Even if we find an energy replacement for oil, aren’t all plastics and most artificial chemicals in our lives made from oil?
So, what do we do about those? Have they found non-petroleum methods of making plastic and the other stuff we use today?
The fist polymers were made from plant materials, not petroleum – natural latex rubber and celluloid.
Polymeric sulfur (which was marketred as Crystex) has nothing to do with petroleum. Nor, I believe, do all the silicones that are made.
But all those polycarbon polymers are easiest and cheapest to make with petroleum. I recall ages ago reading Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven advocating nuclear power in pasrt because we’d want all the petroleum, for petrochemicals, instead of burning.
I remember once getting a sample of foam packing peanuts that were made of corn derivitives.
Aha … throw “corn” and “plastics” into a search engine, and you’ll get plenty of articles like this one.
They’ve apparently succeeded in producing a variety of corn that produces non biodegradable plastic as well. Interesting stuff, but it seems to me it’d be pretty exopensive. And I wouldn’t want it cross0-breeding with my popcorn.