The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Shutting Off The Plastic Tap: A Global Treaty To Regulate Petrochemical Pollution? with Jane Muncke

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

(Conversation recorded on December 2nd, 2024)   One of the central ecological challenges of our time is addressing the plastic and petrochemical pollution that has exploded over the past several decades. This global issue will require the cooperation of all nations. But based on the disintegration of UN negotiations for a treaty on plastic pollution last Sunday, this is easier said than done.  In this special episode, Nate is joined by toxicologist Jane Muncke, who provides an in-depth analysis following the final day of discussions in Busan, South Korea. Together, they explore the complex intergovernmental negotiations that have defined the treaty process, as well as the environmental and health policies that have shaped these conversations in recent years. Will we ever be able to place chemical safety and public health above economic motivations at the global level? Could increased public awareness of the way these seemingly convenient products affect our health and well-being finally shut off the plastic tap? Finally, is it possible for the treaty to go beyond waste management and recycling, to instead move towards reducing the production and consumption of plastics at the source?    About Jane Muncke:  Jane Muncke holds a doctorate degree in environmental toxicology and a MSc in environmental science from the ETH Zurich. Since 2012 she has been working as Managing Director and Chief Scientific Officer at the charitable Food Packaging Forum Foundation (FPF) in Zurich, Switzerland. FPF is a research and science communication organization focusing on chemicals in all types of food contact materials.  Jane Muncke is a full scientific member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), the Society for Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology (SETAC), the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Endocrine Society. Since 2019, she has been an elected expert member of the Swiss Organic Farming Association Bio Suisse's committee on trade and processing where she contributes to further developing the standards for processing and packaging of organic food. She is a director of the FAN initiative, a collective of experts warning about resource overshoot, the polycrisis, and related societal collapse.   Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners  

Our society is addicted to plastic. And one of the things about addiction is you can only do something about it when you become aware that you are addicted. I don't think our society is aware of that yet. You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform, and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming great simplification.

We've had many episodes on plastic pollution. In the past, we had Sean Aswan talk about sperm count, Martin Scheringer, on Pfeas, Jane Munker, and Sean Sutherland on industrial plastics in our food system. In three days' time, we will have Jeremy Grantham back to talk about population decline and the influence from endocrine disrupting chemicals. And in January, Shauna Swan will also be back to discuss new research and some hopeful progress on removing household products and changing behaviors with plastic pollution. But for now, last night at 9 p.m., I got a series of texts from my colleague Jane Munker,

who was in South Korea for the UN negotiations on a global treaty on plastic pollution. and she was quite upset at what had transpired since she's a friend and a scientist, and I have a podcast. I asked her to do a late-night recording on what transpired, and here that is. Jane, who is normally based in Switzerland, has been an independent scientist part of the scientist coalition for these discussions. She holds a doctorate degree in environmental toxicology and has been working as the managing director and chief scientific officer at the charitable, Food Packaging Forum Foundation since 2012. Please welcome this special episode with Dr. Jane Monka. Hi, Jane. Welcome back to the program.

Hi, night. It's good to be back. So, if I'm correct with my time zone math, it is 20 minutes to 11 p.m. in Busan, South Korea, where you have just spent several days a week at intergovernmental negotiating committee meeting on plastics. I'm going to let you do all the talking here, but just to set the context,

on this platform, we've had you, Martin Scheringer, we've had Jeremy Grantham, Sean Aswan, Sean Sutherland and others talk about the growing problem of toxicity, plastic, pollution,

endocrine disrupting chemicals, phallates, all the things. So you are on the ground trying to change policy on packaging, plastics, et cetera, and you just finished this international conference. Tell us what was it about? What happened? What are the implications? Thanks for taking your time this late at night.

Well, it's great to talk with you about this. Nate, thanks for having me. So I participated in what is called the fifth intergovernmental. negotiating committee meeting that was held in Tuzan and South Korea. These past couple days, 10 days, I think I've been here. And this is part of the United Nations Environment Assembly's work. So in March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly or UNEA passed a resolution, giving a mandate to United Nations Environment Program UNAP to negotiate a global plastics treaty. And so this work has been ongoing since March 2022.

