Elon Musk, Time's person of the year

What do you get the richest person in the world?

How about a perch as Time’s Person of the Year. The magazine has conferred that honor on Tesla founder Elon Musk, citing his work revolutionizing the electric car industry, as well as the fact that his company SpaceX’s won an exclusive NASA contract to put astronauts on the moon. Musk, as the magazine notes, also had a well-received hosting turn on SNL. It wasn’t all encomiums. The magazine also brought up Musk’s penchant for inspiring controversy on social media and his ability to rumble markets with the power of a single tweet.

Time Editor-in-Chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal writes, “In 2021, Musk emerged not just as the world’s richest person but also as perhaps the richest example of a massive shift in our society. Musk’s rise coincides with broader trends of which he and his fellow technology magnates are part cause and part effect: the continuing decline of traditional institutions in favor of individuals; government dysfunction that has delivered more power and responsibility to business; and chasms of wealth and opportunity. In an earlier era, ambitions on the scale of interplanetary travel were the ultimate collective undertaking, around which Presidents rallied nations….For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year.”

Time named the scientists behind the COVID-19 vaccines as the year’s heroes, it honored “Drivers License” hitmaker Olivia Rodrigo as its artist of the year, and cited Simon Biles, the Olympic gymnast whose decision to go public with her mental health struggles sparked a global debate, as the athlete of the year.

Last year, Time named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the people of the year. Past recipients have included Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

15 best science books of all time

OK, just 15 more to go.

Maybe I'll watch the movie to get one out of the way.

*** [1/4/21]

Down to 5 to go

recycling won't solve plastic crisis

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Recycling will not be able to contain a runaway global plastic waste crisis, experts said on Friday as they called on companies to reduce plastic production and shift more products into reusable and refillable packaging.

Moving away from single-use plastics and towards systems that allow for it to be reused are among the solutions that experts believe could ease the problem, but radical changes to the production system are also needed.

"We won't be able to just recycle or reduce our way out of it," said Rob Kaplan, CEO of Circulate Capital, which invests in emerging markets initiatives to solve the plastic waste crisis.

"It's a systems problem and needs to combine upstream and downstream solutions," he said, speaking on a panel at  the  Reuters Next conference.

The world produces around 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

But less than 10% of all the plastic  ever made has been recycled, in large part because it is too costly to collect and sort. The rest ends up dumped or buried in landfills or burned.

As recycling schemes falter, big consumer goods companies, including Unilever, Coca-Cola and Nestle, have started investing in projects to burn plastic waste as fuel in cement kilns, Reuters revealed in October.

Meanwhile, plastic production is projected to double by 2040 - something many critics of the industry believe is excessive and the biggest driver of the huge waste problem facing the planet.

"Recycling can't compete with overproduction," said Von Hernandez of the Break Free from Plastic campaign, a global alliance calling for an end to plastic pollution.

"So what we need is limits on virgin plastic production," he said, speaking alongside Kaplan on the panel.

While there is no global regulator or treaty for the plastics industry, the panel speakers said individual consumers can help drive the changes needed in corporate behaviour and hold companies accountable through the life cycle of their plastic products and where they end up.

"Citizens and consumers can compel these companies...to reveal their global plastic and carbon footprint, reduce the amount of plastic they are producing and deploying to the market, and really reinvent their delivery systems," Hernandez said.