Fossil Fuel Consumption

It's interesting, when studying the history of fuel in general, to consider why we chose to run our vehicles on such pollutant fuels. After all, the Model T was originally designed to run on ethanol, but was re-worked to run on normal gasoline because of cheaper prices and availability. In addition, electric cars were fairly common (compared to today) for a number of years, making up as much as 7% of all of the United States' cars. But, for whatever reason, gasoline became the fuel of choice. Now, over 60 million barrels of oil are produced and consumed every day. As a result, a pollution issue that was considered negligible when the first automobiles were produced has become the source of major controversy worldwide.