down an explicit link. I'm all for nuclear advocacy, but I wish they wouldn't use poorly made deceptive arguments like this. I guess they're more concerned about saying something sensational so that the story can spread then they are concerned about reasonable arguments.
I'm not the person you were asking, but he shares my concern. I'm for nuclear energy. I'm a huge fan of it and I would happily have a new nuclear plant "In My Backyard". But I'm not gonna concern myself too much with a carefully framed cherrypicked set of information from an advocacy group undoubtedly funded by the nuclear industry. "300 times the waste" is comparing apples and oranges. No one is concerned about nuclear because it creates a great mass of waste. The concern is that the waste it produces is extremely difficult to deal with and does not currently have a permanent solution. And it mentions lead cadmium and chromium as scary metals, but doesn't give any numbers on it....because those numbers are *extremely* low. The contributor to the mass of waste produced in solar is things like glass and concrete; they are benign.
Nuclear has a major problem because people are afraid of it, even though they shouldn't be. This study is an attempt to up nuclear's ranking at the expense of fear, uncertainty and doubt at solar. And that's a shame because it's a blatantly obviously deceptive technique, and it shouldn't be necessary. There are perfectly good and valid reasons why both solar and nuclear are appropriate energy solutions that should be able to operate harmoniously. But that narrative isn't shocking, and it doesn't go viral like this sort of claim tends to do.
So I'm for nonprofit groups, and I understand the need for corporately funded nonprofit advocacy groups. But I also know to scrutinize the propaganda (word used in it's neutral, non pejorative sense) that comes from them critically, keeping their agenda in mind; _especially_ when they chose deceptive organization names like "Environmental Progress" as opposed to a more descriptive organization name, like "Berkeley Institute for the promotion of nuclear energy".
Right, this is why solar is not a panacea, and no one knowledgeable has ever said it was. Industrial plants like this should be located near other energy sources such as large hydroelectric dams, or nuclear plants; this way you can get high volumes of inexpensive energy and no need to fiddle with battery-storage; so you can run 24/7. If you look at modern smelting operations, they are always near a cheap source of power like this. In the thin-field realm, you don't necessarily harvest the metals by throwing them in a crucible/still. You may use a chemical process with acids to dissolve metals, you might use electrolysis, or you may use electricity to produce a plasma-beam.
We've still got more to learn in the realm of efficient handling of solar waste, but they are solvable in ways that should eventually leaves us with a net energy gain. And until then, it still results in massive savings in energy that is otherwise lost to transport along the grid; and it shields those using locally produced solar energy from any unexpected changes in the energy market.
The problem with the report is not the information in it; it is the framing of data. It's comparing apples to oranges. The "300 times" figure is a measurement of kilograms of waste per terawatt/hour. But the nuclear waste is a much more expensive problem then the solar waste, which is mostly silicon, plastic, glass and concrete. The "study" is done by an organization set out to promote nuclear power. It mentions lead, cadmium and chromium, but doesn't mention how much. Lead is only used in the solder; it's perfectly possible to use lead-free solder. Chromium and cadmium are present in 150nm thick layers. And the cadmium is a by product of the zinc industry, so the chemical must be processed in one way or another; might as well store it in solar panels for a decade or two. There's more cadmium in a Van Gogh painting of sunflowers than there is in a entire solar farm. And only about half of the PV cells out there even use cadmium technology. Meanwhile, nuclear waste is a problem that doesn't currently even have a permanent storage solution. And if/when we finally do get a solution, it will need to be guarded for centuries. These comments mention "recycling", but that's not yet viable on an industrial scale.
The report is from an entity with the goal of promoting nuclear. That's not an ad-hominem attack, that's pointing out a strong potential for being inobjective and having bias. The sort of bias that could cause deceptive cherrypicking of information reported. This is not a peer-reviewed scientific publication. It is an advocacy group that is promoting an agenda. And I say that even though I largely agree with the agenda. We should increase the use of nuclear-power worldwide, but the way to accomplish that is not by scaring people into thinking that solar is bad when it isn't.
The organization wouldn't be Koch Brothers or big-oil, that'd be silly. Environmental Progress exists to promote nuclear energy; and is almost undoubtedly funded by the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry is frustrated by wind and solar, because it allows nuclear to continue to be rejected as a solution, despite having advantages over both in certain situations; namely for industrial power and high-density areas; places where you need lots of power, and you don't need to transport that power very long distances. But getting those plants built requires fixing the PR problems with nuclear, and casting doubt on solar doesn't hurt either, so we get funded propaganda "studies" like this.