We've had five of these intergovernmental negotiating committee meetings. UN is all about abbreviation. So the abbreviation for these meetings is INC. And I've been to INC 2, 3, 4, and now this was the first. fifth one. And in the original time plan that was put out at the UNAAA back in March 2022, the goal was to have a legal text finalized by the end of 2024. And so that was basically the task for this meeting. Well, spoiler alert, we don't have a finalized legal text. Ten days ago before you went to Korea, did you think there would be a final text agreed upon?

So maybe I need to clarify my role in this. So I'm an independent scientist. I'm a researcher. I've worked on chemicals and plastics and the sort of whole plastic problem, which is a very complex problem as a scientist for more than 20 years. So my role in all of this is not to negotiate a legal text, but it is to provide independent scientific knowledge to the negotiators and to to other stakeholders, participants in these treaty negotiations. And I think what's important to say is that in March 2022, when the UNRWA resolution was passed,

most people's understanding of the issue was that it's about the plastic litter that we see. You know, the plastic bottle caps and bottles and plastic bags choking turtles, being pulled out of dead albatross's stomachs, plastic flower pots being found in beached whale stomachs and so on and so forth, right? So that was the focus because that was the communication narrative. And that was an important narrative because that's what raised the awareness for the issue. But the issue that we're dealing with is far, far, far bigger than just a plastic waste management issue, right? And so over the course of the last two and a half years,

I think in no small part have independent scientists and our colleagues in civil society managed to educate policymakers about this issue in a very, in a very fundamental way. And so now, that's one of my takeaways from this meeting here in Busan. And so now, the narrative has changed. We heard some very strong statements about health and, you know, human health being affected by plastics across the entire, all life stages of plastics. It's not even my focus, but I see in the news that plastic is in our blood. It's in our brains.

In the next six weeks on this platform, we will have both Jeremy Grantham and Shauna Swan and giving updated conversations on the impact on sperm count, even testosterone, and it's not even humans, not only humans, it's also our pets and wild animals. It's everywhere. And I also am hearing from influential people that I come across that they're actually switching their focus from climate to toxicity and plastics. Like the conversation is changing. So what happened at this convening?

Is this kind of like the cop meetings on climate? Is this the equivalent for plastics, the meeting you were just at? So again, I'm sort of new to this whole world of United Nations, but COP is COP. It stands for Conference of Parties. And so Cops are held when you have parties that have ratified. a treaty. And so we're in the process of developing this treaty once it is ratified, hopefully next year we'll see. The conference of the parties will take place. And they're usually

held once a year or maybe every other year. So that remains to be seen. But what would be an objective that would be reasonable given the state of plastics and toxics that the people at the event you were just at would have hoped would have been a success. So we have coalitions of the willing. We have what is called the HACC, the High Ambition Coalition, which is I think 68 countries that have officially agreed to participate in this coalition. And one of their key demands is a reduction in primary polymer production. So really you could translate that into turning off the tap.

That's a very important demand, and I think it's very strongly supported by robust science because we see a direct link. And you know, this is not hard to understand, but there's a direct link between supply, demand and pollution. So primary polymers would be the sort. material that all the other advanced polymers, the thousands of different chemicals we have come from. So if you don't have the primary polymer feedstock, you can't make all the other things. Yeah, exactly. So the primary polymers are made from fossil carbon. That's the feedstock.

The carbon is pumped from the ground. It's refined. The heavy weight fraction goes into fuels. and then all of the lighter weight fraction goes into a chemical farmer industry. And plastics is a big part of markets that way these fossil carbons go into. And it's kind of also a little bit become the plan B for the petro industry, right? With hopefully decreasing demand for fossil carbon-based fuels, it's sort of there's been this rush into, oh, okay, great, let's use this raw material to make more plastics. And that's precisely what this high ambition coalition of countries is trying to stop, because more plastics directly equals more pollution. I can already understand and predict the pushback

against this in many, many different ways. One is look around your room. You're in a hotel in North Korea. I mean, the curtains behind you are made from plastics. Of course, yeah. Your clothes, the speakers that we're using to talk to each other as one issue, as another issue, if we removed all the primary polymer production, there would be an immediate change in the world demand for crude oil and what would they do with all the extra? We would still need all the gasoline and the diesel and the distillate, but the fractions that were turned into plastics, what would we do with them? maybe turn them into more fuel, but it's just a whole complex mess. But it has to start somewhere.

