Welcome to the Plasticene
Plastic: It’s in every organ of your body
The history of the Earth is defined and measured by epochs, periods of time defined by significant changes in our planet’s physical and climate conditions. The short time Homo sapiens has roamed the Earth is a mere 300,000 years, a blink in comparison to her age of over 4.5 billion years. We were a sustainable species until the Industrial Age created by fossil fuels, a period so short and temporary it shouldn’t bear mention but for its astonishing destructiveness that threatens to end our existence.
Until recently, we lived in a short, benign epoch we know as the Holocene, a period of relative coolness even if the glacial retreat of the Pleistocene makes it appear otherwise at a glance. Compared to the temperatures of 50 million years ago (the Eocene epoch) in which fossil evidence establishes alligators lived in the Arctic, the Holocene made temperatures just right for humans to spread across the globe and occupy almost every environment on the planet. However, the correlation between increased CO2 and a hotter Earth are established beyond a doubt.
Relationship of CO2 and temperature over the past 66 million years
Some in the science community began referring to the period we live in now as a new epoch, the Anthropocene, with a start date in the 1950s, such has been our impact on the planet. After fifteen years of debate, this term was rejected by geologists. Perhaps if Los Angeles and the Canadian boreal forests burn entirely to the ground, they will change their minds. Perhaps Miami going underwater will be convincing. Perhaps agriculture failing at world scale will be persuasive. In any case, since Anthropocene has been rejected, I would like to humbly propose this epoch be called the Plasticene in honor of the plastic in your organs, brain and mine.
Although I would like to take complete credit for this proposal, in the interest of the unicorn known as integrity, I must admit others have already put this term forward. There is some debate about its starting date — 1907 with the invention of Bakelite by Leo Baekeland or the 1950s when plastic production began to explode. I’m not sure as I seem to have a Lego block lodged in my prefrontal cortex. Drat.
When climate change deniers cite alligators in the Arctic 66 million years ago as evidence life thrived in hotter temperatures, they are correct, but wholly ignoring the fact that most of the planet was unsurvivably hot for human beings, and that we existed not at all.
Some of them believe we were riding around on dinosaurs 6000 years ago as well.
Reconstructing CO2 levels through geological time has been relatively rare until recent decades. Pioneering reconstructions by scientists Paul Pearson and Martin Palmer (PDF paper here), and Mark Pagani (PDF here) show a decrease in average CO2 values as the climate cooled over the past 50 million years. The relationship of global warming to rising CO2 and other aggravating GHGs is established beyond a doubt, well-illustrated in the graph above and argued by only the most ignorant or fossil fuel industry paid trolls.
Let’s talk CO2 levels
Today’s CO2 levels stand at 426.96 ppm, up 2.48 ppm in a year. By the time you read this, those figures will be higher. As fossil fuel lobbyist party COP30 winds down, GHG pollution is being accelerated by blind, greed-driven malevolence.
An overwhelming number of studies have proven the connection of CO2 and global warming; this mechanism was understood by 1856 from the simple experiments of scientist Eunice Foote. By the way Trumpy misogynists — Eunice was, yes, a woman and a scientist, gasp, not a walking incubator for your convenience.
Carbon dioxide absorption of our nearly completely saturated oceans has saved us so far. Approximately half of the planet’s oxygen production originates from our oceans. This study shows that due to their large heat capacity, the oceans absorbed over 90 percent of heat gained by the planet between 1971 and 2010. Between 1971 and 2020 our oceans (which are dying and over three billions depend on for their food source and livelihoods) have absorbed a mind-numbing 380 zettajoules of energy increasingly trapped by GHGs. We’ve added energy equivalent to 25 billion Hiroshima size nuclear bombs confined to our biosphere in just the last 50 years. If you prefer, that’s one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years.
From the abstract of a 2021 scientific paper citing numerous CO2 studies and effects on the oceans including those by Pearson, Palmer and Pagani called Atmospheric CO2 Over the Past 66 Million Years from Marine Archives:
Throughout Earth’s history, CO2 is thought to have exerted a fundamental control on environmental change. Here we review and revise CO2 reconstructions from boron isotopes in carbonates and carbon isotopes in organic matter over the Cenozoic — the past 66 million years. We find close coupling between CO2 and climate throughout the Cenozoic, with peak CO2 levels of ∼1,500 ppm in the Eocene greenhouse, decreasing to ∼500 ppm in the Miocene, and falling further into the ice age world of the Plio–Pleistocene.
Thought to have exerted a fundamental control on environmental change? Why such obsequious language from writers of science? The abstract continues:
Around two-thirds of Cenozoic CO2 drawdown is explained by an increase in the ratio of ocean alkalinity to dissolved inorganic carbon, likely linked to a change in the balance of weathering to outgassing, with the remaining one-third due to changing ocean temperature and major ion composition. Earth system climate sensitivity is explored and may vary between different time intervals. The Cenozoic CO2 record highlights the truly geological scale of anthropogenic CO2 change: Current CO2 levels were last seen around 3 million years ago, and major cuts in emissions are required to prevent a return to the CO2 levels of the Miocene or Eocene in the coming century.