Right; it's worth a fortune in sufficient quantity. CdTe is a thin-film technology. The deposited layer is on the order of 150nm; 1/500th of a human hair. It'd be kinda nice if the cadmium also had value; it's a byproduct of the zinc industry. Some argue that this is a good thing to do with cadmium; much safer than just burying the surplus in a concentrated manner.
You skipped a part. it compares nuclear waste to waste that is mostly harmless silicon, plastic, and glass with potentially trace amounts of lead, chromium, and cadmium. Lead is only present in the soldering, and could be fixed by enacting legislation requiring lead-free alternatives for solar installations; which as I understand it, is already the case in the EU. Not counting the chromium in stainless steel installation hardware, chromium and cadmium are only ever present in thin film depositions, in only some forms of solar panel; meaning like 150nm thick coatings. There's less cadmium on an entire solar farm than there is in just one Van Gaugh painting of sunflowers.
They are an advocacy group that is funded by the nuclear industry; not an independent unbiased research group. So instead of giving cold data, they give scary statistics that try to compare solar waste, which is mostly harmless silicon, with nuclear waste which still doesn't have an agreed upon storage location; and must be protected for centuries. They also mention chemicals that are in trace amounts or potentially not present at all. I strongly support nuclear power and the building of new plants, but I don't particularly support these BS propaganda techniques. There are actual good arguments for nuclear over solar in many markets; this is not one of them.
It appears to be staffed by left-leaning people, but it is heavily influenced by the nuclear industry; and obviously nuclear is never mom & pop operations; that's strictly huge corporations, likely to be controlled by people with fiscally conservative values. These guys are basically attacking the solar industry in hopes of growing support for nuclear; and doing so in sneaky ways; by carefully framing the statistic and naming scary chemicals, many of which are only trace levels or not present at all depending on how the solar panel is constructed. I'm a bit conflicted on that; because in many cases, nuclear is potentially a much better energy source environmentally; but it works best for powering things like industry and high-density areas. Urban and suburban consumers potentially have quite a lot to gain from solar. But that can be revenue lost to these companies that want to build new nuclear plants. Interest in wind and solar has caused interest in nuclear to go down; and that's a shame.
By all means, you should keep an eye out for left-wing rubbish too; but one does not grant a pardon for the other. The article freaking out about plastic bottles the other day was left-wing garbage panic, and most of Slashdot spotted it as such. It's generally better to look at the quality of the research and the soundness of the conclusions than it is to worry about what interest the information benefits.
As far as this concern, solar panels are mostly silicon and glass or plastic. Lead is only present when made with leaded solder; which is outlawed in European production. The shift is towards designs that require as little solder as possible, because solder costs money. And chromium and cadmium are only present in tiny amounts, if at all. Your dinner fork has more chromium than a solar panel by two orders of magnitude at least.
We have very little evidence that PET plastic used in bottles releases chemicals that have a significant impact on life processes. It isn't entirely impossible that it poses a threat, but we have nothing identifiable. And not in the "We can't prove that smoking causes cancer" manner exploiting the fact that those type of studies are difficult, in the we don't even have so much as anectodal evidence that it's a major problem. The great pacific garbage patch is teaming with life and it seems to be doing perfectly well. Some animals do ingest plastic fragments, and in some species, that does build up. This can cause digestive problems, and they can be fatal. Other products like fishing-line and netting tend to cause serious problems, not bottles, but it's not pandemic. Life appears to be able to adapt. The few that die are the weak, the old, and the unlucky. It's effect is on the order of a new predator; it's the sort of thing that ecology can adapt for. If eating plastic was a major issue, then in enough generations, species will adapt to differentiate the stuff. By all means, recycle your bottles, and if that isn't offered, put them in trash bins so that they go to a proper controlled landfill. It's a thing to be concerned about, but it's not a major looming threat. Then again, neither are modern solar-panels. And nuclear waste is mostly a political problem caused by lack of education on how nuclear waste actually works.
Right, so, there are possible but so far not yet proven issues regarding BPA and phthalates to humans, and better proof that they affect other organisms, but not to any detrimental catastrophic level. And this article is particularly focused on plastic drink bottles, which are made from PET, which contain neither BPA nor phthalates. It's a little confusing given that PET stands for "Poly Ethylene Terephthalate" but Terephthalate is not an additive and we have no evidence that it in any way degrades into one of the forms of phthalates that have been established as potentially obstructing life processes.