So what was the result? What was the scientific summary and who were the people that were voting in favor of such a treaty? And who were the people that were opposed? And viewers who have been following this channel can predictably write the script of what you're about to say. Yeah, well, we haven't even come so far as having voting. It's still basically negotiations, it's the liberations. But there's two camps in a way. So we have the High Ambition Coalition or the hack.

So that's the people that care about the biosphere and future generations? Exactly. They want to reduce plastic production. They want to have provisions, articles, banning problematic people. plastic products, banning hazardous chemicals, chemicals of concern we call them, that are present in plastics. They want to have extended producer responsibility or sort of a waste hierarchy and formed waste management approach. And the waste hierarchy basically says that we should focus on reducing, preventing waste from being generated in the first place, reuse.

using products, for example, packaging and so on, and then only sort of midway down the waste hierarchy, it's about recycling. And the big focus right now, of course, is on recycling. And one of the key issues also is to have a fair and functioning finance mechanism because, of course, there are some high-income industrialized countries that are arguably kind of causing all all of this plastic pollution by producing these products and shipping them to low, middle income countries who then have to deal with all this plastic pollution who don't have the waste infrastructure in place. So that's kind of the one camp, the high ambition coalition, who want all of these things.

And then on the other side, we have a coalition that calls itself the like-minded group. it's not transparent who is a member of this group and some countries keep sort of moving in and out and it's a little bit probably the game of negotiating such a treaty which is its own kind of universe in a way but the clear leaders the strong drivers of the like-minded group are the Russian Federation and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. and the Arab League of States is very much involved. India is also part of this group. China is one of those that, to me at least, is not quite clear in its positioning.

And unfortunately, also South Africa. You know, I'm South African, right? So I'm saddened to see that development. South Africa in one of the meetings before this INC-5 in Busan informed South African stakeholders that it would not be supporting provisions on reducing primary polymer production. I have so many questions. This isn't like a typical interview because you are both a scientist and a good friend of mine. So this is just a conversation.

If there were a benevolent alien philosopher observing what's happening with humans on this planet, how dissimilar is what you just experienced from someone kicking a termite mound or an ant hill and having a bunch of ants and termites running around? Well, I mean, kicking an ant hill, depending on what the motivation is, if you're an ant eater and you want to eat them, maybe it's similar. but if you're just doing it to be destructive, I mean, the point is there's a clear intrinsic motivation for the like-minded countries

because they insist on their right to extract their natural resources, as we call the fossil carbon that happens to be in the ground in their territories, and they insist on the right to pollute, basically. This gets back to the entire environmental consumption, chicken or the egg argument. What if people in the world didn't demand plastics and or had replacements that were made from

coconut shells that were, you know, refined in an environmentally benign way, then the like-minded wouldn't have as much power, right? So doesn't it have, don't we have to change our demand and our technology? before we can unilaterally outlaw or agree in principle to reduce the primary polymer production? Yeah, you're absolutely right. In principle, you're absolutely right. But, you know, reality is different. We have, I don't need to tell you how our economy works, right? I've learned so much from you, Nate, about this. but we have an economic system that basically depends on raw materials and materials like plastics.

Plastics are a vector for overconsumption. And plastics are needed for creating value. For example, if you look at food, the food system depends on the availability of these highly functional, economically cheap materials for, first of all, producing foods. We use these melting foils that oftentimes just kind of get tilled into the ground and then you get microplastics and so on, destroying soil fertility and groundwater and God knows what. But then also packaging of food. If you have a globalized food business

model, you need highly functional packaging that allows you to ship the products across the world without too much cost for fuel, you know. Highly functional and very inexpensive, because if there was a tax, even if it was a gradual tax on primary polymers that would give innovators a price signal, we need to use less of this thing, then even a doubling or tripling in the price of plastic packaging would mean a lot of products are no longer economically viable to be shipped internationally as one example, yes? Yes. And actually, it's funny you say that because there is a concrete proposal to do just that, the polymer premium, to tax. I forget how much it is. It's not a lot. It's something like,

