Can we, as Americans, sustain our "way of life" without Petroleum?

Question

If the true cost of our "way of life" were to be calculated ( health [ all forms, physical and psychological] and environmental, would we as Americans still dedice to contribute to our own demise. I am painfully aware of our addicition and complacency in the matter, however this does not justify the ongoing destruction of life all around us via petroleum based issues (a.k.a pollution and war) So, the question is posed, can we sustain our "way of life" without petroleum? And if we could, how would that in turn shape the world around us and our role in it?

P.S. Take some time to really think about how we use petroleum. Truthfully it will take some time to wean ourselves from its hold on our society!

Answer 1

sure can, almost anything we "over-consume", can be made in an agricultural setting.
the problem with our society now, is that Chemistry was touted as being the savior of man, and we based our entire society around faster synthetic ways of creating goods through chemical processes.
these faster ways basically removed life, such as microorganisms from the equation, that do the same things. taking that life out of the equation has created many of the problems you see.
now that advances in microbial science, biotechnology, and gentic engineering is allowing these processes of microbes to be done more efficiently, we can put living organisms back into our equations and reduce many of the problems their absence has caused.

once we begin to build the structure of our society around life rather than toxins, you'll see things will not change much at all. economies will grow, people that are more important to our own life as far as food suply will actually start making money without government help, and you might even be able to breath again with out the sniffles or constant allergy problems.
the big question is, can this be done before corporations completely control that industry as well, or is that what our governing bodies are waiting on?

Answer 2

Yes we could but people in other countries might suffer.

We could replace our fuel with bio-diesel; if I remember right it would take the output of a state or two to provide us with enough fuel, which would mean less food for export. I know people are hot on ethanol, but it hasn't passed the break even point yet, it takes more energy to produce then you get from it.

Yes, I've heard the claims that you get 2 times up to 5 times, but I haven't seen it yet. They take the leftovers and use that as feed, and use that energy to boost their claims. Never mind that they would get even more energy if they use it for feed or food.

Bio-diesel on the other hand requires a mechanical and chemical process. Mechanical to get the oil out, and chemical to process it into bio-diesel. Although the oil from algae is looking really promising, in which case we wouldn’t have to divert any crop land to produce oil. The government did a lot of work in the 70's and had some types of algae that produce 50% of their weight in oil.

We could also produce hydrogen from wind power, to replace natural gas.

We would need different fertilizers, to keep the crop output up.

We could replace many of the plastics with soy based products; Henry Ford did this in the 40's if I remember right. We could replace a lot of plastics with other material, metal for example. Computer cases could be made from metal, phones, etc. We could replace some plastics with wood.

But, doing so may be very bad for the environment in some cases. Think about how much more wind power we would use, the bird strikes, noise.

But, it would also be good in some cases, we would plant more trees. After all if we started using more wood to replace some plastics we would need more trees. And YES the more tree we use the more trees we plant. When you use wood, you are basically ordering trees to be planted. The down side it that we tend to plan only a few types of trees.

So, all in all yes we could do it, it would hurt some people and help others. The problem is that oil is cheap now, and until the price of oil goes up world wide, it's not going to happen.

Oh don't even bring up taxing oil to make it happen sooner. If you really think about it, all that would do is depress the US economy, send our jobs out of the country even faster and not really help the problem. I can make a really good argument on this and have on another board I belong too.

My opinions are subject to change with new facts.

