I don't self-inflict it on myself, because when I see a piece of art that looks really neat I go "ooh, that looks really neat" rather than "wait, I need to dig around to find out whether I'm supposed to like this or not."
People have to actively choose to make themselves miserable in the way this comic depicts. That's what I mean when I say it's self-inflicted.
Oh, probably because it's cheaper and more efficient.
If you wanted to use the gas in a gas power plant to produce electricity to run an electric heater, there's a bunch of steps where energy gets lost. The turbine and generator isn't 100% efficient and the transformers and transmission wires lose energy along the way to your house. Whereas burning something directly for heat is nearly 100% efficient, the only waste is whatever heat gets carried away by the exhaust. Which isn't much with a modern high-efficiency furnace. I've got one of those and every once in a while I knock icicles off of the exhaust vent outside when I pass it. They use countercurrent exchange to keep all the heat inside the house.
Yet, exceedingly rare to see fires from this
You just answered your own question. The techniques for running gas lines into houses and hooking them up to furnaces are very refined at this point, it can be done safely.
A little plastic fiber isn't toxic waste. You are applying absolutely ridiculous standards.
So if I shredded pounds of plastic and a little fiber glass and sprinkle it from the air on your house it doesn't matter because straws?
Are you forgetting that this is an active war zone? The whole reason those fibers are there is because flying bombs are using them for guidance. Having to sweep up some sparkly fiber is a trivial distraction from far more important issues.
Exactly as I keep pointing out.
It's self-inflicted.
You just seamlessly switched from plastic straws specifically to all microplastics from all sources. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. How much do plastic straws contribute to microplastics? It's utterly negligible. But it's something that a public panic can be whipped up over, and people end up thinking they're actually accomplishing something meaningful by switching to paper straws. It's outright counterproductive. If I was a Captain Planet villain then I would consider it my greatest accomplishment to get people worked up about plastic straws and thinking that they were significant.
Same here with these fibre optics. The environmental impact is trivial, be it plastic or glass. The cost of worrying about it is far greater than the cost of just going ahead and using it.
I love how sci-fi this sounds. Just need mention of verteron particles thrown in there somewhere.
Ah, good, that makes this less of a dilemma then.
If it's under the topsoil then it's not going to be eaten by mice or oysters.
I really think this is one of those problems where people are looking for problems to make a big deal out of, like the massive panic about plastic straws a while back. Especially in this case where it turns out the fibers are plastic to begin with.
On the one hand not fond of the CCP, and this is a step toward making Taiwan more "safely" invadeable.
On the other hand not fond of the United States throwing its weight around like it's in charge of the world and not fond of monopolies in general.
So hard to settle on a reaction for this.
There are some cities that do things a third way; they have a centralized facility that burns the gas (or other fuels) to generate electricity, and then also pipe the heat out to the city in the form of heated water or steam running through insulated underground pipes. Buildings tap into those pipes and run it through radiators. That has the potential to be even more efficient because you're using what would otherwise be "waste" heat, but it depends on a relatively compact city to avoid losing too much heat while sending it through the pipes. I understand this is not uncommon in Eastern European and Russian cities. I'm not familiar with the details, though, so if you want to know more about this I'd recommend Googling around a bit.