cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33806813

A new global life-cycle analysis finds that if not properly disposed of, biodegradable plastics could increase methane emissions and plastic accumulation.

The paper is here

THIS IS AN AWESOME OUTSIDE THE BOX DISCOVERY!!!!! It will greatly affect The Environmentally Friendly Industries, can anybody say Solar Panels?

I am so happy, though it is just a short term solution, need to stop needing them all together, referencing the solar panels replacing rare earth metals with peanut shells.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42577269

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50181764

Archived

A new term has entered the lexicon of Chinese economic analysis: involution. In Chinese, this term translates to “nei-juan”, a concept that refers to a state of “excessive and self-defeating competition among Chinese companies for limited resources and opportunities”. In this situation, intensifying effort yields diminishing returns for all participants [...] This phenomenon is best captured with a theatre metaphor: in a crowded theatre, one person stands to get a better view, forcing everyone else to stand as well. Ultimately, no one’s view improves, but all are exhausted from the extra effort.

[...]

China’s involution issue is ... a structural outcome [China's] supply-side, investment-driven model [that] systematically suppresses household income to subsidize production and leads to chronic overcapacity and destructive competition.

[...]

The trigger was the collapse of China’s real estate sector in 2021–2022. As property developers cut investment sharply, Beijing faced a serious threat to GDP growth. Because the growth model could not tolerate a decline in investment, the state redirected capital away from real estate and toward manufacturing. This shift was politically necessary to stabilize headline growth, but it was not driven by market demand.

[...]

[Chinese] provincial and municipal governments, under pressure to meet [Beijing's] growth targets, offered subsidies, cheap land, tax exemptions, and financing to attract investment. This led to duplicated projects and rapid oversupply.

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The surge in supply collided with structurally weak [domesstic] demand. Consumer confidence deteriorated after 2020 due to job insecurity, falling property values, and rising precautionary savings. The same growth model that fuels overcapacity also depresses consumption by transferring income from households to producers. A limited social safety net further encourages precautionary saving, reducing the effectiveness of short-term consumption subsidies.

[...]

The polysilicon industry, a key upstream input for solar panel manufacturing, illustrates the scale of the problem. After the property collapse, in less than four years, the top four Chinese producers managed to add the capacity equal to two-thirds of the total global capacity ... It puts China as world-leading in the industry, supplying about 95% of the world’s polysilicon supply. The problem is that this is roughly double the global demand. This overload of supply drove capacity utilization below 40% in 2025, forcing producers to sell panels at prices below their variable costs.

[...]

Beijing’s “anti-involution” campaign represents a serious attempt to curb the most damaging effects of excessive competition. Measures include revisions to the Pricing Law, coordinated production cuts, and sector-specific interventions such as plans to retire excess polysilicon capacity ... However, these policies treat the symptoms rather than the cause. They reduce capacity in one sector without changing growth incentives, simply shifting overinvestment elsewhere. Indeed, while investment slows in EVs and solar, capacity expansion is accelerating in petrochemicals, another sector already facing involution.

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Two reforms are essential [in China]: strengthening domestic demand and accepting lower investment-led growth ... The supply-side reforms must be paired with strong fiscal support for households. In a liquidity-trap environment, fiscal policy, not monetary easing, must play the central role in restoring confidence and consumption.

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In parallel, China must reduce its reliance on manufacturing and infrastructure as primary growth engines. This would require Xi Jinping to confront an uncomfortable political trade-off: accepting lower GDP growth targets in order to pivot the economy toward services, consumption, and household income growth.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33595164

Indigenous land conservation practices such as seasonal grazing and shifting cultivation recognised this vulnerability by allowing the vegetation and soil to recover. However, these were gradually eroded by colonial and postcolonial governance, which prioritised formal land tenure and permanent settlement but paid little attention to soil productivity and protection from erosion.

Ultimately, erosion control cannot be treated as a solely environmental problem.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33477490

Ecuador has 65 oil and gas lease blocks, 88% of them in the Amazon, covering a quarter of the country’s total area. That’s according to a new data set from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).

Many of the lease blocks overlap with several Indigenous territories, including the Cuyabeno-Imuya Intangible Zone, which is home to 11 Indigenous communities from the Secoya, Siona, Cofán, Kichwa and Shuar nations. Oil and gas leases also overlap with other Indigenous Shuar communities in Pastaza and Morona Santiago provinces, among others.

A Mongabay estimate based on the dataset found that roughly 21% of the leases overlap with protected areas and 61% overlap with Indigenous territories in Ecuador. Image by Andrés Alegría/Mongabay.

The SEI data set also shows lease blocks overlapping with protected areas, including the west side of Yasuní National Park. In a historic referendum in 2023, more than 5.2 million Ecuadorians voted to halt all current and future oil drilling in the park. Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve (RECB) and Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, both home to a great diversity of wildlife including pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) and jaguars (Panthera onca), also host active oil and gas production blocks, according to the data.

Combined, the blocks cover 7 million hectares (17 million acres), one-fourth of Ecuador’s total land area.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24447292

Europe’s supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum.

Brands using plastic packaging – from Kraft’s Heinz Beanz to Mondelēz’s Philadelphia – use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco.

The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter (more than 70m tonnes up to 2023).

Aramco’s petrochemical subsidiary, Sabic, along with other big players, devised a successful way to rebrand their harmful business as “planet saver”. They label plastic as “circular” and climate-friendly, although in practice it remains almost entirely fossil-based, exacerbating global warming and the plastic crisis.

Under industry pressure, Europe is on track to legalise this practice, which independent experts have described as greenwashing, with lax EU rules set to take effect in 2026 and similar UK regulations to be enforced as of 2027.

Han Zeng at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and his colleagues began finding fossils at a quarry in the mountainous region of Huayuan County in Hunan Province in 2021.

So far, they have analysed 8681 fossils from 153 species, nearly 60 per cent of which are new to science. The team has christened this ancient ecosystem the Huayuan biota and say the site is comparable and possibly superior to the most famous Cambrian fossil site, the Burgess Shale in Canada.