[freebeard]

On a side note, as CR would say,

justacarguy.blogspot.com... Rubber, airplane tires, and an obscure southwestern plant grown in the USA that doesn't require farmers till after each season

Tire manufacturer Bridgestone has operated a demonstration-scale processing facility in central Arizona for the past decade in an effort to show that guayule can eventually be harvested for natural rubber at a commercial scale.

The market is currently dominated by rubber sourced from Hevea brasiliensis trees in Southeast Asia....
But fungal infestations of monocultured Hevea trees have caused steep drops in global natural rubber supplies in recent years, and the Southwest’s drought has reduced the water available to farmers, making it harder to grow alfalfa, cotton and other crops.
....Bridgestone launched its guayule research initiative in 2012, when it broke ground on a guayule processing and research center in Mesa, Arizona. Today, the company says it operates the research center in Mesa, as well as a 281-acre guayule farm in Eloy, Arizona. Bridgestone says it has invested more than $100 million in its efforts to commercialize guayule.

Guayule is part of the Bridgestone plan to achieve carbon neutrality and make tires from 100% renewable materials by 2050, according to the company. It is actively researching a range of solutions to support the recycling of materials from end-of-life tires and promote the replacement of non-renewable materials such as oil, silica and virgin carbon black in new tires.