you know, $10 per ton of polymer or something like that. It's really not a lot. But the proposal is to, well, use that funding that will come in to finance some of the infrastructure build out in the low middle income countries to manage waste better and then to gradually increase that. But also hopefully to use that to support innovation into other business models, which don't depend on the this cheap, cheap material, economically cheap material. And just let me, let me say this also. I mean, there are huge externalities associated with the use of plastics. Some concrete data from Leotrasand, a good friend of mine, a professor at New York University, he's shown, he and his colleagues have shown that just a handful of plastic chemicals, phthalates, bisphenol A,

PFAS, are implied to have health costs in the range of $249 billion in 2018 alone in the US. So there's a huge externality associated with this. I can't remember the stats, but there are many, many thousands of chemicals, and only a fraction of them have been tested. and none have been tested in combination with other chemicals and substances. So is there like a power law distribution here? Is there an 80-20 rule where 20% of the chemicals and plastics account for 80% of the health damages? Is there something like that or we really have no idea? I don't think we can say that.

I mean, it sounds intriguing. It would be a good talking point. But I think we're even too far away from that night. I mean, literally we have these health costs for five or six, let's say three or four groups of chemicals. And in our work that you're referring to the Plaskam report, we identified 15 different groups of chemicals of concern. And that's not even all of the known plastic chemicals. We know there are about 16,000 known plastic chemicals, but experts estimate that there may be up to 100,000. plastic chemicals. And we have we have hazard data which would allow us to assess the the toxicity

for for about 4,000 of those chemicals. What have we wrought? Let me just ask you personally, how many people were at this this event? I think I don't know exactly. Roughly. About 3 to 4,000. Okay. And as a human, as a woman, as a originally South African, now European, like what was your personal sense of things? What were people's reaction to your friends and colleagues working on these issues around the world? Well, I mean, I'm very lucky

because I have a lot of friends and colleagues who understand a lot of this issue. But I fear sometimes we're moving too much in our little bubble, you know? Like we talk to each other. we did a whole bunch of side events and, you know, it's, it's, it's almost like a summer camp, you know, it's like you see these, these people that you build relationships with, you have connections, you know, they become friends. I'm not talking to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I'm not talking to the Russian Federation, you know. So it's, I mean, there's, there's

clear polarization there. It's 7.30 in the morning my time, and the first I knew of this conference was last night when you messaged me and you were pretty upset and disappointed. So is that sentiment quite widely shared amongst the 3 or 4,000 people that were there? Yes. And maybe this is one of the things that unites everyone. Everyone is walking away from Busan with a sense of not having achieved what they came to achieve. The like-minded group, and I'm just insinuating those, so it may be wrong, but I mean, there were over 220 chemical industry professionals, they're lobbyists or whatever

you want to call them, and their goal was to have a weak treaty. They didn't get that. We didn't settle for a weak treaty. So they didn't get what they wanted. the negotiations continue. The more ambitious countries didn't get what they wanted. They didn't get an ambitious treaty. But they have managed to achieve something quite special, I think,

in that they've sort of managed to uphold the ambition. There were so many discussions about chemicals. There were so many discussions about the, reduction of the PPP, we call it, the primary polymer production. And repeatedly, countries from the like-minded group were saying, this is the red line. We're not even going to talk about having provisions on these issues because it's unacceptable to us. It's not in the scope of the mandate and so on. And so they have not managed to kick that out. And when we come back for the next round of negotiations, these things are very much on the table because more and more

countries actually that were in the middle ground now have joined the ambitions of the like-minded. And there was one moment that I just want to share with you in the closing plenary yesterday. So you've got to imagine this was a huge hall, a huge, huge big hall with, you know, seating for three to four thousand people. in the front is a daze where the chair sits and the sort of UNEP representatives and part of the team around the chair taking notes and managing the meeting and then there's a couple rows of the member states right so so the different UN member states that all send delegations to this meeting and there's two four ten sometimes delegates member state. And I think there's about 170 member states that were there, give or take.

