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Plastic is made from oil, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to believe people never were skeptical of plastics and that skepticism wasn’t covered up by lobbying.



Yes of course, and lobbyists can be very effective. They covered up climate change and the harms of smoking too. I'm sure there are things that (almost) nobody knows today because of corporate cover-ups that we'll discover in 10 years. Climate change didn't enter the public consciousness until the late 80s, decades after the basic science was well-established, and it took more decades for it to become something that "everyone" knew about. That's the fault of corporations and lobbyists, not individuals that were too lazy to do their own climate modeling.

It is obvious to me that smoking is bad for you, it feels like an intuitive fact that nobody should have to be taught, but that's because I grew up in a culture absolutely saturated with that idea, and I didn't know anyone that smoked. Somebody who grew up 70 years ago in the complete opposite culture can't be blamed for not knowing at the time that smoking causes lung cancer. How could they know? Nobody can follow cutting-edge research from every field on the planet and adjust their life accordingly. Even if you could it wouldn't help - cutting edge science is often contradictory and it takes time for a consensus and convincing body of evidence to build up. I'm sure both of us hold intuitively obvious beliefs that we'll realize are wrong in 20 years.

What is the solution? It's not helpful to wait until after a coverup is exposed and then blame every individual who didn't somehow figure it out on their own. You also can't just believe the opposite of everything you've ever been told - you'll have the same problem. Some things that corporations produce are actually good for you, lobbyists are occasionally paid to promote something useful and true. Your parents were probably right about a lot of stuff they taught you. You can and should ask questions and learn as much as you can, but life is complicated, nobody can be deeply educated about every single thing they touch.




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