What other alternatives do we have besides crude oil?

“To every action, there is an equal opposite action,” Issac Newton’s third law of motion but also a statement that holds true for many applications outside of physics as it does in physics. Take for instance the recent oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Look at all the other creatures sharing this planet with us (human Beings). Since the dawn of time, they still continue to live in harmony with their environment and have been doing so well, adapting to the changes in their environment by evolving traits that enhance their survival in their environment.

Humans on the other hand have refused to live in harmony with the environment, but have rather taken a turn where we try to make the environment conducive to us and in doing so, have changed so much, even putting other citizens of this planet at risk of extinction simply because of our greed.

The equal but opposite actions of what we are putting into the environment is now evident in the recent global warming that is no longer a phenomenon but becoming ever so evident with melting ice caps, rising sea levels, changing weather patterns and more recently frequent natural disasters in all four corners of the world.

Having said that, the recent oil rig disaster is a good eye opener for what we are doing to our environment. Already this incident has sparked calls for switching to safer alternatives like bio-fuels and green energy technology. The question now is how dependent are we on fossilized fuel and would switching to bio-fuels help solve the problem we are in already? Would bio fuels cater for the worlds demands in fuel, hydorcarbon and polyethylene supply? There is an endless list of products fossilized fuel in the form of crude oil delivers to the everyday household, how much of this can we get from biofuels if we made the switch?