Nachoman's summer 2010 enginehouse challenge.

[nachoman]

Ah, but the point is, like it or not we will run out of petroleum someday, as the earth only has a limited supply. It's best to make that later rather than sooner. As you mentioned, there are plenty of items that would be difficult to replace. If you an save from throwing stuff away as unneeded plastic packaging or vaporizing it as gasoline, that limited supply will last a little bit longer for the things we really cannot do without. That glue is made from petroleum . So when will we run out? I asked those oil company recruiters and that was the honest question they would step around. Their answer was that a career in the oil industry is no longer about finding new oil reserves as those are already discovered, but rather about finding more efficient ways of extracting the oil. I took that to mean what you see is what you get.

Reducing driving from 175 miles to 150 could be hypocritical if the person looked down on you for not doing it (as the person who drove only 100 miles could look down on them), or justified being wasteful in other areas because they drove less. It's just like the oxymoron of the"hybrid suv", that still gets worse daily mileage than my 45 year old ford. But reducing driving from 175 to 150 miles is 14% savings - and that is significant if everyone did it. Most people would love to save 14% on their food bill, the government to spend 14% less, get a 14% raise, lose 14% of their body weight, or have their favorite quarterback complete 14% more of their passes. By the way, I am not a "tree hugger" by any stretch. I just hate throwing things away (and my enginehouse is proof of that )