Even this oversimplification is wrong. Back then we had a bit over a third of the current world population and a much worse standard of living across the globe.

Progress is about making good tradeoffs, not about picking perfect solutions. Otherwise your logic could get rid of any innovation by ignoring its benefits and saying "it has some problems so let's get rid of it altogether, we somehow survived without it in the past".

Yes, the human species has survived with far fewer luxuries than we now enjoy. The species also survived before computers and the internet, and before air travel and before automobiles.

These things (including plastic) all have widespread costs and widespread benefits. Let's try to find ways to reduce the costs without entirely ignoring and losing the benefits?

>We somehow survived without it 60 years ago.

60 years ago we were putting way dumber contaminants in our bodies.

Yeah and 60 years ago we didn't have the robust food supply chain we have now. Plastic is a cheap way to package, transport, and store foods. Without it your options are... glass, metal, wood, ceramic, etc. So "get rid of all plastic" means "jack up the price of all food". This would put us in another situation where the cure is worse than the ill. X people die every year due to microplastics, but abolishing all plastic will probably push hundreds of millions into poverty.

The device you posted this on has a plastic shell, plastic coated silicon chips, a plastic PCB, uses wiring covered in plastic.

The paint on your walls is plastic, as are your sewer pipes, probably water pipes, the insulation in your walls, the glue such makes up structural members of your house...