As lovely as it sounds, there's no way we can eliminate our crude oil usage. We can certainly reduce its use as a fuel. But petroleum is the base material in plastic and eliminating plastic manufacturing is just not gonna happen - not in my lifetime or in the lifetime of the next few generations.
I would love to see us reduce our reliance on ANY fossil fuels for fuel. Gas and petroleum both. Technology and manufacturing innovations has come such a long way, but there's so much room for improvement.
Simple idea, maybe impossible to implement with our current technology: using vegetable oil for diesel engines (which you can already do) BUT - rework the exhaust system to somehow fit some device to the exhaust that neutralizes it, with zero carbon monoxide discharge.
At one point we were paying farmers to burn their cornfields, because there was too much, and the prices dropped too low for them to stay afloat. Imagine them not having to waste all that potential energy, and instead, profit from it while allowing us to continue using diesel motor vehicles, with clean-burning fuel. Right now it isn't possible. It could be though. And the oil companies could be jumping on this idea and running with it and making a fortune while at the same time reducing (not eliminating) their fossil fuel production.
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