As we adjust to climate change becoming our new normal, most corporations around the world, sensing a serious threat to economic stability due to the ravages of catastrophic weather events, are seeking ways to help reduce CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
There is, however, one notable but perhaps expected exception: the fossil fuel industry itself.
Recent reports of a decades-old disinformation campaign designed and carried out by the oil and gas giants claiming that burning fossil fuels does not contribute to climate change should not be that surprising.
After all, these corporations are accountable to their shareholders and have a legal obligation to preserve value for them.
We should expect then that they will engage in more shameful activities designed to fend off restrictions on the burning of fossil fuels while they figure out other ways to make money. And it appears they have figured out at least one solution: plastics. Ah, yes, that probably sounds familiar to those of you who remember that famous line from “The Graduate,” as Dustin Hoffman was being given the secret to financial success from an industry insider.
The demand for plastic is greater now than ever before. It’s a tremendously useful product: cheap, light, infinitely malleable and virtually unbreakable.
Plastic has found its way into every consumer product you can think of, from water bottles to diapers, flat-screen TVs to blankets, winter hats to underwear. And during Covid, demand for gloves, masks, gowns, syringes and other disposable plastic items has skyrocketed.
So why is plastic being called “the new coal”? The primary feedstock for plastic is fossil fuels, and the environmental impact of making it, transporting it and disposing of it rivals that of….coal.
A closer look: Fracking is a process of drilling deep into the earth and then forcing under high pressure a toxic mixture of chemicals, water and sand into the underlying shale rock formations to release oil and gas.
Much can go wrong with this process with failed well casings and accidents, but even if the process goes smoothly, leakage of greenhouse gases is common and the gas or oil that is extracted along with its muds is laced with radioactive elements, fracking chemicals like benzene and toluene and hypersaline water.
The extracted oil and gas is then moved through giant pipelines, compressor stations and other pipeline infrastructure (which leak toxic chemicals as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas) across thousands of miles, or transported by ship or truck, where accidents are becoming all too common.
Extracted crude oil then heads to refineries which require massive amounts of power (the oil refining industry is the third-largest stationary emitter of greenhouse gases) and gas is liquefied or compressed and combined with industrial chemicals to ready it for the plastic industry.
Plastic’s impact on the environment and our health doesn’t end there. Fenceline communities surrounding the industrial sites mentioned above suffer from many chronic and debilitating illnesses related to contaminated air and water.
And last year we shipped roughly 1.4 billion pounds of plastic trash overseas, mostly to developing countries. Most of it is burned in the open, exposing people to toxic air pollutants and further polluting their scarce and contaminated water sources.
Plastic waste like shower curtains, birthday balloons, straws and food packaging end up in our landfills, or more likely in our rivers, lakes, bays and oceans, where it negatively impacts marine life, who often mistake it for food. Plastic “islands” formed by circular currents (gyres) now populate all of our oceans.
“The New Coal: Plastics and Climate Change” is a new report issued by Beyond Plastics, an environmental organization founded by former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck. The report details the plastics industry’s significant, yet rarely acknowledged contributions to the climate crisis.
Using coal-fired power plants as a benchmark, the report looks at 10 stages in the creation, usage, and disposal of plastics. According to Enck, “Plastics is the fossil fuel industry’s Plan B, but there is no Plan B for the rest of us.”
“Plastic production is the last gasp of the fossil fuel industry, “she says. “Plastic produces greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle…. If plastic were a country, it would be the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, beating out all but China, the U.S., India and Russia. Yet few policymakers and even fewer businesses are addressing plastic’s impact on our rapidly warming climate, and working to limit its ballooning greenhouse gas emissions.”
According to the report, the global impact of plastic production on our environment is now greater than that of coal-fired power plants. As of 2020, the U.S. plastics industry is responsible for at least 232 million tons of CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) gas emissions per year.
This amount is equivalent to the average emissions from 116 average-sized (500-megawatt) coal-fired power plants.
This column’s writers have covered single-use plastics and the harm they cause to our environment many times. We have written not just about the aesthetics of plastic garbage stuck in street gutters, hanging in our trees and littering our beaches and surface waters, but we have covered the enormous plastic-filled gyres found in our planet’s oceans, the harm to wildlife and even the chemicals that we ingest from eating and drinking from plastic containers.
Scientists say we are breathing microplastics in our air and drinking microplastics in our water. And now we know that this ubiquitous material is helping to move our planet to the brink of collapse.
I am hoping a robust discussion will take place at COP26 about the role the plastics industry plays in our climate crisis. And, unlike past conferences, let’s also hope they don’t repeat the mistake of asking countries to make their pledges voluntary.
So far, that approach has not worked.
