You know, I considered plastic, which is now so ubiquitous and important at every level of everything, not just peoples' homes... no news stories seem to mention a danger to plastics production, though, so I've been mum on it.

My implied (and somewhat optimistic) point was that automobile fuel may be the first thing to become permanently and obviously expensive (some would say that it's starting to happen already), and everyday consumers would finally curb their use of it, staving off a scary global oil shortage for a while and allowing stuff like plastics production to continue. But we'd still need to find an oil replacement for that too, I suppose.