Devon Brigham
English 102
Professor Adam Korman
Fossil fuels are killing our planet
Maintaining this planet will always be difficult but with fossil fuels it may be impossible to keep this planet going forever. We must learn some way to reduce our usage of fossil fuels or else we will destroy our planet and must face the consequences. The consequences will come in multiple forms we will have to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss. Climate change will ravage the world if left unchecked, destroying many environments and leading to a massive loss of biodiversity. This will affect the entire world and have devastating ramifications for all biotic and abiotic parts of the earth.
Climate change has always existed and is a natural phenomenon, normally, but many scientists have found data to support the theory that humans have made climate change worse. This human-induced climate change differs from the usual as the earth lacks systems to mitigate this new climate change. "According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere for anywhere between 300 to 1,000 years. "(Mulroy). All of this carbon dioxide increases the heat of the planet creating the climate change effect.
While the carbon dioxide is just sitting in the atmosphere it begins to degrade the ozone layer. This is extremely harmful to the atmosphere as it can begin to burn a hole through the atmosphere. To know just how harmful this is, we need to understand exactly how the atmosphere benefits us in the first place. The atmosphere keeps in oxygen, while also protecting life from dangerous ultraviolet solar radiation. Thus, if there is a hole burned through the atmosphere there will be oxygen getting out through the hole, and the harmful radiation from the sun will pass through. This harmful radiation can have any number of effects on life that can ultimately be fatal if left unchecked. That's why the matter of handling emissions is so great, there is already a large number of emissions sitting in the atmosphere, and we add more to it every day. The issue has exceeded just not polluting, now we will have to remove emissions from the atmosphere as those emissions will sit there for up to 1000 years. Emissions have already resulted in holes in the atmosphere around Antarctica and these could potentially add to the melting of the Antarctic as the ultraviolent rays from the sun will beat down there more strongly than ever before. This could have extinction level repercussions and could lead to massive tidal waves that destroy cities.
The effects of fossil fuels are extremely wide ranged from the potentially catastrophic to the minute. Every area will be affected and people and animals from all levels will die and lose their homes. The potential heat will change the whole world into a potentially desolate place that has become engulfed in desertification, while oceans become more massive as the Antarctic melts away increasing sea levels. Countries built on islands will be destroyed and cities built in deserts like Arizona will become nearly impossible to live in from the heat. "As climates warm overall, people use more energy resources for cooling needs, which will lead to a rise in air pollution and deaths from increasingly hot weather conditions that cannot be mitigated."( Rosenberg) Heat will destroy all resources in some places and other places will suddenly become very cold. All the life in the area that has evolved around the ecosystem will be affected by this change. This will force animals to move from their habitat to find new homes and resources. Most of these animals will die due to the unsuitable conditions that their bodies are not used to. This loss of biodiversity will happen en masse, resulting in a never-before-seen event, that could have great ramifications on many of the following environments after the world has been changed by climate change. The world may simply not be able to sustain certain ecosystems without keystone niches being fulfilled. What happens if climate change kills a great number of those keystone creatures? Will the earth be able to maintain life for long after this point? Or will there be a great domino effect, seeing one keystone creature perish at a time until most life is unable to survive.
Humans must find a way to alter our potentially catastrophic future, otherwise we will cease to have a future. This must come in the form of switching away from harmful emissions, those created by fossil fuels will be a primary target. How can we do this? The first step will be to replace those energies with clean ones. What types of energy are considered clean? Clean energies are anything that does not pollute or otherwise destroy the environment. Good examples of such energies are solar energy, using the sun's energy to create energy of our own is an easy and extremely clean way to produce energy that can sustain homes and businesses around the world. Another powerful sustainable energy is wind energy, in some parts of the world there is massive amount of wind happening at a near constant rate, in such places, the energy potential could be endless. Another sustainable energy source is thermal energy that is created deep underground or inside of volcanos, where the heat is collected and converted into energy for homes. Another energy source is tidal energy, this power source gets its energy from the natural waves of the ocean created by the gravitational force from the sun and moon. All these sources are clean and do not produce emissions and they are nearly endless, so why haven't we switched completely to them?
Sustainable energies are currently being integrated heavily into modern society, but they weren't always. The reason for this is because humans lacked an idea of the damage they were causing, and they also fundamentally lacked the understanding to make sustainable energies en masse. Humans were also controlled by greed, and they still are to this day to some degree. This greed limited how people saw transportation and machinery, they wanted to get as much money as possible, and it would take time and energy to develop new sources of energy. Energies that even to this day struggle to compete with the ease of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels used to be found relatively easily and were numerous at the time. Another important fact about fossil fuels is that they do not require a time of day or certain weather patterns. They can be used at anytime and anywhere, without fail. And these days, fossil fuels are just as cheap, because "it has been used for centuries, we have a great and well-developed infrastructure for fossil fuels. It means that we can use them effectively, and they are relatively cheap." (MetGroup) So, even though we now know that we are killing our own planet, we are trying to reduce our usage of these fuels, but is it enough?
