Petroleum Conservation ~ How and why?

The title states it plainly - The conservation of petroleum, also known as crude oil. Its a valuable commodity in our everyday life, as it makes up various products such as plastic, gasoline, asphalt, and so on. But why limit usage of it if it does all these great things?

Perhaps many reasons, such as the controversial topic of peak oil, environmental issues such as pollution, economical standards labeling it a commodity sometimes even more valuable than gold, and the effect of being dependent on it as a race, not knowing when it runs out. I will not deny it - We NEED oil. But how we obtain, process, use, and reuse it is another topic.

America on its own consumes around 25% of the worlds oil, and that's given basis with the usage of (most common) imported oil for the usage of being created into plastics, vehicular usage (gasoline, lubricants, motor oil), and other misc. uses such as paraffin, wax, and alkenes. A chart is given, showing the relationship between the top consumption of oil, and the top production.

Interactive Oil Chart

The US currently imports all of its oil, spending quite some money to keep its economy and people going.



(numbers are in barrels imported per day)

However, conserving this oil would create a scenario for the American people calling for usage of friendlier (economic, environmental, etc) uses of obtaining, using, and reusing energy, such as wind, solar, biofuel, geothermal, and whatnot.

Thus, I call for everyone to try to do their part to help the environment - Recycle/reuse plastics and other petroleum goods, try to be fuel efficient, and perhaps save even some coin being more efficient.

(Thanks to Wikipedia and other sources for the info, and to a good teacher of mine who informed me about the issue - Thanks, Mr. H. )