The thing is, of the oil taken out of the earth, what percent has been used for plastic? I'm not sure but a very small portion. Now even if we're at peak oil n

The thing is, of the oil taken out of the earth, what percent has been used for plastic? I'm not sure but a very small portion. Now even if we're at peak oil now which is certainly not necessarily true, the Hubbert Curve (where the definition of peak oil comes from) shows that peak occurs when 50% of the oil has been extracted. Thus we can assume we have at least half the oil available to humanity not yet extracted (let alone all the non-traditional oil techniques like tar sands which boost reserves by an order of magnitude). My point is that while the price of oil will go up as supply can't keep up with demand, we are nowhere near being in the position where oil is not available for materials. We're also nowhere near being in a position where oil's not economic for materials, because as plastic, oil is arguably very valuable. Sure we may reach a point where oil's primary value is as plastic, once we solve the other-energy-source challenge. But we don't need to worry about running out of feedstock for plastics, and we certainly won't need to excavate old landfills for the stuff. At least not soon.