To answer the question if we can save our planet, I believe that we can, its my personal belief that sometimes you must struggle forward regardless. We could always create technique that could replace or bolster the atmosphere as it is. Or we could find ways to remove the emissions from our atmosphere, and switch to fully sustainable energy. Switching to sustainable energies means removing energy sources like oil and natural gases like methane and using energy sources like solar and wind exclusively. Another fuel that is a considerable problem is coal. "Coal is a fossil fuel, and is the dirtiest of them all, responsible for over 0.3C of the 1C increase in global average temperatures. This makes it the single largest source of global temperature rise."(clientearth) We will need to educate people about the harmful effects of using certain fuels and will have to work with countries who refuse to comply with the no emissions policies. If we do all of this then we can possibly become fully sustainable and reduce the likelihood the atmosphere will collapse.
How harmful are these fuels really? Well, study found that "Air pollution kills more than 100,000 Americans every year."( White) and "another study found that coal alone accounts for an average of 43,000 deaths per year in the U.S."( White). These are just examples of people being secondhand affected by fossil fuels, these aren't even examples of people who work daily with them. Many miners have to go deep into the earth, one of the most hazardous places in the world, on a daily basis just to gather these resources. The writer from CLF has this to say about it "Whether they're developing black lung from coal mining jobs, braving horrendous working conditions on oil rigs, or falling victim to one of the many disasters described above, the fossil fuel industry is a brutal place to work." (White) This illustrates the innate danger in these fuels, even gathering them ends up harming the workers. These are the things that our lives are based around and often people die just to get them. The question is, how many regular people are affected by fossil fuels negatively? In one instance, there were around "50,000 people who were displaced when a failure in natural gas infrastructure triggered a string of explosions and fires that devastated the region and killed a teenager."( White). This doesn't even account for all the wildlife that has been killed due to fossil fuels. "The Exxon Valdez spill famously devastated an entire coast, with brutal ripple effects ranging from hundreds of thousands of dead seabirds to Alaskan Indigenous tribes losing their subsistence hunting and gathering traditions." (White) Events like these put into perspective how harmful fossil fuels are on a regular basis and how often they end up destroying the environment. We need to switch from fuels, if not for the environment for ourselves. And speaking of ourselves, how do fossil fuels affect people?
Fossil fuels affect everyone and everything in cities, cars constantly spit out of emissions, and that's not all, other machines like in factories or even in homes like A/C create harmful fumes, that we inhale daily. These harmful fuels can cause all sorts of problems and even cancer. "Smog and soot, deriving from greenhouse gas emissions, can enter an individual's airways and cause physical distress. Pollutants may cause coughing, wheezing, chest pains and shortness of breath. That can also increase the frequency of asthma attacks in asthmatic individuals." (Marsh). Another problem with fossil fuels is the fact that climate change can cause its own health problems, so if you have problems with emissions then you also have problems with things like the allergy season becoming longer (Marsh) or increased heat related conditions like heat stroke.
One of the main reasons we need to switch from fossil fuels is because of climate change, this may sound simple, but many people acknowledge the change but do not agree with the fact that it's an issue. They insist that climate change is a natural phenomenon and that humans don't affect it enough to matter, don't affect it at all, or are simply part of the natural process. These perspectives often ignore the fact that the human population has boomed so significantly, and their emissions along with them. They suggest that climate change has always happened, and no one disputes that, but they say that the problem will naturally solve itself. The issue that one side says is that there has never been so much harmful emission in the atmosphere, and its creating holes in it. These holes are letting in ultraviolet light that's melting the Antarctic, which is again, negatively impacting life on earth. Ultimately, scientists are finding more and more evidence to prove that we are causing an issue, and that human-induced climate change is real.
We are benefiting from fossil fuels in the short term, and we may even avoid the next ice age (Rosenberg) but in the long term we shall surely pay the price. We need to accept right now as a whole that humanity needs to slow down on its resource use or there will be no earth left. The issue is that the whole world is built on these unsustainable practices, and that money can allow things like illegal dumping and emission credits. These practices contribute significantly to the destruction of the environment. Businesses are allowed to do this because they can bribe people, either observers or higher up officials with things like positions or invitations into groups.
