If we quit burning petroleum for fuel, we have a century plus of feedstock for plastic. We can make plastic now out of bio feedstock, it's just expensive. If

If we quit burning petroleum for fuel, we have a century plus of feedstock for plastic. We can make plastic now out of bio feedstock, it's just expensive. If petroleum prices rose sufficiently, bio feedstock becomes reasonable. In addition, a lot of our problems with "alternate" sources of materials are that they would use a lot of electricity to create--which we currently get by, you guessed it, burning petroleum. So, it's more efficient to simply start with petroleum feedstock and skip the conversion losses. If more of our system were based on renewable energy, then converting other feedstock to plastic becomes viable.