I am also learning to grow my own food, my starter plants are doing pretty well, if you don't already know about it search for "layered garden" because the path of least resistance is just a good idea.

If you like eggs, you might consider getting your own chicken, they are crazy easy to take care of, more so then I even imagined. Although I will admit it's only been 3 days. In short though you just setup a water and feed spot, and give them a basic coup with a nesting area and for the cost of some feed, you get organic bug control and manure(careful its nitrogen rich and needs to be composted or it will "burn" your plants) and an egg a day per chicken if you get one of the common hybrids, and if you are getting them for eggs, I have to say the ISA Brown I got has been the most docile and quiet(I got 3 different breeds). By doing so, you reduce the demand for the oil it takes to get the eggs to your kitchen, plus they are much fresher, and not only do you reduce your oil demand, but your neighbors, family, and friends as well, as in their first year(their most productive) they typically produce 300+ eggs per chicken, so you will have plenty to give away, or perhaps barter with. The best starter website I have found if you would like to find out more: http://allaboutchickens.tk/

Actually oil might be re-newable. http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bainerman/bainerman083105.html

I know for a FACT that is Texas there is enough oil in the earth to supply the US for the next 150 years, not to mention Alaska, Artic, and Africa. In the link above Dr. Thomas Gold who contends that oil is not a limited resource, and that oil, natural gas and coal, are not so-called “fossil fuels.”

In his book, The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, he explains that dinosaurs and plants and the fossils from those living beings are not the origin of oil and natural gas, but rather generated from a chemical substance in the crust of the Earth.

Dr. Gold: "Astronomers have been able to find that hydrocarbons, as oil, gas and coal are called, occur on many other planetary bodies. They are a common substance in the universe. You find it in the kind of gas clouds that made systems like our solar system. You find large quantities of hydrocarbons in them. Is it reasonable to think that our little Earth, one of the planets, contains oil and gas for reasons that are all its own and that these other bodies have it because it was built into them when they were born? That question makes a lot of sense. After all, they didn’t have dinosaurs and ferns on Jupiter to produce oil and gas?"

Peace.