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0 pointshosh4y ago0 comments

I definitely want to put the plastic into the carbon cycle, it is just that the carbon cycle I have in mind is not the same as the carbon cycle people are used to thinking.

There's a carbon cycle of plants -> oil -> plastics -> burn in air -> plants -> oil ... And that cycle takes a long time.

But the carbon cycle I am thinking of is one that makes the carbon in the plastics bio-available to plants directly. That means greater fertility, greater food abundance, food sovereignty, better land management.

Trying to stuff the carbon from plastics back into rock does not give us greater fertility, food abundance or food sovereignty. If anything, it will increase the wealth inequality gap, and makes it harder to feed everyone.

We're not quite there yet. The key is being able to safely composting plastics, and that means finding or breeding microorganisms that are capable of eating it. What we would have to give up are the properties of plastic that our modern society is addicted to ... something that _doesn't_ biodegrade, durable and cheap enough to be used ubiquitously.

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pabs34y ago

That is a good point, there are a lot of parallels between our current plastic situation and the world before the invention of lignin/cellulose breakdown mechanisms by fungi.

However, I still think that in the short term, stopping the oil/gas/plastic carbon cycle and finding ways to reverse it, to reduce climate change is much more important for the planet and humanity.

In addition, we need to think about stabilising the human population (encouraging birth control etc) both for climate change and ecological/species survival reasons.

Once we have solved/stablised/reversed Earth's ecological problems then maybe we can think about integrating plastics back into the shorter carbon cycle safely.

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