And then behind the member states sit the observers. And so I'm part of the observer group. And the observers are everyone from your hardcore anti-plastic activist to the industry lobbyists, right? And the scientists, like yourself. And the independent scientists. I'm part of the scientist coalition for an effective of Plastics Treaty. We had 71 colleagues on the ground in Busan, and we were also there, of course, in the closing plenary. And then the way it works is the chair makes suggestions, there's an agenda and so on. And so the chair proposed to extend the negotiations to go to a INC 5.2, essentially, and then to finalize the treaty there, which I'm pretty hopeful will happen.

we'll see. And then the different member states are allowed to make interventions and give statements. And so, you know, there sort of were a whole bunch of statements. And then Rwanda, who's been one of the members from the beginning of the heck, the High Ambition Coalition, read out their statement and, you know, reinforcing the need to have an ambitious treaty that is effective, that is based on science, that doesn't only deal with waste management, but really also deals with turning off this tap, with the chemicals and so on. And at the end of her statement,

Julie Cabera, the delegate from Rwanda, said, and now I would like to invite everyone who supports an ambitious treaty to stand up. And it was thousands of, well, thousands, but, you know, hundreds, maybe a thousand people. more than half, definitely, who stood up. And it was such an emotional moment and people started clapping and cheering and it was such a visual, powerful moment to just show, hey, you know, we're here to do the good work.

We want an ambitious treaty. And it's just a few of these light-minded countries and, you know, the chemical industry who are trying to jeopardize this and who are basically holding everyone else hostage. Well, you've just described the beating heart of the economic superorganism, Jane. So what is the role of science there, especially since from the earlier meetings,

like you said this was the fourth or fifth one? The fourth one? The fifth, yeah. The fifth. So there has been a lot of news that half of one percent of our brain by mass is microplastic. And it is clear now that sperm count is dropping in humans and animals around the world.

So it's no longer plastic consumed by albatrosses and turtles. It's a much, much bigger deal, which means the risks are bigger, the stakes are bigger, and the political implications are much larger. So did scientists like you have a fair say in the proceedings, or was there obfuscation and then the UN equivalent of lobbying, interrupting the proceedings? It's the latter, unfortunately, but you knew that when you were asking your question already. So, you know, as observers, we don't have an active role. Sometimes we get to make interventions in the plenary.

It didn't happen yesterday. Unfortunately, we ended at 251 a.m. And at that time, you know, most delegates had left the hall anywhere already, so you don't have a lot of impact if you do a statement then. But anyway, our role is more to stand by. We go into the so-called contact groups. That's where the actual legal text is drafted and negotiated. And that's where countries put forth proposals. And then other countries say that it's good or bad or whatever.

And we sit there and listen to that. And when we hear something that is scientifically not supported, we go and talk to those member states and just kind of offer the scientific evidence in a non-policy prescriptive way. That's our role. And we also get approached by members, but, you know, we've built relationships now with people that are delegates for different member states. They come and ask us about what do you think about this proposal and, and, and, and, and, and, what's the evidence for that and so on. So that's kind of our role in a nutshell.

Let me rephrase the question, Jane. Policies and language and text aside, do you think that most people, the high ambition countries, the interested states, Saudi Arabia, Russia, everyone at the event pretty much understands the science on toxicity and its potential implications versus high. and they're just following the human maximum power law for status and short-term gain, etc. Or is there genuine disagreement and non-understanding of the threat that plastics face? I think there is genuine lack of understanding, to be honest. And again, as we took before, I think most negotiators, when they went into this process, thought it's about albatrosses and turtles. We have changed the narrative. So I was part of a

so-called intercessional meeting, which was held between INC4 and INC-5 in August and Bangkok, which was closed to observers. I was there because I was nominated as expert for one of the member states. And something remarkable happened there. A bunch of countries got together and said, hey, we need to make this treaty much more about health. And that's definitely not a narrative that the like-minded group wants to see. But that is a narrative which I think is not stoppable anymore. Well, it's nonpartisan. I mean, I live in the United States. I think both Republicans and Democrats care about their testosterone and their sperm count and their health and everything. Yeah. And it's about the health of children. I mean,

That's also something that our mutual colleague, Thomas Homer Dixon, Tad, also speaks about, you know, the shared vision of humanity is the health of our children, the future of our children, right? And everyone can kind of agree on that. Almost everyone. You would think everyone could. So that's a very powerful platform. And even there is still big. disputes on that. And what we've been seeing, Nate, is very clever, very strategic communication.

