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[–] 29 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Or incorporate it. Basically what George Carlin said. Evolution will witness a new paradigm of life plus plastic and will keep evolving as if nothing matters.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    It took 60m years for fungi to evolve to break down lignin (trees) and the eventual oxidation of the lignin decay products has caused the most rapid climate shift we have ever seen

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    What kind of climate shift are you referring to? Like when fungi produce organic acids and aromatic compounds etc, how is that related to shifting the climate in any way?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Maybe?

    Evolution takes a long time and unless we are dealing with microbes and fungi, generations are counted in years or decades.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    I think chances are higher we all die, the microplastics get embedded in a layer of rock worldwide, and nature moves on without us. Evolution is way too slow to keep up with manmade horrors.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Is 60 million years not too long?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I wholly expect that some time from now humans will gather to talk about the moral implications of letting creatures that depend on microplastics go extinct due to our efforts to remove plastics from the environment or if we should be producing plastics to keep them alive.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    ...only a few million years

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future takes a look at the idea

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    ...or go extinct.

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