The 165-year reign of oil is coming to an end. But will we ever be able to live without it?

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Petroleum extraction may one day become a relic of a time gone by, experts say. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, humans killed millions of whales for oil. They stripped their blubber, spinning the iconic creatures in the water and pulling off the fat in a huge spiral like the peel of an apple. The blubber was boiled into oil, then strained into barrels to be used in everything from oil lamps to industrial lubricants. This was the bloody process that brought light to society. "It is horrible," Charles Nordhoff wrote of his experience on a whaling vessel in 1895....