What alternatives are there to oil? What is the best?

Why is conservation of oil important in the present scenario ? what are oil alternatives ?

• hey there every one ...pl help me about how can we make conservation of oil an important part of our lives .....hope to get a positive result...

• Answer:

  Oil is important because they're not making any more of it, and the world supply is quickly dwindling. In the United States, our (once vast) oil supply "peaked" and began declining in the early seventies. Sure, many politicians (such as Sarah Palin) would have you believe that we have huge untapped reserves offshore. Unfortunately, the size of these fields is exaggerated. If we could pull all that oil out of the ground tomorrow, we wouldn't have enough to meet a year of our own demand. That's why the US has to buy oil from foreign countries. China and India, to whom we've outsourced our good manufacturing and technology jobs, have to import their oil as well. With growing middle classes, they're beginning to become serious competitors for worldwide oil supplies. So the US has the highest demand for oil in the world, no real domestic supply, and is quickly losing its number one rank to China and India. Eventually, demand will outstrip supply, and we'll be paying VERY HIGH prices for our gasoline and oil-related products. Alternative energy inputs, such as solar, wind, nuclear, hydrothermal, hydrogen, ethanol, biodiesel and air compression account for a very, very low percentage of our total energy inputs. The fuel sources the USA has in abundance are corn, natural gas and coal. Natural gas can be used to power cars, but that would away from our national heating and electricity production supplies. Corn can be used to produce clean(er) burning fuels for cars and trucks, but that would take away from our food production (80% of corn goes to feeding cattle for beef). Coal is best used to create electricity. The best possible scenario for dealing with the looming energy crisis AND global climate change (all at once) would be to give up our cars and live in more compact, mass-transit run, walkable/bikable cities. Instead of gas-slurping semi-trucks and airliners, we should switch to electric powered trains (conventional and high-speed) for travel and shipping. We should set aside fossil fuels for essential activities such as farming/food-production and international flights. Initially, coal could be used to generate the electricity we need to power this kind of society. Over time, we could replace coal-powered power plants with clean, renewable energy production. There is no REAL need to have cars, other than our selfish, stubborn insistence that we "need" them. We'd be a lot healthier and happier without them, and we could wave goodbye to the high expense, global warming and constant oil-related wars and spending.