Fossil fuels must be handled or else our planet will die, yet for all we do, there are those who would try to keep using fossil fuels, or people who turn a blind eye to its destruction. This must be changed anyone who knows the truth of fossil fuels must work to change the fact that we use them at all. We need to as a species commit to removing fossil fuels and switching to sustainable energies that can keep our atmosphere clean. Otherwise, our ecosystems and our people will die due to a massive shift in temperatures around the world. It may not be now, but it's coming, and we must divert our course or otherwise we may lose our home, and if there is no way for us to leave this planet then we could lose humanity itself.
Reference page:
English 102
Professor Adam Korman
Fossil fuels are killing our planet
Maintaining this planet will always be difficult but with fossil fuels it may be impossible to keep this planet going forever. We must learn some way to reduce our usage of fossil fuels or else we will destroy our planet and must face the consequences. The consequences will come in multiple forms we will have to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss. Climate change will ravage the world if left unchecked, destroying many environments and leading to a massive loss of biodiversity. This will affect the entire world and have devastating ramifications for all biotic and abiotic parts of the earth.
Climate change has always existed and is a natural phenomenon, normally, but many scientists have found data to support the theory that humans have made climate change worse. This human-induced climate change differs from the usual as the earth lacks systems to mitigate this new climate change. "According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels stays in the atmosphere for anywhere between 300 to 1,000 years. "(Mulroy). All of this carbon dioxide increases the heat of the planet creating the climate change effect.
While the carbon dioxide is just sitting in the atmosphere it begins to degrade the ozone layer. This is extremely harmful to the atmosphere as it can begin to burn a hole through the atmosphere. To know just how harmful this is, we need to understand exactly how the atmosphere benefits us in the first place. The atmosphere keeps in oxygen, while also protecting life from dangerous ultraviolet solar radiation. Thus, if there is a hole burned through the atmosphere there will be oxygen getting out through the hole, and the harmful radiation from the sun will pass through. This harmful radiation can have any number of effects on life that can ultimately be fatal if left unchecked. That's why the matter of handling emissions is so great, there is already a large number of emissions sitting in the atmosphere, and we add more to it every day. The issue has exceeded just not polluting, now we will have to remove emissions from the atmosphere as those emissions will sit there for up to 1000 years. Emissions have already resulted in holes in the atmosphere around Antarctica and these could potentially add to the melting of the Antarctic as the ultraviolent rays from the sun will beat down there more strongly than ever before. This could have extinction level repercussions and could lead to massive tidal waves that destroy cities.
The effects of fossil fuels are extremely wide ranged from the potentially catastrophic to the minute. Every area will be affected and people and animals from all levels will die and lose their homes. The potential heat will change the whole world into a potentially desolate place that has become engulfed in desertification, while oceans become more massive as the Antarctic melts away increasing sea levels. Countries built on islands will be destroyed and cities built in deserts like Arizona will become nearly impossible to live in from the heat. "As climates warm overall, people use more energy resources for cooling needs, which will lead to a rise in air pollution and deaths from increasingly hot weather conditions that cannot be mitigated."( Rosenberg) Heat will destroy all resources in some places and other places will suddenly become very cold. All the life in the area that has evolved around the ecosystem will be affected by this change. This will force animals to move from their habitat to find new homes and resources. Most of these animals will die due to the unsuitable conditions that their bodies are not used to. This loss of biodiversity will happen en masse, resulting in a never-before-seen event, that could have great ramifications on many of the following environments after the world has been changed by climate change. The world may simply not be able to sustain certain ecosystems without keystone niches being fulfilled. What happens if climate change kills a great number of those keystone creatures? Will the earth be able to maintain life for long after this point? Or will there be a great domino effect, seeing one keystone creature perish at a time until most life is unable to survive.
Humans must find a way to alter our potentially catastrophic future, otherwise we will cease to have a future. This must come in the form of switching away from harmful emissions, those created by fossil fuels will be a primary target. How can we do this? The first step will be to replace those energies with clean ones. What types of energy are considered clean? Clean energies are anything that does not pollute or otherwise destroy the environment. Good examples of such energies are solar energy, using the sun's energy to create energy of our own is an easy and extremely clean way to produce energy that can sustain homes and businesses around the world. Another powerful sustainable energy is wind energy, in some parts of the world there is massive amount of wind happening at a near constant rate, in such places, the energy potential could be endless. Another sustainable energy source is thermal energy that is created deep underground or inside of volcanos, where the heat is collected and converted into energy for homes. Another energy source is tidal energy, this power source gets its energy from the natural waves of the ocean created by the gravitational force from the sun and moon. All these sources are clean and do not produce emissions and they are nearly endless, so why haven't we switched completely to them?
