Don’t mind this glaring bastion of land use mismanagement
Note that it’s not the same voices saying these two things.
The stupid part is that it 100% is. The plastic straw thing was to shift blame onto consumers so we’d blame ourselves instead of the big energy companies. The “AI data centres are cool” people are the same ones as before, now telling everyone how we need to give up more of our meager existence to serve the rich. Energy companies also love it because they can check prices to the fucking moon.
Why is everyone so angry about straws? You all acting like we made you put down your dog. Nobody said it’d solve all issues. Besides, wasn’t it about marine life and not carbon?
I feel like I’m one of the few people that never really minded the paper straws.
The Sun Life chip bags that were super loud was funny to me though.
I mean the paper straws suck, and 100% of my straws here in Finland were going into recycling or the incinerator rather than the Pacific Ocean, so it feels like I’m putting up with terrible straws for literally no reason.
People here care about those? I’ve never had any issue with them even in movies where they lay in the drink for a long time. What issues do you have?
They taste and feel gross in the mouth and get soggy. Maybe the ones you’ve had have thicker plastic coating (ironic when you think about it) than the ones in my neck of the woods. I can barely finish a burger before the straw in the drink starts getting soggy.
Oh, I don’t mind them at all, and people who do are weird for that. There’s a use case for plastic straws for people with certain disabilities but it’s rare. The important thing is that I still understand what that push was trying to do. I can be ok with the results while not being blind to the true motivations.
Plastic straws never had much to do with climate change though? That was mostly about plastic pollution.
Plastic straws are the least of our issues. As long as the 1% are using private jets and super yahts, it makes zero difference.
This isn’t a 2020 vs. 2026 thing. It’s a corporate thing. What corporations do is pour money into anything that makes pollution primarily the fault of the average person’s choices.
“The reason the environment is bad is that you don’t choose to recycle properly.”
It works best for corporations when the thing requires permanent vigilance from the average person. That way, when John down the street accidentally puts a soda can in the trash, an environmentally focused person who has bought the corporate propaganda can have their bile focused on John, and will forget all about the company down the street that pollutes every day the amount that John pollutes in a decade.
The truth is that, while individual responsibility makes a difference, what really makes a difference is legislation regulating corporations. That packaging that you have to figure out how to recycle? That’s not really your fault. It’s the fault of the company that packaged it that way. If they had legislation to force them to do environmentally friendly packaging, they would do that. But it’s so much more convenient for them if they can do the irresponsible thing and still make you feel like it’s your fault.
Plastic straws can be cast as the consumer’s fault. Data centers are corporate. That’s the difference.
Awesome summary.
It is a pretty good contrasting example of the hypocrisy and ridiculousness though.
This right here. It’s the same in just about every sphere. If there’s money to be made, the environment takes a back seat, and the psyop gets to work
👆
It was just performative corporate “wokism”. They’d do anything to appear attractive to their customers as long as it doesn’t hurt their bottom line. Plastic straws, sure! Actually reduce the amount of waste generated? Absolutely not. How much of the great Pacific garbage patch is made up of straws?
Let me fix that:
2020corporation: BUY MY STRAWS! REALLY GOOD STRAWS! CHEAP TOO! environment: better stop using those, people will not properly dispose them and animals will think it’s food and die of starvation because their bellies are filled with undigestable garbage. Also they can easily get stuck in a turtle’s nose,2026corporation: BUY MY AI! REALLY GOOD AI! CHEAP TOO! environment: better not use it too much, nature and humans included need that water too. Also they use a lot of electricity and you need either dinosaur bones or rare earth to produce that electricity, both is bad for the climate you depend on to survive.Corporations are blasting bombs, burning cities, drying rivers, fracking forests and then they tell you how you eating 3 times a day is what’s bad for the environment
Consumer climate guilt is the biggest grift of the 21st century.
OK, derailing slightly. There is nothing I hate more than going to a restaurant and getting a cardboard straw for a plastic cup with a plastic lid.
It’s almost as infuriating as seeing people who still somehow wear masks incorrectly.
trump
Yeah, my state government is like “pwease limit showers to 5 minutes (0.3 kiloseconds) and keep your thermostat at 75° (24°C) 🥺” while they take kickbacks for approving more of the damned things
Gotta preserve resources for the data centers.
2027: “Your wasteful token over-use is destroying the planet, smh”
Good. GOOD.
The planet is going nowhere good, I want to at least make sure it dies so fast, that they die too.
Paper straws are scientifically terrible for carbonated drinks. All of those fibers make a ton of nucleation sites for the CO2 and just make darn sure that your carbonated drink isn’t carbonated by the time it gets to your mouth. Seriously, if you wanted to design something to intentionally make a carbonated soda flat by the time it gets to your lips, I don’t know how you’d do it better than with a paper straw. Maybe a long hose that shakes the liquid as it goes through?
And sure, ok, plastic straws aren’t great environmentally. But surely there was a third option before we went back to literally the worst choice? Something decently cheap, biodegradable, and non-porous? Can we not invent something like that? There’s tons of industrially-compostable polymers, right? Wouldn’t those break down in the ocean over time?
I’ve never understood why they don’t just use the coffee lids for everything.
Something decently cheap, biodegradable, and non-porous? Can we not invent something like that?
Have you tried lips yet? They’re free for most of us and while still a bit porous, they’re quite effective for helping transfer whatever liquid you are trying to transfer from the source into your mouth- soda, beer, whiskey, wine, coffee, water, piss. You can also use them for fun on friends, like sucking dick or eating pussy (or ass). 100% reusable and biodegradable!!!
