Fossil Fuels Heading For Extinction
Most people could come up with the first and most obvious reason:
fossil fuels are not, for all practical purposes, renewable.
At current rates, the world uses fossil fuels 100,000 times faster than they can form. With demand far exceeding supply, it’s only a matter of time before the world is runs out of natural fuel.
And although technology has made extracting fossil fuels easier and more cost-effective than ever before, the depletion of the more easily accessible oil and natural reserves compel us to find and tap into new ones.
This means building oil rigs much farther offshore or in less accessible regions, or digging ing deeper and deeper into the earth to reach coal seams (with the resultant environment chaos) or scraping off ever more layers of precious topsoil. It could even result in unwanted agreements with countries, and cartels with whom it may not be in the best political, moral or ethical interests to forge such commitments.
The True Cost Of Mankind’s Insatiable Lust For Fossil Fuels…
* There are huge human and environmental costs involved in the reliance on fossil fuels. Namely drilling for oil, tunneling into coalmines, transporting volatile liquids and explosive gases. Not to mention the transportation of these substances to all four corners of the world, often at great danger to the transporters, and those whose paths they cross during their journeys.
* All these can and have led to tragic accidents resulting in the destruction of acres of ocean, shoreline and land, killing humans as well as wildlife and plant life.
* Even when properly extracted and handled, fossil fuels take a toll on the atmosphere, as the combustion processes release many pollutants, including sulphur dioxide (a major component in acid rain). When another common emission, carbon dioxide, is released into the atmosphere, it contributes to the “greenhouse effect,” in which the atmosphere captures and reflects back the energy radiating from the earth’s surface, rather than allowing it to escape back into space.
* Scientists agree that this has led to global warming, an incremental rise in average temperatures beyond those that could be predicted from patterns of the past. This affects everything from weather patterns to the stability of the polar ice caps.
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