Grog- I read your soapbox and that study on using only renewables is eye-opening.
You're right- the problem is that petroleum is used in SOOOO many things. We can't just simply do without it. I wonder if we stop using so much as gasoline, if what we don't use there could be used for many more years making the things we depend upon still available to us?
I'll be gone before there is a serious crisis/shortage of fossil fuels (based on projections of how much longer it will last). It will require extreme ingenuity to figure out how to live without it- but I'm hopeful that not only technology will progress, but that humans will be smart enough to figure it out. I think we have to change our habits NOW and start doing things immediately to help future generations.

It's such a quandary...