Last week I watched the 1973 dystopian film thriller "Soylent Green" for the first time in probably 30 years. The film depicts a society in which climate change has put most of the world into a hellish, near perpetual heat wave (at least during the summer), dramatically increased the inequality of wealth (with the fortunate few living in luxury apartments with air-conditioning), and caused a scarcity of food such that most people are reduced to eating what is called "soylent," a processed wafer-like food that supplies essential nutrients (the production of which is monopolized by one huge corporation called the Soylent Corporation).
You don't have to stretch your mind all that much to see that a lot of what is depicted in "Soylent Green" is already coming true. I found one part of the plot particularly prescient in predicting the decline of plankton in the oceans. You see, in the film plankton form the basis for one type of soylent, namely soylent green. (Soylent red and yellow are also available but less desirable.)
Ostensibly a crime drama, the film follows a police detective played by Charlton Heston who is trying to solve the murder of one of the members of the board of directors of the Soylent Corporation. Ultimately, the detective stumbles onto a forbidden secret: The plankton in the oceans are dying thus threatening the worldwide food supply. As the investigation continues, the detective penetrates a production facility for soylent green where he discovers (spoiler alert!) that soylent green is now being made from recycled bodies of the dead, a sort of civilization-wide cannibalism.
Fast forward to today, recent surveys suggest that plankton, the basis of the global ocean food chain and the generator of 50 percent of the globe's natural oxygen production, is now in decline. It would likely take several centuries for oxygen in the atmosphere to decline to levels which affect human health. A more immediate effect would be on the pace of global climate change itself since the wide variety of microscopic ocean plants and plant-like creatures which are collectively called plankton absorb a considerable amount of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major driver of climate change. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would likely be twice what they are today without the action of ocean plankton.
Plankton are also the crucial lowest level of the ocean food chain providing sustenance for sea creatures ranging "[f]rom the largest of whales to the smallest of fish larvae."
Carbon dioxide itself poses a threat to plankton even as the same gas provides nourishment to its many organisms. As more and more carbon dioxide has dissolved in the ocean forming carbonic acid, it has increased the acidity of ocean waters thereby inhibiting the growth of some plankton organisms and increasing the growth of others. This is scrambling the makeup of the base of the ocean food chain and affecting creatures higher up that chain that rely on adequate supplies of now declining organisms or that proliferate as a result of increases in certain organisms that act as food. The imbalances could have cascading effects that "could threaten the stability of entire food webs."
Microplastics as well pose a threat to plankton—first, by preventing phytoplankton from getting enough sunlight and, second, by sending those microplastics up the food chain and concentrating them in seafood and fish eaten by humans.
So great is the reach of plankton that they powerfully affect "cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, silica and other, often limiting, elements." In addition, "[p]lankton produce dimethyl sulfide that enters the atmosphere and affects cloud formation and climate regulation."
The microscopic world of plankton puts them out of sight and therefore out of mind for most people. That's understandable. But that does not prevent the drama currently unfolding in the Earth's oceans from proceeding. Our lack of understanding of plankton and the myriad other living communities on Earth put our own health and existence as a species into question. In 2017 I wrote a piece entitled "Which species are we sure we can survive without?" Today, with regard to plankton, we humans seem to be intent on finding out if some of the species that make up plankton are among those we can live with less of or altogether without.
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
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