If this fellow is right, and the plastic in the ocean is coming from Third World countries, then the 'horrible deeds' of the West in this regard are just more lies perpetrated by the self-hating Left, climate crooks and slaves to Paris and the UN.

Despite Morrison's great personal campaign, the only reason we don't have a Labor government after the election is because Labor is so awful, and the Coalition is just a little bit better; but it has to get a lot better over the next three years.

Australia's economy has slowed to levels last seen during the Global Financial Crisis. Our growth rate? 1.8%. Our long term performance has averaged 3.5% in the past. Three states, WA, SA and NT have gone negative.

In comparison, America has grown by by 3.2% this financial year - the dumping of the Paris, approval of fracking, support for coal mining and the removal of the stupid stigma against fossil fuels - have all helped.

If ever we needed to follow America, it is now. But, without a Donald Trump of our own, there's not much chance that's going to happen.

What I really wanted to say to this author's article/risible rubbish/crap, would likely be pulled for abuse or obscenity. We don't need fossil fuels to have plastic. we can make biodegradable plastic from sugar cane.

Or, if we were intelligently led, from CO2 extracted from seawater and combined with hydrogen also extracted from seawater. All very doable and economical if the power deployed is MSR thorium!

Which can also be used to burn and re-burn the nuclear waste other nations want someone to thoughtfully dispose of. And given, MSR technology is used for just that purpose and as we're paid annual billions to provide such service, able to provide power for under one cent PKWH.

Interestingly, as we draw down CO2 from seawater, the ocean draws down similar quantities directly from the atmosphere.

That said the moribund morons (science free zone) we're saddled with as so-called leaders/the author. We will continue to stagger toward a date with destiny that will serve very few of us!

Same old, same old, business, as usual, the decrepit minds like that of the author try with this kind of garbage to keep the completely disgraced status quo and the income generated for them by fossil fuels!?

And all that actually counts for the (me, me, me) diseased minds of the dumbed down, deeply disingenuous denialists!?
Alan B.

its been a number of PM's since Mr Rudd said that climate change is the most important issue facing this planet. Besides a few brainwashed school girls most have woken up to the scam. That white stuff called snow which the charlatans like Flannery and Gore said would disappear just keeps defying their prophecies.

What would we use for sugar if we used the sugar cane to make plastic?

We lived for thousands of years without sugar and just don't need it. In fact, sugar and Lollie water are probably the premier cause of obesity and rotting teeth.

Rotten teeth bring with them other serious health and heart problems.

As a cash crop, the returns from sugar are minimal and rip the goodness out of former premier farmland, with exponentially reduced sugar content the result.

Turning some of it into biodegradable plastic seems smart to me and possibly put some profit back into the crop!

Moreover, biodegradable film can be placed directly on fallow ground, to encourage weed species germination. That is until they hit the plastic ceiling.

The rolled out plastic cover and trapped heat, which along with the absence of sunlight, kills them and ground scurrying vermin. And without spray!

It also quite massively reduces evaporation losses and can be drilled directly through when planting other more profitable crops, where the water usage is also far less and only used by the chosen crop species.

Irrigation to such agriculture is via underground tapes and together with the biodegradable film. Quadruples the harvest for half the traditional water usage. And more often!

Further, if the ground is first hilled before the film is laid, all subsequent rain is encouraged to flow to the little in-between valleys and right where the sown crop can use all of it. Where the retained heat allows for earlier planting and harvest! When the plastic can be turned in, to become part of the soil carbon.

This is how the smart farmer adapts to real climate change, Cody.
Alan B.

Many Leftists' minds are already Plastic !

Thanks, very interesting! We might not need sugar, but we certainly crave it, and have done for a long time. Could the world's hunger for plastics be satisfied by annual sugar cane production?

Don't worry about it Cody, Alan lives in his own little fantasy world, filled with all the Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon super gear, not yet actually invented.

I wonder if he can tell us the advantage of wastefully flaring off all the ethylene gas now used for plastics production, then growing sugar cane to replace the raw material so wasted.

Yep plastics are great. Last night as I put some leftover fried tomato into a plastic clip lock container, & stretched some glad wrap over left over whipped cream from my scones, jam & cream, I wondered how many lives had been saved, or made much less painful, by the availability of clean airtight PLASTIC containers to safely save our food.

Talk about a con job. The supermarkets now sell us plastic bin liners, rather than give us shopping bags to do the job. It is a loss/loss action in every way. Those bin liners are thicker to justify selling them. We now throw out more plastic with our single use plastic bin liners, than we ever did with single use reused shopping bag liners.

Has there ever been a greenie initiative that did not produce a worse result than the pretend problem, due to unintended consequences, with these dumb clowns.

Meanwhile:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-waste-pollution-trash-crisis

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-health-pollution-waste-microplastics

"Plastic is fantastic".

Shock horror!

So much so, that Labor now wants to eliminate the use of single-use plastic bags. This is despite the absence of cost-benefit analysis to justify such a draconian move.

Come on Daffy do you really believe that greenie crap? I was in the plastics raw material industry for many years. Our biggest problem was UV & other degradation. It was a very short time in the sun before our lovely strong glossy material was very much the worse for wear.

Hundreds of millions were spent trying to improve the weathering of our materials, with out as much success as we really need.

Those wast heaps could easily be converted into power house fuel, if any interest actually existed other than in greeny sensation mags.

Those islands of plastic waste out in the pacific is another con job by our greenie mates. When real people went looking for them, they could only find any plastic by dragging ultra fine mesh through the crystal clear water.

I am surprised that you are so easily fooled.

Singaporeans are of course way more switched on than our Gits !
https://youtu.be/Dei_duocsu4

How does one make steel from sugar cane?

You can't make much steel from ethylene either Is Mise.

Hasbeen,

True, but it is also true that steel is plastic, so how does one make it from sugar cane?