Answer 3

My friend, there are so many ways we as humans could live without petroleum, I personally believe and just a theory nothing more, that we are all being greatly deceived by the oil companies and their affiliates in the name of the true god called currency. Imagine the control the governments would lose over its people if there were no more need for fossil fuel consuming products, if everything you owned was powered from the natural sources we have occurring every second since the existence of the earth began gazillions of years ago. Imagine a machine if you will, that was built like a hydro electric generating station, lets say in an area like Niagara falls, only instead of a group of power lines coming out of it , just one wire that leads to the top of a tower on the building itself. Everything everywhere on the planet, from heating and lighting to travel in all aspects would be powered from this station all electric motors for cars, trucks, ships, airplanes..even outboard motors and lawnmowers powered from the electricity in the air. If you think this idea is really far fetched, take a look at an old radio with the one antenna used to receive electric radio waves, you can power radios without batteries, with the proper antenna and right capacitors( which are also easily assembled ). Imagine never worrying about running out of fuel in your car, or having the power go out in an emergency , no more power lines to contend with either, never worrying about dead batteries.
The petroleum companies would never allow such things to happen , The governments would never allow such things to happen, what control would anyone have if you take away fossil fuels? none...Society would not know what to do if there were no need for fossil fuels ....it would act like a dog let off its chain for the first time, not knowing where to run first. people would learn that money would be useless and that we would need to create machines to do the manufacturing while humanity could go about finding new ways to make the world a better place even more, rather than worrying about how they are going to pay the bills.
If you haven't noticed, the cars are pretty much the same as they were a hundred years ago, they still need 4 tires, they still need gasoline to move them. What happened to the jetsons future they promised us in the 50s? What happened to the Avro car ?
there were so many good inventions that were designed to better the whole of mankind....all bought up by the oil companies to make sure these inventions will never be seen again.
If Nickola Tesla were to achieve his goal, humans would have worshiped him like Christ, for he would have been one man that changed the world for the better of humanity.
Its all about controlling us and making money from the taxpaying slaves.
As far as plastics go, there are enough oils that can be extracted from seeds and plants like canola, and corn, sunflower seeds hemp...there is so much that can be made from alternate sources.
Hemp alone could wipe out the cotton and oil industry...wonder why that is illegal too?

Answer 4

John Kennedy said in a speech that we would land a man on the moon within a decade, it took 8 years. If a leader of the U.S. come along and made the same commitment and funded it, we could be off of middle east oil in less then ten years and off of oil completely within 20 years. That is how long it would take to replace fossil fuel driven energy completely. But there are those in government and the lobbyist that support the oil company's and are obstructing any such commitment. That being said yes we could be living a in a better world if somebody would just step up.

Answer 5

No we can’t not at least as it is now. When you think about it though the oil industry is in a lot of ways running things in this country. How well do you think that they’ll take to the idea of giving up the source of their income in favor of something that will only help everyone in the end? I’ll tell you what those greedy rednecks will tell you “You communist.” It all boils down to human greed. We all have it, thus nothing changes. It’s a pleasant thought you had but I am afraid that the reality of this situation is rotten.

Have a nice day

Answer 6

The Native Americans used buffalo dung for fire fuel. That was our personal resource. Buffalo eats grass, grass is broken down, broken down substance dries up, "chip" is burned.

We don't need petroleum, or gasoline, or TV, or soda or beer or illegal immigrants.

Yet, that is all we seem to let run our lives. The media has won, ladies and gentlemen, and I feel that we should do something about it. If we need heat, we go out and find a flint rock and grass and stone and burn stuff and cook things over it.

Answer 7

Millions of people would suffer, do you have any idea how much stuff is made fom pertoleum not just gasoline for our cars, almost all plastics are pertoleum based, no partoleum no computers, no phones, etc.....I think that if our government was serious about getting off of dependency of the middle east we could do it 10 years or less, but but bottom line there is no way could sustain our "way of life" without pertoleum...

Answer 8

Not just America, I think the whole of Europe and just about everywhere depends on petrol - or diesel - or aviation fuel.

Without it we would be lost, not only is petrol used to transport ourselves, it is also used to transport all the goods we use as well, from the underwear we use to the coke we drink... it all traveled by road at some point, possibly by air or ship as well.

Countries with very low productivity such as say, Iceland (nothing against Iceland, they just have very low natural resources so rely on a lot of imports) would be totally screwed over without the use of fuel for transport.

Answer 9

Too many people think that petroleum's only use is in your car's gas tank. There are a lot of idiots who don't know that we need petroleum for plastics as well. Where would the medical industry be without plastics?

Answer 10

YES no doubt . But the problem there is will that ever happen ..no because the big oil companies and auto companies pay to much money to the government.. Other countries have done it . I don`t remember which i`ts like Denmark or Greenland ? can`t remember. They have done quite successfully