I was reflecting on this a week ago when discussing how ubiquitous plastic is now. There are rightfully many health and environmental concerns about plastic, but it's nice to remember many of the positive impacts it has had. If celluloid had not been invented when it was, humans would have absolutely hunted elephants to extinction for something as trivial as pool balls.

I like the promotional quote at the end. It ties in petroleum too. Again, our dependence on petroleum is coming back to haunt us, but at the time, it averted extinction for whales. Mass adoption of technologies always comes with tradeoffs.