Life finds a way.
We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well, so eventually our plastics will 'rust' and degrade faster.
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We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well, so eventually our plastics will 'rust' and degrade faster.
Earth had a plastic like problem before. There were no fungi that eat cellulose so dead trees were just piling up without degrading. Those trees turned into ~petroleum~ coal that we consume now.
That trees somehow turned into ~petroleum~ coal, I learnt in school. I used to imagine trees were somehow buried under stand suddenly and before they could be degraded they turned into ~petroleum~ coal under heavy pressure.
> The world at beginning of the Carboniferous period was a humid, tropical place. Seasons, if any, were indistinct. The Carboniferous trees and plants resembled those that live in tropical and mildly temperate areas today. They grew in wetlands and were shallow-rooted. This, combined with their great height and ponderous weight, was a bad combination, because these enormous trees would regularly become uprooted and topple into the marshy ground, landing on other trees that preceded them.
> Here is where fate steps in. Although trees had evolved lignin and cellulose, no bacteria that could digest these woody substances had yet evolved. In fact, those bacteria would take another 60 million years to evolve. All this time huge trees kept growing, crashing into the swampy ground, and piling up on top of uncounted other trees, getting buried deeper and deeper into the ground. Over millions of years, subjected to the heat and pressure of deep burial, the carbon in these trees was converted into the fossil fuels we know and love today – coal, oil, and natural gas. All the fossil fuels we use were produced during this 60-million year period.