Life Will Find a Way

I saw the video “Where Do You Draw the Line”, about the destruction of the Amazon River basin and forest by the oil companies, and it caused me to do a long introspection. They were destroying the lungs of of the planet for 8 days worth of the world’s consumption of oil. 8 days, and it would take decades to undo the damage, if not centuries.

So, we have pollution of the forest, which contains the most ecological diversity of the whole planet, and in which new species are not only being discovered, but are EVOLVING. Yes, I meant that: evolving. They are appearing and filling niches that are left by species that are going extinct. Life does that—filling in the gaps, like a machine that grows a new gear that has broken and fallen apart. It has an innate intelligence.

Millions of years ago, carboniferous forests fossilized because bacteria did not know how to break down something that was newly evolved: lignin. These fossilized forests became the coal seams we see today. For centuries that carbon was naturally sequestered, and the CO2 levels dropped. During that time, bacteria evolved to break down and metabolize lignin and cellulose. These bacteria also exist in the gut of termites, and break down cellulose into sugars that they can metabolize. There have also been instances where bacterial colonization has occurred in the human gut, and fiber has been converted in the same way leading to unexplained obesity. But to get back to the case in point:

We are putting out a substance, oil, that does not have a way of being broken down easily into an ecosystem that is intelligent enough to find that way. Does this sound like a recipe for disaster? It does to me. There was a book written years ago called “Mutant 59: the Plastic Eaters.” In that book, a scientist genetically tinkers with a strain of bacteria that metabolizes plastic. Is this far fetched? Absolutely not—in fact it is prophetic. At the moment, there are several strains of bacteria that are being developed to deal with oil slicks and spills in the ocean. Some are being carefully deployed with the knowledge that once you let the genie out of the bottle, it is hard to get it back inside. There is already a fungus that eats polyethylene, and urethane used in insulation. The really big complication is that these plastics that make up a big part of our civilization are oil based, and it is a short hop from eating oil to eating plastic made from that oil. Of course, there will be countermeasures that will be used, and we are all familiar with the methods to weatherproof wood to keep it from rotting from microorganisms that can metabolize the lignin. The same will be true for the plastics.

But in the interim we will be looking at a “plastic apocalypse” that no sci fi movie has ever addressed because it is too close to reality. What will this look like? Let’s look at one possible scenario: In the Amazon basin, an oil company has been dumping crude oil into the river in reckless behavior typical to large corporations. One of the natives sees a bubbling mass in the water, and a clean spot developing. This is the oil being broken down into carbon compounds whilst hydrogen gas is liberated along with methane. It smells like rotting vegetable matter. He sees white and green spots developing on leaves that line the shore that have been splashed with oil. The oil and tar are being broken down into constituent parts, with the carbon precipitating out. A woman moves a plastic tarp that has a hole in it, and notices it is sticky to the touch.

It has begun.

The newly mutated bacterium moves with the oil, looking for food. On land, it spreads toward the source, and finds a puddle that is in the high traffic area for the workers. One of the workers steps on the puddle, and it hitches a ride to the well head. A drop falls off the boot and into the well head, and seeps downward. It then finds a perfect growth medium. It begins multiplying. They secure the well head, and let the gas flare off instead of collecting it like they should. After a while, they notice that the pressure is rising instead of falling, and the color of the flame is changing. They do not think twice about this one, and after the flare is done, begin pumping. The oil/tar seems thicker than normal, and is heated. It is either put into pipelines, or sent to the tanker trucks, where a leak splashes onto a hose for an air line. It then finds a different food source, and mutates to accommodate that medium. The driver checks his hoses, and notices a sticky residue, as if the hose were melting. He shruggs it off and sticks the rag in his back pocket that he wiped the hose off with. It then spreads to his neoprene boots and plastic parts of his truck. He then takes it to civilization, where rain washes it off onto an asphalt road, finding another growth medium to snack on. YUM! He returns to the truck hours later to find it a mess with the upholstery, steering wheel and plastic parts looking like cooked pasta drooping down and running. The soles come off his boots, and the plastic fillings in his mouth fall out leaving a weird taste.

It takes a while to spread. The oil in the tanker infects the refinery, and all the seals begin to fall apart resulting in explosions. The refinery is shut down, and by the time they realize that it is an organism doing this, it has spread to most of the planet. Melting insulation in wiring causes power outages, and plastic computer cases melt into pools of goo. All of this is in the first week of infection. Power plants are shut down, and nuke plants that are not shut down soon enough experience meltdowns. They notice that silicon based plastics are affected the least—for now anyway. It is a carbon based organism after all. Plastic piping falls apart as the organism adapts to handle toxic poly vinyl chloride, and water leaks pop up all over. National emergencies are declared, and defense computers break down resulting in not missile launches, but explosions inside the silos because of the plastics there. A moratorium on nuclear energy is declared. Conductors are wrapped up in fabric in a stopgap measure to keep things operating. Different plastics are being formulated to replace what is breaking down that are not oil based.

A month later 50% of the oil wells are infected. Oil first turns to tar, and then solidifies. Many oil wells stop producing. The only ones that are still working are beyond the temperature tolerances for the bacillus, which are becoming extremophiles and adapting to those as well. At this time things have come to a grinding halt, and after an economic collapse the world is struggling to climb back to where it was. It will take decades to recover. This is the post-oil world. To be sure, it is still being produced from waste, and stored carefully to prevent “the rot” from taking their precious supplies. But for the most part the world is forcibly shoved into alternative energy sources, and (gasp) free energy. The possible perpetrators for this are denounced and vilified, but it doesn’t bring back the dead billion. Of course, it wasn’t a lab that did this, or a mad scientist, but nature herself.

But why did this happen? Monocultures are vulnerable structures, and are just inviting disaster. Manufacturing so much based on oil, and being horribly sloppy with the management of the raw materials at the same time, is just asking for this to occur. Monocultures fail, from the potato famine in Ireland, to wheat blights in several countries. Technological diversity gives redundancy, and if one part fails, others are there to fill that niche. We should take a lesson from ecosystems on this, and the chicken farmer that has his entire livlihood wiped out by bird flu. Living systems are intelligent and self-regulating. If they see an imbalance, an organism evolves to bring that system back into balance. Sometimes that organism is not something that we would prefer to have around, and can create a lot of destruction in its wake. Sometimes it gently fills a niche, and works together with the biological wheelwork to regain balance. It is a matter of magnitude. If the pendulum has been pushed too far to one side, it has that much farther to swing before it finally reaches the center again.

It is all up to us.