Bacteria isn't great at traveling around on it's own. It depends on some vector to move it long distances. Bacteria are in our life because they are able to consume various organic materials and those are all over the place. But if you make a bacteria that consumes plastics, then it's only going to be able to thrive in areas that are a mixture of water and plastic. Medical equipment and food-packaging wouldn't be at risk because it wouldn't come into contact with anything in such a way that a colony, plastic-eating or not, would be able to thrive. Now what could be at risk could be things like Polyethylene drainage pipes. Contaminated water could flow through them allowing a biofilm to form allowing them to be eaten away.
"toxins" is a pretty nebulous word. In the right quantities, basically everything is a toxin. We don't have much evidence that the "toxins" released as plastics break down seriously harm the food chain. And if we do discover any that are harmful, we can potentially develop alternative formulations that don't release those specific chemicals moving forward.
It breaks down in to more stable forms, but it never breaks down into components like carbon. You have ethylene dust that eventually gets into the ocean. Now the freakout that this is a disaster is what I've got a problem with. We don't have hard evidence that this seriously has a negative impact on life. Plastics recycle well, Polyethylene can be incinerated for power if we like, or we can put it in landfills; and despite the freakout in the late 80s and 90s, we're never really gonna have a major problem with finding landfill space. We'll run out of oil needed to make plastic before that happens.
This article doesn't spend much any time explaining the problems of having an overabundance of plastic bottles. Yeah, we all know about the great plastic mass floating around in the ocean; but evidence that plastics do much any serious harm to life is nil. Compare this to Climate change which is a problem that effects trillions of dollars of production. This article does not explain how plastic debris compares to Manhattan being under water, or farmland turning to desert, or the spread of tropical disease carrying insects.
The assertions of an executive running a group called "Surfers against sewage" doesn't hold much weight for me. Give me some science showing how much damage this plastic actually does. So far, I don't think it's enough to remotely compare to climate change.
This premise does not work without natural resources as feedstock. That requires owning or purchasing from mines and such. Plus, rich people aren't too keen on halting the process of getting richer. You don't need money at all, if you go into the woods, and live off the land My Side of the Mountain style, but that's not the endgame for this crowd. They want to make more money than all the other guys. That requires customers.
Slashdot Mirror
HOW did you find out about Steve??!?
Confirmation that the person is tied to the account is not public; merely evidence. That said, parent is still completely wrong and I replied to him explaining why.
The general definition of a word doesn't mean shit. If you want to argue that what CNN is doing is blackmail, I'm fine with that. But if you want to claim that it's a felony, or an offense of any type, criminal or civil, then you need more than that. When crimes are committed across state lines, you usually stick to federal law, but, whatever, let's presume it happened to be intra-state. Going by state law, let's pick CNN's home state of Georgia. We don't know the state in which the victim resides, parent asserted full-stop that it was a felony, so he must have meant either federally or In GA. I doubt very much he bothered to look up the state the post was made from, or the state in which Turner/Time-Warner is incorporated. Georgia requires the demand of property in order to fall within violation of extortion law (Section 16-8-16). Property means ownership. CNN does not own anything as a result of this. And you're welcome to argue that the speech-act of making an apology and promise to be good has value, but I'm pretty sure most judges upon hearing that would tell you to go fuck your hat. And even if they agreed, there's this clause: "It is an affirmative defense to prosecution...that the property obtained by threat of accusation, exposure, legal action, or other invocation of official action was honestly claimed as restitution or indemnification for harm done in the circumstance to which such accusation, exposure, legal action, or other official action relates or as compensation for property or lawful services." So CNN lawyers would be able to argue down that path.
Blackmail law in the US is about threatening to reveal that a person has committed a crime (18 U.S. Code 873). CNN is threatening to reveal that a person designed a gif, which is not a criminal act. Since it's not in regards to a crime, it is not a felony. Extortion law in the US is about threats of physical violence (18 U.S. Code 876).
I wish they didn't feel the need to be so deceptive. If you're organization was created to promote nuclear, just say so. It's like they specifically designed themselves to immediately set off the bullshit detector for even slightly skeptical people so their stuff would only spread among people who take "studies" at face-value. Their arguments, their name, their background-info pages, the website styling, it's all disengenuine. And it's weird to need to act that way when there are indeed lots of good arguments for nuclear acting in tandem with solar and other clean energy sources. It's like it's aimed at people who aren't clever enough to research and see why modern nuclear is safe; they're targeting people who are silly enough to think that solar will solve all our problems so it's OK to keep fighting against that plant they want in my backyard.
It's a solvable problem. And there's no reason not to continue to roll out solar. By improving the specific process used, and improving the infrastructure needed to harvest the panels and transport them to a facility, and by implementing regulations regarding how dead panels must be handled, the costs can drop to a point where they can be factored into the purchase price of the panel.