Boiled down to the simplest language, the Earth was much hotter just three million years ago and hotter still 66 million years ago, conditions that made the poles tropics and precluded the conditions necessary for human life. Rising CO2 levels at speeds never remotely seen in the geological and climate records of the planet leave no room to evolve or adapt. The speed of this change is unsurvivable on nature’s terms which ultimately sets the governing laws, not human arrogance.
But I thought this article was about plastic, Geoff
Well, it is but there is so much to talk about, and it’s all such interrelated merry fun! Like the micro and nanoplastics floating in our bloodstreams, I have sprinkled plastic into this article, now let’s focus on it.
Microplastics are shed from items we contact every day, packaging, clothes, paints, cosmetics, and car tires among them. Tiny particles slip through the linings of our lungs and guts into our blood and internal organs, even into our cells.
“Plastic never goes away — it just breaks down into finer and finer particles.”
— Desiree LaBeaud, MD, pediatric infectious diseases physician at Stanford and co-founder of the university’s interdisciplinary Plastics and Health Working Group.
For brevity’s sake, let’s do some bullet points:
In 1950 two million tons of plastic were produced. By 2019 this number was nearly 460 million tons. By 2060 on a business as usual projection this number could be 1.23 billion tons. Interactive graph here.
Data from a 2018 to 2022 in an eighty-four country audit to identify plastic brands in the environment revealed 50 percent of the plastic was unbranded, demanding mandated producer reporting. The top five branded plastic polluters globally were Coca-Cola at 11 percent, PepsiCo 5 percent, Nestlé 3 percent, Danone 3 percent and Altria 2 percent. Together they accounted for 24 percent of branded plastic waste, and just fifty-six companies accounted for more than 50 percent.
Claims of plastic recycling are lies. Less than 10 percent of plastic is recycled and only plastic labeled PET #1 and HDPE #2 can be recycled at all. And they fall far short of the woeful 30 percent rate required to meet the definition, yet, everything plastic carries the recycling symbol. Our governments allow this.
From a ProPublica article:
Take a close look at any plastic product, and you’ll likely see a little number stamped on it called a resin identification code; it distinguishes what kind of plastic it’s made of. Plastic bags, for example, are labeled No. 4. Only some No. 1 and No. 2 plastics are widely recyclable. In each case, the number is surrounded by the iconic “chasing arrows” symbol, which has come to denote recyclability, regardless of whether that product can actually be recycled.
Recycling plastic releases huge quantities of microplastic. Beware of the pyrolysis scam as well.
Did you know you paint your walls in plastic? Paint is 37 percent comprised of the stuff.
Plastic waste and “management” figures vary, but approximately 49 percent of plastic waste goes to landfills, 19 percent is incinerated, 22 percent mismanaged entirely (unaccounted for), and 9 percent “recycled.” For instance, those heavy plastic bags we carry groceries in may be made from recycled plastic bottles, but only delay the inevitable breakdown of the bags themselves, and the process of “recycling” itself releases microplastic into the environment. Landfilled plastic breaks down into micro and nanoplastics which leach into our air and water. Burning it quite obviously results in toxic emissions, air pollution, environmental damage, and the resulting toxic ash ends up in landfills where it leaches into the water and soil.
Plastic in our bodies is linked to infertility, endocrine disruption, inflammation and impaired immune systems, cancer and other diseases. Recycled black colored plastic may be most dangerous to human health of all because of the presence of flame retardants present in its original source — electronics.
The Cleveland Clinic, one of the top healthcare centers in the world, offers advice on protecting yourself from nanoplastics and points out the average liter of plastic bottled water contains an astonishing 240,000 plastic fragments, with 90 percent being nanoplastics.
The discovery of fossil fuels and resulting Industrial Revolution brought previously unimaginable luxuries and control over our environment. Desirable sanitation, heat in the winter and vaccinations gave rise to an unsustainable population level. Heated debates over the carrying capacity of the planet abound. One thing of no doubt, whatever that number it could be higher without the wanton greed of the richest who consume far beyond their share and drive our destruction through their lifestyles, investments and never satiated greed. Elon Musk, spouting fascist dogma and promoting Nazi ideology on X and through his heinous AI known as Grok may soon be the world’s first trillionaire.
Our predicament was always built on death, from the coal miners of the 18th century who contracted black lung disease to the children sent into the mines of the Congo for the cobalt necessary for the lithium batteries in our phones and green lie called electric vehicles.
In any case, the game is almost up as in the next four or five decades it is likely any remaining oil will become unextractable because of untenable EROI. Meanwhile, resource wars and massive climate migration are the future as they feed us plastic, just one more measure of historically proven psychopathy running the planet.
Without outright rebellion we’re finished.
Riding Dinos?
MAGA gets their education off TV. They grew up watching the "Flintstones" and thought it was reality TV. Just like the "Apprentice" with Trump. "I seen it on TV! It must be true!"
Everybody should start with eating their credit cards. It would be a good beginning to "Eat the Rich". The good news is that when agriculture completely collapses there's going to be plenty of plastic leftovers to keep going. Real recycling! I might start a website on plastic recipes for the ag collapse. "Dashboard stew". sounds great!
Thank you for the sobering, depressing, but true data feed from various sources. Trump and his destructive, capitalist drive is proposing rescinding the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program—no accountability to billionaires and their investors worldwide. When the fossil fuel industry falls, they will find ways to continue squeezing the earth's resources! WE need the rebellion now.