Polly Ethylene shook her head in disbelief. “Enough plastic has been dumped into the oceans to fill FIVE garbage bags full of trash on every foot of coastline around the world!?!”  What a mess the flood of plastic she and her Polly cousins Propylene, Styrene, Vinyl and others had been allowed to make. “Time to call in the flood control crew,”  Polly declared.

         She wasted no time in assembling the team.  They set to work creating a comprehensive plan to address the flood of plastic trash and to slow the spread of microplastic particles in our water, the soil and in the very food we eat.  Then Polly called a press conference on the Iowa County Courthouse steps and introduced the first speaker, Donna Bye-It.

        “Folks, the least polluting plastic is the plastic that is never made in the first place. Before you put the next plastic item in your shopping cart, pause to consider if it’s something you actually need.  Is there a more eco-friendly alternative?  Manufacturers will response to your purchasing choices.”

        Next, Ray Purrpuss reminded the crowd that many products are designed to be used only once and then tossed.  You know the ones – cups & plates, utensils, containers and bags.  “Yikes! - too much trash!” he cautioned. “Look for ways to use that item a 2nd, 3rd or 4th time. 

        “Then of course, if you do have an item to discard, check the bottom for the recycle symbol.  If it matches the types of plastic your trash / recycling provider can handle, drop it in the recycle bin,”  Reice Eyecle advised.  “But don’t fall for the ‘I can buy and throw away plastic willy-nilly because it’ll all get recycled anyway’ trap.  Our recycling system is far from perfect.  Less than 10% of the plastic in the U.S. actually gets remade into new products.”   
      
        Cy Eince wrapped-up the event with some encouraging news.  “My colleagues and I have discovered that the tiny waxworm grub likes to chow down on plastic trash.  And there’s a strain of bacteria that chews up polyurethane and breaks apart its harmful compounds.  We’re looking for ways to put these critters to use on a large scale. 

        “But this isn’t a silver bullet that will solve the plastic problem.  It’s going to take all of us doing our part to clean up our only home where we’re all forever… Earthbound.” 

         The stately cottonwood trunk branches into a “Y” about fifteen feet up.  While the main trunk continues growing straight and tall, the branching limb, also of considerable girth, has decayed.  Strips of bark dangle leaving it mostly bare; woodpecker holes grace the upper stretches.

        As I passed underneath a pileated woodpecker’s tap-a-tap-tap drew my attention to the base of the decayed off-shoot limb.  She was chipping out small chunks of soft wood finding tasty morsels as she worked.  About a third of the once-sturdy branch’s diameter had already been whittled away.  At some point it’s destined to fall.  That busy woodpecker is tipping the scale toward an inevitable major disruption of that tree.
 
        COVID continues to be a terrible scourge and has upset almost every aspect of our lives.  It too is tipping the scale toward a different major disruption – the inevitable demise of fossil fuels as our primary energy source.  Coal and petroleum have been modern society’s go-to sources of energy for more than a century.  But like that once-sturdy branch they are destined to fall.

        Poppycock you may say, but consider:

• COVID is causing a dramatic reduction in transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions.  Carbon dioxide is the chief man-made heat-trapping gas emitted when burning fossil fuels.  CO2 emissions  have dropped 7% in 2020, the largest drop ever. 
• Exxon, the petroleum giant and once one of the most profitable corporations in the world, was nudged off the Dow-Jones Industrial Average Index earlier this year.
• Coal burning worldwide peaked in 2013.  Eight U.S. coal mining companies filed for bankruptcy last year.
• China, the world’s most populous country and biggest fossil fuel greenhouse gas emitter, recently announced a goal of net zero emissions by 2060.
• Clean renewable energy sources like wind and solar have been the least expensive way to generate electricity for over two years.  And with increasingly efficient appliances and lighting the use of electricity is declining.
• Energy companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in new energy sources such as “green hydrogen.”

 
        Disruptions are quite unsettling, and 2020 was full of them.  But they aren’t all bad.  Our local “disrupter,” that pileated woodpecker, has been making frequent appearances in our neighborhood.  Perhaps she’s a harbinger of hope for the brighter future that 2021 is sure to hold for us right here on the only home we’ll ever know where we’re all forever… Earthbound.