They aren't required to say it, but if you dig through the website, it's pretty clearly almost certainly funded by the nuclear industry, yeah. It probably wouldn't take too terribly much googling to track down an explicit link. I'm all for nuclear advocacy, but I wish they wouldn't use poorly made deceptive arguments like this. I guess they're more concerned about saying something sensational so that the story can spread then they are concerned about reasonable arguments.
I'm not the person you were asking, but he shares my concern. I'm for nuclear energy. I'm a huge fan of it and I would happily have a new nuclear plant "In My Backyard". But I'm not gonna concern myself too much with a carefully framed cherrypicked set of information from an advocacy group undoubtedly funded by the nuclear industry. "300 times the waste" is comparing apples and oranges. No one is concerned about nuclear because it creates a great mass of waste. The concern is that the waste it produces is extremely difficult to deal with and does not currently have a permanent solution. And it mentions lead cadmium and chromium as scary metals, but doesn't give any numbers on it....because those numbers are *extremely* low. The contributor to the mass of waste produced in solar is things like glass and concrete; they are benign. Nuclear has a major problem because people are afraid of it, even though they shouldn't be. This study is an attempt to up nuclear's ranking at the expense of fear, uncertainty and doubt at solar. And that's a shame because it's a blatantly obviously deceptive technique, and it shouldn't be necessary. There are perfectly good and valid reasons why both solar and nuclear are appropriate energy solutions that should be able to operate harmoniously. But that narrative isn't shocking, and it doesn't go viral like this sort of claim tends to do. So I'm for nonprofit groups, and I understand the need for corporately funded nonprofit advocacy groups. But I also know to scrutinize the propaganda (word used in it's neutral, non pejorative sense) that comes from them critically, keeping their agenda in mind; _especially_ when they chose deceptive organization names like "Environmental Progress" as opposed to a more descriptive organization name, like "Berkeley Institute for the promotion of nuclear energy".
We've still got more to learn in the realm of efficient handling of solar waste, but they are solvable in ways that should eventually leaves us with a net energy gain. And until then, it still results in massive savings in energy that is otherwise lost to transport along the grid; and it shields those using locally produced solar energy from any unexpected changes in the energy market.
Much much easier. Handling e-waste is an infrastructure problem. Handling nuclear waste is a lingering social issue.
The report is from an entity with the goal of promoting nuclear. That's not an ad-hominem attack, that's pointing out a strong potential for being inobjective and having bias. The sort of bias that could cause deceptive cherrypicking of information reported. This is not a peer-reviewed scientific publication. It is an advocacy group that is promoting an agenda. And I say that even though I largely agree with the agenda. We should increase the use of nuclear-power worldwide, but the way to accomplish that is not by scaring people into thinking that solar is bad when it isn't.
The organization wouldn't be Koch Brothers or big-oil, that'd be silly. Environmental Progress exists to promote nuclear energy; and is almost undoubtedly funded by the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry is frustrated by wind and solar, because it allows nuclear to continue to be rejected as a solution, despite having advantages over both in certain situations; namely for industrial power and high-density areas; places where you need lots of power, and you don't need to transport that power very long distances. But getting those plants built requires fixing the PR problems with nuclear, and casting doubt on solar doesn't hurt either, so we get funded propaganda "studies" like this.
Right; it's worth a fortune in sufficient quantity. CdTe is a thin-film technology. The deposited layer is on the order of 150nm; 1/500th of a human hair. It'd be kinda nice if the cadmium also had value; it's a byproduct of the zinc industry. Some argue that this is a good thing to do with cadmium; much safer than just burying the surplus in a concentrated manner.
You skipped a part. it compares nuclear waste to waste that is mostly harmless silicon, plastic, and glass with potentially trace amounts of lead, chromium, and cadmium. Lead is only present in the soldering, and could be fixed by enacting legislation requiring lead-free alternatives for solar installations; which as I understand it, is already the case in the EU. Not counting the chromium in stainless steel installation hardware, chromium and cadmium are only ever present in thin film depositions, in only some forms of solar panel; meaning like 150nm thick coatings. There's less cadmium on an entire solar farm than there is in just one Van Gaugh painting of sunflowers.
They are an advocacy group that is funded by the nuclear industry; not an independent unbiased research group. So instead of giving cold data, they give scary statistics that try to compare solar waste, which is mostly harmless silicon, with nuclear waste which still doesn't have an agreed upon storage location; and must be protected for centuries. They also mention chemicals that are in trace amounts or potentially not present at all. I strongly support nuclear power and the building of new plants, but I don't particularly support these BS propaganda techniques. There are actual good arguments for nuclear over solar in many markets; this is not one of them.
