[p1necone]

It's the same inane naysaying that pops up on anything about environmental concerns. "Look those other people are bad too, therefore we don't have to improve".

That logic is bullshit and lazy, and we should call people out when we see it.

[lopmotr]

Western countries already do so much to protect the environment from plastic that there's not much room to improve. It almost all gets buried in landfills or burnt, not spilt into the ocean. Since we've pretty much solved the problem already, why not invest that money into something we're not doing well, like CO2 emissions? Even if we were to reduce plastic waste in the ocean, perhaps there are less costly ways, like fining people for littering, putting nets on the stormwater drain outfalls, or, shockingly, stop trying to recycle if that's how it's getting into the ocean.

All environmental efforts have a cost and it's a mistake of hyped-up media consumers to assume that the latest popular cause must be fought at any cost. There may be other, more effective, uses of that money on things that aren't in the news right now.

[nitrogen]

We need an "effective environmentalism" movement to parallel effective altruism.