One day we'll start having microorganisms that can break down plastics efficiently. It took a few million years for wood, so I'm not holding my breath until it

One day we'll start having microorganisms that can break down plastics efficiently. It took a few million years for wood, so I'm not holding my breath until it happens, but it will almost certainly happen. So the worse that can happen to the Earth itself is it'll have a layer of plastic residue just like it had a layer of wood residue (coal) until we started digging it up. Of course, as George Carlin used to say, the planet is fine: it's us that are fucked. We'll see how bad the effects of plastics on the long term really are, but if anyone suffers, it'll be us, not the planet or life on it in the long term.