It appears to be staffed by left-leaning people, but it is heavily influenced by the nuclear industry; and obviously nuclear is never mom & pop operations; that's strictly huge corporations, likely to be controlled by people with fiscally conservative values. These guys are basically attacking the solar industry in hopes of growing support for nuclear; and doing so in sneaky ways; by carefully framing the statistic and naming scary chemicals, many of which are only trace levels or not present at all depending on how the solar panel is constructed. I'm a bit conflicted on that; because in many cases, nuclear is potentially a much better energy source environmentally; but it works best for powering things like industry and high-density areas. Urban and suburban consumers potentially have quite a lot to gain from solar. But that can be revenue lost to these companies that want to build new nuclear plants. Interest in wind and solar has caused interest in nuclear to go down; and that's a shame.
As far as this concern, solar panels are mostly silicon and glass or plastic. Lead is only present when made with leaded solder; which is outlawed in European production. The shift is towards designs that require as little solder as possible, because solder costs money. And chromium and cadmium are only present in tiny amounts, if at all. Your dinner fork has more chromium than a solar panel by two orders of magnitude at least.
We have very little evidence that PET plastic used in bottles releases chemicals that have a significant impact on life processes. It isn't entirely impossible that it poses a threat, but we have nothing identifiable. And not in the "We can't prove that smoking causes cancer" manner exploiting the fact that those type of studies are difficult, in the we don't even have so much as anectodal evidence that it's a major problem. The great pacific garbage patch is teaming with life and it seems to be doing perfectly well. Some animals do ingest plastic fragments, and in some species, that does build up. This can cause digestive problems, and they can be fatal. Other products like fishing-line and netting tend to cause serious problems, not bottles, but it's not pandemic. Life appears to be able to adapt. The few that die are the weak, the old, and the unlucky. It's effect is on the order of a new predator; it's the sort of thing that ecology can adapt for. If eating plastic was a major issue, then in enough generations, species will adapt to differentiate the stuff. By all means, recycle your bottles, and if that isn't offered, put them in trash bins so that they go to a proper controlled landfill. It's a thing to be concerned about, but it's not a major looming threat. Then again, neither are modern solar-panels. And nuclear waste is mostly a political problem caused by lack of education on how nuclear waste actually works.
Right, so, there are possible but so far not yet proven issues regarding BPA and phthalates to humans, and better proof that they affect other organisms, but not to any detrimental catastrophic level. And this article is particularly focused on plastic drink bottles, which are made from PET, which contain neither BPA nor phthalates. It's a little confusing given that PET stands for "Poly Ethylene Terephthalate" but Terephthalate is not an additive and we have no evidence that it in any way degrades into one of the forms of phthalates that have been established as potentially obstructing life processes.
Bacteria isn't great at traveling around on it's own. It depends on some vector to move it long distances. Bacteria are in our life because they are able to consume various organic materials and those are all over the place. But if you make a bacteria that consumes plastics, then it's only going to be able to thrive in areas that are a mixture of water and plastic. Medical equipment and food-packaging wouldn't be at risk because it wouldn't come into contact with anything in such a way that a colony, plastic-eating or not, would be able to thrive. Now what could be at risk could be things like Polyethylene drainage pipes. Contaminated water could flow through them allowing a biofilm to form allowing them to be eaten away.
"toxins" is a pretty nebulous word. In the right quantities, basically everything is a toxin. We don't have much evidence that the "toxins" released as plastics break down seriously harm the food chain. And if we do discover any that are harmful, we can potentially develop alternative formulations that don't release those specific chemicals moving forward.
It breaks down in to more stable forms, but it never breaks down into components like carbon. You have ethylene dust that eventually gets into the ocean. Now the freakout that this is a disaster is what I've got a problem with. We don't have hard evidence that this seriously has a negative impact on life. Plastics recycle well, Polyethylene can be incinerated for power if we like, or we can put it in landfills; and despite the freakout in the late 80s and 90s, we're never really gonna have a major problem with finding landfill space. We'll run out of oil needed to make plastic before that happens.
The assertions of an executive running a group called "Surfers against sewage" doesn't hold much weight for me. Give me some science showing how much damage this plastic actually does. So far, I don't think it's enough to remotely compare to climate change.
This premise does not work without natural resources as feedstock. That requires owning or purchasing from mines and such. Plus, rich people aren't too keen on halting the process of getting richer. You don't need money at all, if you go into the woods, and live off the land My Side of the Mountain style, but that's not the endgame for this crowd. They want to make more money than all the other guys. That requires customers.
No one ever got "I can afford a robot army"-rich selling a product that only other rich people can afford.