The Official Save-The-Planet-Book

Energy (Part 1)

In modern society, energy production is an essential foundation of
life. Our lights, our refrigeration, our vehicles, virtually
everything we interact with daily requires energy to run. However, our
dependence on energy has had deep environmental impacts as we burn
dirty fossil fuels to keep up with the ever increasing demand for
power, destroying and polluting our environment while simultaneously
causing global warming and climate change.

Here, I'll be giving an overview of the different sources from where
our energy is produced, from dirty fossil fuels to green energy
sources to everything in between along with future technology and how
we can decrease our energy footprint. In part one of two of this
article, I'll be describing the big three fossil fuels and the big
four of green energy, going over the environmental consequences of all
six and the advantages of each piece of green technology.

Fossil Fuels:

Coal: Historically the most commonly used energy source, now it's
thankfully fading away. Millions of years ago, coal used to be
decomposing organic material in wetlands and floodplains. However, as
time passed on, they became buried under sediment and increasing
pressure and heat transformed them into coal, lumps of dark, black
carbon.

While cheap and abundant, coal is an extremely dirty fuel to burn,
releasing heavy metals like arsenic and mercury into the air along
with sulfur dioxide, a component of acid rain, and fine particulates
that increase the risk of lung cancer, asthma, and other serious
respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Furthermore, coal mining has been detrimental to both the environment
and to health, as seen by black lung disease, a chronic and incurable
respiratory illness caused by inhalation of coal dust, and mountaintop
blasting, which has decimated mountain ecosystems and polluted
groundwater in the Appalachian mountains. Also, coal is the most dirty
of all the fossil fuels, releasing more carbon than either oil or
natural gas, making it the worst fossil fuel for the environment.

Oil: The most used energy source in the US, oil unfortunately plays a
key role in our current electric and transportation systems. The
origins of oil lay in microscopic marine creatures like algae and
zooplankton that sunk to the bottoms of lake and ocean beds, getting
slowly buried under silt and mud. As millions of years passed, heat
and pressure transformed these creatures into liquid hydrocarbons,
which we refer to as oil.

Oil has deeply dangerous environmental effects. Burning oil, like
burning fossil fuels, releases stored carbon dioxide into the air,
contributing to climate change. Furthermore, burning of oil for energy
in power plants and vehicles has led to dangerous air pollution around
major cities, increasing the risk of developing asthma and chronic
respiratory diseases and cutting down average lifespan.

Oil extraction has been an environmental catastrophe. One of the most
infamous environmental disasters was the oil spill at Deepwater
Horizon, which led to five million barrels of petroleum gushing into
the ocean in the biggest man-made oil spill ever recorded in history.
It destroyed marine wildlife, which developed deformed organs due to
the toxic nature of the oil, and marine birds, whose wings failed to
work when covered in oil. Oil pollution spread throughout the Gulf of
Mexico, polluting estuaries, wetlands, marshes, beaches, and coral
reefs, while releasing highly toxic, volatile carbon molecules into
the air.

Natural Gas: The fastest rising fossil fuel energy source in the US,
natural gas has begun to play a larger role in heating and
electricity. Natural gas was formed in a similar manner as oil, but
increasing heat and pressure converted the liquid hydrocarbons into a
gaseous form, the most of which is methane.

Natural gas does have some serious environmental effects. While less
pollutant heavy and producing less carbon dioxide compared to other
fossil fuels, which is one reason some industry-minded people say that
it'll play an important role in a carbon-free future, it still
produces a significant amount of carbon dioxide and air pollution and
is a limited resource.

Furthermore, fracking, which is the process used to extract natural
gas, has had some serious environmental consequences. For one, it has
a high potential to cause groundwater pollution, which can contaminate
the fresh water supply for many people, especially in areas where
fracking is prevalent, like Pennsylvania and Colorado. Furthermore,
fracking has led to earthquakes in areas far from fault lines, like in
Ohio and Oklahoma, due to the injection of wastewater into underground
wells.