It boggles the mind to know we humans are literally made of stardust. Nearly all the elements in our bodies come from the stuff produced as stars exploded over the last 13 billion years.
It boggles the mind in a different way to know that we star children are endangering life on the planet, including our own, by burning carbon. We can stop it, but we don’t.
Now, the oil industry is causing another life-threatening problem. Plastic waste has invaded the bodies of virtually every breathing lifeform on the planet.
The jury is still out on whether the international community will solve it.
We’ve all seen pictures of sea creatures being strangled by plastic refuse. Human bodies are affected, too. Tiny plastic waste is present in our blood, brains, hearts, livers, kidneys, lungs and testicles, as well as in placentas and breast milk. We ingest the microplastics contained in fruits and vegetables, water, water bottles, seafood, cosmetics, household dust and the air. Plastics are everywhere they’re not supposed to be.
How big is the problem? One estimate is that there are 51 trillion pieces of microscopic plastic on the planet, equivalent in weight to 1,345 blue whales and 500 times more numerous than the stars in our galaxy. The amount of plastic produced so far exceeds the biomass of all the world’s terrestrial and marine animals. Plastic waste is so pervasive and permanent — it can take 1,000 years to break down — that it is one of the reasons geologists concluded that humans are now the most destructive force on the planet.
There are several noteworthy parallels between the climate and plastics crises. Both are caused by the oil industry, whose petrochemicals are used to make most plastic. The wastes of both have spread worldwide. Both are products of a business model that profits by degrading the environment and threatening human health. In both cases, big oil companies escape the “polluter pays” principle, forcing the environment and society to cover the cost of damages.
Big oil companies are so powerful and embedded in the economy that governments have been unwilling or unable to stop them. In fact, most nations either subsidize or run oil production. Direct and indirect subsidies totaled $7 trillion in 2022. Carbon dioxide emissions have received the most attention, while plastic wastes have mostly flown under the radar.
“Our economies are heavily dependent on petrochemicals, but the sector receives far less attention than it deserves,” according to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. “Petrochemicals are one of the key blind spots in the global energy debate, especially given the influence they will exert on future energy trends.”
International leaders signed a treaty in 1992 promising to get climate change under control. They just concluded their 29th Conference of the Parties to talk about it, but the world is still careening toward a future where life on parts of the planet will become intolerable.
It’s already happening. For example, a new study concludes that global warming was responsible for half the deaths of the 68,000 Europeans who succumbed to excessive heat two years ago.
Nevertheless, the fossil fuel industry pushes back hard against effective responses to the climate and plastics crises. More than 1,770 fossil fuel lobbyists signed up to attend COP-29, outnumbering the delegations of most countries. Today, Nov. 25, nations are convening in the Republic of Korea, hoping to finalize a legally binding agreement to do something about plastic pollution. Nearly 200 lobbyists registered from the chemical and oil industry.
Nearly 70 countries support capping plastic production, a policy that new research concludes is “the only rational strategy for tackling plastic pollution.” However, the Biden administration and oil industry reportedly favor a “flexible” approach: voluntary national agreements and market signals to reduce waste. And under President-elect Trump, the U.S. is unlikely to join an international plastic treaty under any terms.
As for the rest of the world, the failure of the Paris climate agreement so far demonstrates that voluntary targets don’t work. Market-based schemes won’t work either until the prices of plastic and oil reflect their total life-cycle costs to society and the environment. Now, it is cheaper for oil companies to produce virgin plastic than to use recycled materials.
Meanwhile, the global demand for plastic has nearly doubled since 2000 and it’s growing exponentially. So is plastic waste. Analysts say oil companies like ExxonMobil plan to increase plastic manufacturing as petroleum demand declines in transportation and other sectors. The International Energy Agency predicts that plastic production will drive nearly half of the growth in oil demand by mid-century.
In yet another parallel between the climate and plastic crises, oil companies tout questionable technical fixes. Carbon capture and sequestration is their answer to burning fossil fuels, but power plants and factories equipped with this technology will never generate electricity at prices competitive with carbon-free renewable energy.
One of the ill-conceived technical fixes for plastic wastes is to burn them in steelmaking, a carbon-intensive industry. The U.S. Department of Energy has approved a $183 million loan guarantee for a company that wants to do this. The loan is contingent on an environmental impact review, but the air emissions will likely be unhealthy. Green hydrogen, not plastic, is the fuel of the future for steelmaking. (The Department of Energy is funding some of those projects, too.)
A final parallel between the two crises is that cities and states are suing oil companies to recover damages from both types of pollution. Several investigations proved that oil companies covered up their knowledge that fossil fuels cause climate change. Similarly, lawsuits allege that oil companies falsely claimed recycling of plastics was a solution, when in fact it never was. In reality, less than 10 percent of plastic is recycled.
The plastic lawsuits have had mixed success so far. What’s certain is that oil companies will continue making plastic if consumers buy it. And so long as virgin plastics are cheaper than recycled plastics, recycling will remain a sham. Bioplastics are possible solutions, but much work is needed to make them viable.
Until then, plastic waste will continue accumulating in virtually every ecosystem, every animal species, and every human body. Move over, stardust.
William S. Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.
