Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum. — Kurt Vonnegut

The fossil fuel industry has always been way ahead of us. Its decades of propaganda and deceit easily rivals that of the tobacco industry. One of its greatest gimmicks, though, has gone underappreciated.

Eight decades ago, before the ongoing plastic deluge began in earnest, the industry got us to cheer a superhero made of the petroleum byproduct. In the early 1940s, Plastic Man, a jocular, witty purveyor of justice, began keeping the world safe.

His humor, apparently, was one of this superpowers. Ironically, before Patrick “Eel” O’Brian was exposed to an unknown chemical liquid and transformed into Plastic Man, he was a crook.

We’re all Plastic People now living in a Plastic World, and it’s not funny.

We feed plastic to our babies. Infants fed with plastic bottles swallow trillions of synthetic particles a day, according to a 2020 study. Scientists found that the recommended high-temperature process for sterilizing plastic bottles and preparing formula milk causes them to shed millions of microplastics and trillions of even smaller nanoplastics.

Plastic particles have also been found in human breast milk.

Yum.

We’ve plasticized the planet for alleged convenience and sophomoric amusement. A wasteful society built on petroleum waste: plastic bags, plastic straws and stirrers, plastic cups, plastic plates, plastic cutlery, plastic bottles, fruits and vegetables wrapped in plastic, and balloons.

Nearly 100% of plastics are made from oil, methane, and coal. The energy-intensive production process releases the equivalent of about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually — more than the emissions of Russia, the world’s fourth-biggest polluter. Some 16,000 chemicals are used in plastics, including dyes, flame retardants, fillers, and stabilizers.

In the United States alone some 50 billion water bottles are bought annually, which averages to about a dozen bottles per month for every person in the country. By the way, tap water is tested more rigorously than bottled water.

We throw away nearly 60 billion disposable coffee cups annually. That ludicrous number includes paper cups with plastic linings, plastic cups, and Styrofoam cups.

You have a better chance of spotting a Steller’s sea eagle outside your local coffee shop than a human inside with a reusable mug.

Microplastics have been found in the placentas of unborn babies, in semen, in bone marrow, in the organs of Antarctic penguins, at the summit of 5.5-mile-high Mount Everest, and in the depths of the 7-mile deep Mariana Trench.

Yikes.

Some 9 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the material was introduced eight-plus decades ago. Nearly 80% of plastic that has ever been made still rests in landfills or litters the natural world, with the exception of that which has been incinerated, recycled, or unknowingly consumed. Some 14 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean every year, but terrestrial microplastic pollution has been estimated to be much higher than marine microplastic pollution, some 4 to 23 times higher.

A study published in April found nearly one in three earthworms and a quarter of slugs and snails contain plastic. They ingest microplastics as they graze across soil. Plastic has been found in some butterfly caterpillars, perhaps from feeding on leaves contaminated with petroleum waste. Plastic has been found in hedgehog feces.

An expert review of the problem published in September stressed that the world is in a “plastic crisis.” This human-made emergency joins another, the already-raging climate crisis. The authors concluded all this plastic is causing disease and death from infancy to old age. They even put a number on it: at least $1.5 trillion annually in health-related damages.

“We know a great deal about the range and severity of the health and environmental impacts of plastic pollution,” Boston College professor Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist and lead author of the report, told The Guardian. “The impacts fall most heavily on vulnerable populations, especially infants and children. They result in huge economic costs to society.”

The recent analysis found that fetuses, infants, and young children were highly susceptible to the harms associated with plastics, with exposure associated with increased risks of miscarriage, premature and stillbirth, birth defects, impaired lung growth, and childhood cancer. Micro- and nanoplastics have also been linked to strokes and heart attacks.

These tiny bits of plastic can act as toxic sponges, attracting polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and other persistent organic pollutants. They also can carry harmful bacteria such as E coli.

While the fossil fuel/plastics industry argues the focus should be on recycling plastic and not slashing production, the September report noted, “It is now clear that the world cannot recycle its way out of the plastic pollution crisis.”

Unlike cardboard, steel, and aluminum, chemically complex plastics can’t be readily recycled. Their market has always been limited.

The driver of this crisis is the massive acceleration of plastic production, which has increased 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tons a year by 2060, according to The Guardian.

While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use wastefulness, such as nips.

Don’t count on greedy fossil fuel CEOs to do anything to address yet another public/environmental health crisis directly connected to their dirty products. Last year several industry CEOs saw significant compensation increases, including ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods receiving a $44.1 million package and Chevron’s Michael Wirth receiving $32.7 million.

Exxon has even funded right-wing outlets to spread climate change denial across Latin America, according to recent reporting by The Guardian. Hundreds of previously unpublished documents reveal a coordinated campaign to make the Global South “less inclined” to support the U.N.-led climate treaty process.

The documents include copies of the actual checks Exxon sent and years of correspondence between the Texas-based fossil fuel behemoth and Atlas Network, a U.S.-based coalition of more than 500 free-market entities. The dirty money helped finance Spanish and Chinese translations of English books denying that human-caused climate change is real and flights to Latin American cities for U.S. climate deniers to spread lies.

The lies and propaganda have led to fossil fuel emissions hitting a record high. This year 38.1 billion tons of fossil carbon dioxide is projected to be emitted. The planet is now projected to heat up by 2.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times by the end of the century.

Bill Hare, of Climate Analytics, told The Guardian a “world at 2.6C means global disaster.” A world this hot would likely trigger major “tipping points” that would cause the collapse of key Atlantic Ocean circulation, the loss of coral reefs, the long-term deterioration of ice sheets, and the conversion of the Amazon rainforest to a savannah.

Before the industry embraced the greed and began lying, it warned us about the dangers of burning fossil fuels. Today’s CEO psychopaths won’t make that same mistake when it comes to the proliferation of plastics.

In 1967, though, the American Petroleum Institute, now a propagandist organization for the fossil fuel industry, commissioned a report about the burning of coal, oil, and methane. Its authors, Stanford University scientists, noted levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and fine particulate matter are rising quickly, and their most likely source is the burning of fossil fuels. They said the cumulative impact on Earth’s climate and on human health is all but certain to be negative and potentially disastrous.

Projections created internally by the industry beginning in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on the climate were extremely accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according to a 2023 analysis.

In 1977 Exxon senior scientist James Black delivered an urgent message about the issue. He said there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which humanity is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels. He noted that doubling greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would increase global temperatures by 2 or 3 degrees.

Three years later, in 1982, during a talk titled Inventing the Future: Energy and the CO2 Greenhouse Effect, Exxon’s president of research and engineering spoke about the need for an active transition away from fossil fuels. He noted that it takes about 50 years for society to switch to a new energy source, and that at current rates, carbon dioxide levels could double by the late 21st century, with “climatic changes” occurring by the middle of the century.

In 1982, the atmospheric level of CO2 was about 340 parts per million. Today, it’s 426.68, and “climatic changes” began years ago.

Exxon and the industry invested millions of dollars studying the issue, and were keenly aware of the dangers of burning fossil fuels on planetary health. But greed took over, and ever since ExxonMobil and the industry have spent millions spreading climate denial.

Not satisfied with choking us to death, the industry also wants to drown us in plastic.

Note: For a more in-depth dive into “The Plastic Inside Us,” click here. For a comprehensive look into Exxon’s knowledge of the dangers of its products, click here for Inside Climate News’ “Exxon: The Road Not Taken.”

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.