We know from the tobacco files that, you know, there's this famous memo, PR firm executives, saying doubt is our product. And that is a, that's a formula that really has been put to good work by the PR industry. for many issues, not just tobacco. And we see a sort of evolution of that, I would say, in these negotiations, which I would phrase as manufacturing confusion. So it's not doubt, but it's confusion. Confusion is their product. And how did that manifest in Korea?

Well, a lot of statements by like-minded group countries, literally starting with, I'm very confused. Mr. Chair, I'm very confused. Repeating the word confusion, but then also just confusing people with the statement, you know, kind of switching from one thing to the next, cherry picking science. I'm sure it sounded quite earnest, though. Yes, and that's the thing about this manufacturing confusion and manufacturing doubt. It's almost, you know, I don't want to be cynical, but it's almost, an art form. You need to understand the science to then distort the science to make it, you know,

work for you. What's the bottom line, Jane? What do you think is, what's the best case going forward, the most likely case and the worst case based on what you've learned in the past 10 days? The good thing of this meeting is that people are understanding the complexity. of the plastic issue. And for me, as a scientist, that's just wonderful. The more people understand what we're actually dealing with and start to embrace that, you know, yes, it is complex, but there are still good things we can do.

That's great. We now have the opportunity to really roll up our sleeves even more and negotiate a treaty that is ambitious and that really protects human health and the environment from plastic pollution, also from the extraction. I mean, think about fence-line communities who are exposed to these toxic, toxic chemicals. So that would be sort of acute exposure. But then almost the entire human population, 8 billion people who are exposed to plastic chemicals

that leach from plastic packaging into food because plastic is not an inert material. And so people ingest these, if they're not kind of, kind of, making a super big effort trying to avoid that on a daily basis. And we see increasing non-communicable diseases. You've alluded to the declining sperm count and so on. There's a whole bunch of health implications related to this chronic low-level expose. So if we can do something about that, we get a huge return on invest by preventing these cases of chronic disease. And then also the end of life when we look at the damage plastic pollution does to ecosystems, but also to human health. And one of the big issues, Nate, that is really talked about is in low-income countries where

there is no infrastructure to deal with this man-made material that becomes waste, people just burn it. And when you burn plastic, you're creating toxic chemicals galore. And some of these toxic chemicals are persistent organic pollutants, the dioxins, for example, which don't go away. Nature cannot metabolize them. And they travel. So they travel, they accumulate in sediment. And one story from the country that I live in now that I call home, Switzerland, there we have infrastructure to incinerate waste. But in the city of Lausanne, they were not filtering. the emissions from that plant properly. And so now as a result, people living in the Xana

being told not to eat vegetables that they grow in their own gardens because the soil is contaminated with dioxin. And that's a first world country. I was in India earlier this year, and they had massive piles of plastic trash, the size of my office. And then every third day, they would just burn it. And I had to ride through it on my motorcycle.

my bike and, you know, I was just like covering my mouth. I mean, you could see the acrid, the black, brown smoke in the air, you know, times millions of communities probably. So, thank you for this impromptu update. There's a lot more, I mean, basically that I'm hearing from you is this is another example of the metabolism of the superorganism being strong. stronger than the in-service-of-life ethic of those people who are scientifically looking at wide-boundary implications. But different than things like climate change, there still is a pathway for more education and awareness globally and within policy and within citizenry about the risk that plastic pollution faces to us, our children, and the ecosystems.

