Wild bees in Argentina building nests with plastic

A recent article in the National Geographic referred to a discovery that wild bees near Argentinian crop fields have been found to make nests out of plastic sheeting debris gathered from around the farms they haunt.

The plastic had been cut and overlapped to provide a foundation for further construction.

The article itself has a neutral tone, but there is the requisite "other perspective" that thinks it's really sad that our rampant use of plastics has led to them ending up in places that they don't belong.

I think that plastic debris is a real problem, but also recognize that while plastic creates unwanted debris in the oceans, waterways, and farm fields of the world, it's also an extremely resource-efficient way to solve many problems. Finding "environmentally-friendly" alternatives would likely require more resources, and would make life more expensive for everyone. I'm fine with that, but we have others to consider. The only solution is to do less - not to find replacements for plastic. Stop "doing things". Stop "looking for solutions" and instead avoid the problem to begin with. Incrementally, of course. Everything you do matters because there might be 7.53 billion of you out there doing the same thing (or aspiring to).

The article speculates that bees incorporating plastics may build nests that are more durable and more resistant to mold and parasites, thereby improving the health of the species. The same thing we use it for.

And so it's great that bees are finding some use for this plastic. They are, in effect, reusing and sequestering it rather than landfilling or recycling it, thereby avoiding the energy inputs that recycling normally entails. The plastic that these bees have harvested will not be blowing into the ocean. We'd be celebrating this if humans did it.

One more reason to protect the bees. Or at least the wild ones in Argentina.

If 20% of Ontario car owners drove electric cars to work every day...

If only 20% of Ontario cars owners drove electric cars to work every day, it would make such a difference in reducing our oil consumption and carbon footprint.

Great idea - I agree!

So, what would that look like?

• 1.6 million cars: Ontario has about 8 million registered cars. 20% = 1.6 million
• 6600W electricity to charge: Electric cars charge with a 6600W electricity supply (220V * 30A) at the fastest-available home charging rate. Nissan Leaf uses a 6600W charger
• 1,600,000 * 6600 watts = 10,560,000,000 watts

Unfortunately, Ontario only produced about 17,000,000,000 watts at its peak for the overnight period 8:00pm last night to match consumption.

So, to maintain current consumption and add the load of 20% of Ontario vehicles charging overnight, we'll need to bump overnight generation by 62% to support our goal. Ontario has that capacity, but would likely not generate it at current overnight rates as more expensive generation would need to be activated to get there, so it potentially turns the overnight period into "peak consumption" period.

Unless you think the world will never run out of affordable oil or gasoline (I don't know what you'd reference to support this), shouldn't this be enough to convince most people that we need to deal with this problem, and that it might be better to look at our living/working arrangements to remove the car from the equation as much as possible?