Yep, right now that seems like the best option to me. But the problem is that most to-go cups at restaurants require lids for structural integrity. It’s also not the greatest solution for particularly clumsy people (like me) who tend to spill drinks down their shirt.
There is a demand for change that falls on the consumer that is different than the way that gets pushed by corporations trying to guilt trip us into changing our ways than shaming us for accepting what they’ve offered while trying to greenwash something they’ve figured out is cheaper for them while changing nothing about their own habits. Sometimes, we are going to indulge the convenience of to-go cups, it’s the world we live in. But how many times do we default to that for convenience rather than either eating there and drinking from a glass, metal, or clay cup? How many times could we have eaten at home on our own cups/plates but just wanted it faster and simpler? The fault is not entirely on the consumer, but it can be affected by actively resisting the allure of convenience.
There are drinks or packagings that are worse without a straw.
That said, we alread have pasta straws. Companies should use pasta straws. I drink boba tea pretty slowly so paper’s not gonna survive that. Milk through paper straw is the worst milk I tasted. There’s no good reason to use paper straws. Pasta straws are better.
So, I get that humans are taste and texture driven, and experience is a delight. But even with a pasta straw, that’s a lot of resources, like land use, water use, the fuel that goes into harvest, the manufacturing, and the transport that are wasted on the growth, production, and one time use of a wheat based straw just so you can enjoy a boba tea the way your like to. Sure, it’s going to decompose quickly, but while that straw isn’t lasting for a lifetime in a landfill, it’s also not lasting a lifetime of use. There’s a balance to be found between our indulgences and what is required to achieve that indulgence.
I have silicone straws that have been in regular use for several years. They came with little plunger doohickeys for cleaning, which is nice. Can’t boil and eat them afterwards, but I’m on a diet.
I’ve had silicone straws before that also had a lot of nucleation sites because of texturing, and ended up foaming up the drink in the process of sipping, too. Is there a particular thing I should look for? Or do I just need to suck it up (ha) and buy a titanium straw?
Sorry, I can’t tell you what you want to hear. I have one metal straw and it gives me Final Destination vibes.
Oof, that’s an intrusive thought I wasn’t expecting to develop. Good call, no metal then.
You’re supposed to save them up. After a month or so that’s a decent meal!
The only real flaw with pasta straws is cross-contam’ing everything with gluten. Celiacs can go fuck themselves I guess, so that’s sorted.
But wait, what if you’re Italian?!
I now take the lid off the beverage and drink straight from the cup like a savage. If you’re a beverage lid purist, you might want to consider investing in a personal metal straw, they even make them crazy now.
I agree that sipping is probably the best option. My problem is that most to-go cups at restaurants use lids for structural reinforcement; they make the cup less sturdy (because it’s cheaper) and count on the lid to keep it stable.
For clumsy and forgetful people (it’s me, hi, I’m the problem) the option right now seems to be buying a reusable straw that ends up sitting in my silverware drawer permanently, living with the fact that I’m just always going to have some sort of stain on my shirt, or drinking subpar, flat sodas. Or, I guess, switching to a non-carbonated drink. None of them are my favorite options. Come on, scientists!
Except the AI data center comes from the same side as the plastic straws.
U see the thinking here but I disagree. Renewables are by far the most economic source of energy. More demand for energy will thus create more energy production and thus drive the transition to happen faster.
This would make perfect sense under a management that doesn’t bomb regulations or uses the phrase ‘big beautiful coal’.
Increased demand will cause increased supply on all fronts including coal/oil/gas and drive investment into renewables as its more economical. If the demand wasn’t increased the same amount of foss fuels will be burned just over a longer period of time. The graph may be steeper now but the integral will remain the same.
Let’s abstract the idea here: Widgets are in heigh demand and sell for $3 each they come in 2 types type A and type B. Type A costs $1 to produce and type be costs $2 to produce but their is not enough production of type A to meet the total demand so it is backfilled with type B. The people making type B widgets realise they can make an extra $1 per widget if they switch from type B to type A widgets. They thus invest in the production of type A widgets for the next generation. This investment isn’t instant so they also lobby politicians so they reduce the cost of type B widgets from $2 to $1.5.
The people buying the widgets are unhappy that widgets are so expensive and as such want cheaper widgets. They now have a vested interest in creating more type A widget production machines.
So if we want less type B widgets increased demand for widgets overall in the long run will result in more investment of type A widgets and the eventual phasing out of type B widgets completely simply due to economic profit incentives.
Nobody wants to invest in making type B widget making machines as that is less profitable than investing in type A widget production machines. Thus all new widgets production machines will be type A. The type B production machine have a running lifetime they will produce the same amount of type B widgets over their lifetime regardless of if that lifetime happens now or spread over a longer time.
Even if the price of widgets drops to $1.2 and type B production becomes unprofitable the money on the type B production machine has already been spent it still makes sense to run it till its lifetime is complete (this is the case cos fosil fuel products are cheap but the infrastructure to burn them is expensive) it is better to realise some percentage of the infrastructure roi than to realise 0% of the roi. Thus you run the machine despite it being unprofitable on a per widget bases as this reduces ur overall loss.
In the end the same total number of type B widgets where produced just that increased demand means that we transition to type A widgets faster and produce the last of the type B widgets now instead of later.
Great explanation which makes sense.
“Coalie” the cute little mascot to sell the idea to fucking children for fucks sake.
This timeline is fucking atrocious.
Nah, those data centers will be powered by gas turbines cos the current electrical infrastructure can’t handle the amount of power the data centers need.
Yeah I’m not saying they will be powered by renewables but increased power demands will drive investment into it cos their is a profit incentive.
They are not AI data centers, that is just the marketing. They will be Surveillance Data Centers.