Yes, absolutely. But there's always a butt. isn't there. I'm worried that the people that really are working selflessly, aiming to, you know, fulfill their moral calling in a way to prevent current and future generations from being intoxicated by these synthetic man-made materials, these people are tired, exhausted. It's been a long and difficult process. I was really looking forward to seeing this done this treaty, but okay, we'll keep going. As you know, Nate, facts don't change behavior. Facts don't even change perception always. And perception is reality. And you can buy perception. If you have a big enough advertising budget, you can buy perception. And people are being nudged or brainwashed or whatever you want to call it

into lifestyles that they maybe wouldn't choose if they're fully understood the implications of those lifestyles. But we're kind of, you know, we're all busy and, oh, we don't have time. So we run into the supermarket and buy ultra-processed food, ready-made meals, stick them in the microwave, plastic everywhere, right? The clothing, fashion industry, building materials, mobility, even, you know, alternative energy sources. Everything depends. on these materials. And so I'm really worried that those countries that have a lot of cash lying around are investing that into public relations and into brainwashing and bribes to negotiators,

quite frankly speaking, to prevent us from getting an ambitious treaty. So that's a real concern. This was supposed to be a 15-minute Jane on the scene in career. conversation, but unfortunately, your friend Nate, has, has so many questions. Let me ask you this just real quick. And I know it's approaching midnight there. So I can't believe that you're staying up till 240 in the morning and still doing podcasts. What if there was like a plastics equivalent of a global hunger strike in the global north or anywhere where people learned about these risks and there's a hundred items in their weekly, you know, profile, but 80 of them,

just to pick a number, are things on your short list that, like, packaged frozen food that you heat in a microwave, if they stopped buying those things, but still use the Apple iPhone headset that you're wearing and really important things like that. Yeah. Could personal behavioral consumption choices en masse change this conversation? Sure. It's a great idea. I mean, you basically are talking about the fast-moving consumer goods, the FMCGs.

I think if people really started consciously reducing consumption of these products, demanding alternatives, I think the market would change. but who am I to say that? And, you know, I mean, there's been the zero waste movement has been around for more than a decade now. Yeah, it's very convenient, this stuff, you know. So here's another question. And I really don't want to end on this question because it's kind of depressing. But you mentioned earlier that we're buying these intoxicants, which are the plastic supply chain.

And yet we consciously, many people in the world buy intoxicants and consume them every day in the form of alcohol, which is convenient and makes us feel good for a brief moment, even though we know, especially at higher levels, that it's not good for us at all. So is this, I mean, is this just a macrocosm of this human penchant for short-term convenience, comfort despite the externalities? Well, I feel like this is starting to become a one-hour conversation. There's so much in there to unpack. I mean, I think, briefly, I think in a way our society is addicted to plastic. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things about addiction is you can only do something about it when you become aware that you are addicted. And I don't think our society is aware of that yet.

I don't think being aware that you're addicted is, I think that's the first step. Then you have to have some consequences and hit rock bottom and interventions and all that. Absolutely. Exactly. And it's, I mean, you know, you need to get your dopamine metabolism balanced out again, right? And so in a way, that's what our society needs to do. Yeah. It's all about dopamine.

On this and many issues. Thank you so much for your work and your time as a scientist and as a human on these important issues. Do you – I definitely want to have you back again. There's a lot here. Do you have any closing words as the clock strikes midnight in Busan, South Korea for our viewers? I think, you know, watch the space. it's definitely also interesting in terms of multilateralism in general. I mean, the world is changing. I think the plastics issue is very much related to climate and to biodiversity as well.

And to the global north and global south dichotomy. Yes. And also, I mean, to the geopolitical powers, you know, I mean, the like-minded countries, they, of course, have real economic interests also. So it's a very interesting topic. It's definitely more than just about a material. And the other thing I think is that's really important is to remain hopeful. And I really mean that in the sense of what Thomas Homer Dixon talks about, the commanding hope. We don't know exactly what the outcome is. we know that natural systems inherently are regenerative.

I sometimes feel like all the people running around at these INC meetings are little regenerative forces in themselves, and that gives me hope and strength. There's really intelligent people that want to do the right thing that are working so hard, and yeah, may they have the power. from when you and I first met, the number of people in my network that are talking about toxic pollution from plastics is exploded, like orders of magnitude. So it is changing. We are becoming aware. And we'll see what comes next.

Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Take care, night. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please follow us. on your favorite podcast platform. You can also visit The Great Simplification.com for references and show notes

from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast, check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagan's, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Batlutz,

Brady Hyan, and Lizzie Siriani.