Sustainable energies are currently being integrated heavily into modern society, but they weren't always. The reason for this is because humans lacked an idea of the damage they were causing, and they also fundamentally lacked the understanding to make sustainable energies en masse. Humans were also controlled by greed, and they still are to this day to some degree. This greed limited how people saw transportation and machinery, they wanted to get as much money as possible, and it would take time and energy to develop new sources of energy. Energies that even to this day struggle to compete with the ease of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels used to be found relatively easily and were numerous at the time. Another important fact about fossil fuels is that they do not require a time of day or certain weather patterns. They can be used at anytime and anywhere, without fail. And these days, fossil fuels are just as cheap, because "it has been used for centuries, we have a great and well-developed infrastructure for fossil fuels. It means that we can use them effectively, and they are relatively cheap." (MetGroup) So, even though we now know that we are killing our own planet, we are trying to reduce our usage of these fuels, but is it enough?
To answer the question if we can save our planet, I believe that we can, its my personal belief that sometimes you must struggle forward regardless. We could always create technique that could replace or bolster the atmosphere as it is. Or we could find ways to remove the emissions from our atmosphere, and switch to fully sustainable energy. Switching to sustainable energies means removing energy sources like oil and natural gases like methane and using energy sources like solar and wind exclusively. Another fuel that is a considerable problem is coal. "Coal is a fossil fuel, and is the dirtiest of them all, responsible for over 0.3C of the 1C increase in global average temperatures. This makes it the single largest source of global temperature rise."(clientearth) We will need to educate people about the harmful effects of using certain fuels and will have to work with countries who refuse to comply with the no emissions policies. If we do all of this then we can possibly become fully sustainable and reduce the likelihood the atmosphere will collapse.
How harmful are these fuels really? Well, study found that "Air pollution kills more than 100,000 Americans every year."( White) and "another study found that coal alone accounts for an average of 43,000 deaths per year in the U.S."( White). These are just examples of people being secondhand affected by fossil fuels, these aren't even examples of people who work daily with them. Many miners have to go deep into the earth, one of the most hazardous places in the world, on a daily basis just to gather these resources. The writer from CLF has this to say about it "Whether they're developing black lung from coal mining jobs, braving horrendous working conditions on oil rigs, or falling victim to one of the many disasters described above, the fossil fuel industry is a brutal place to work." (White) This illustrates the innate danger in these fuels, even gathering them ends up harming the workers. These are the things that our lives are based around and often people die just to get them. The question is, how many regular people are affected by fossil fuels negatively? In one instance, there were around "50,000 people who were displaced when a failure in natural gas infrastructure triggered a string of explosions and fires that devastated the region and killed a teenager."( White). This doesn't even account for all the wildlife that has been killed due to fossil fuels. "The Exxon Valdez spill famously devastated an entire coast, with brutal ripple effects ranging from hundreds of thousands of dead seabirds to Alaskan Indigenous tribes losing their subsistence hunting and gathering traditions." (White) Events like these put into perspective how harmful fossil fuels are on a regular basis and how often they end up destroying the environment. We need to switch from fuels, if not for the environment for ourselves. And speaking of ourselves, how do fossil fuels affect people?
Fossil fuels affect everyone and everything in cities, cars constantly spit out of emissions, and that's not all, other machines like in factories or even in homes like A/C create harmful fumes, that we inhale daily. These harmful fuels can cause all sorts of problems and even cancer. "Smog and soot, deriving from greenhouse gas emissions, can enter an individual's airways and cause physical distress. Pollutants may cause coughing, wheezing, chest pains and shortness of breath. That can also increase the frequency of asthma attacks in asthmatic individuals." (Marsh). Another problem with fossil fuels is the fact that climate change can cause its own health problems, so if you have problems with emissions then you also have problems with things like the allergy season becoming longer (Marsh) or increased heat related conditions like heat stroke.
One of the main reasons we need to switch from fossil fuels is because of climate change, this may sound simple, but many people acknowledge the change but do not agree with the fact that it's an issue. They insist that climate change is a natural phenomenon and that humans don't affect it enough to matter, don't affect it at all, or are simply part of the natural process. These perspectives often ignore the fact that the human population has boomed so significantly, and their emissions along with them. They suggest that climate change has always happened, and no one disputes that, but they say that the problem will naturally solve itself. The issue that one side says is that there has never been so much harmful emission in the atmosphere, and its creating holes in it. These holes are letting in ultraviolet light that's melting the Antarctic, which is again, negatively impacting life on earth. Ultimately, scientists are finding more and more evidence to prove that we are causing an issue, and that human-induced climate change is real.
We are benefiting from fossil fuels in the short term, and we may even avoid the next ice age (Rosenberg) but in the long term we shall surely pay the price. We need to accept right now as a whole that humanity needs to slow down on its resource use or there will be no earth left. The issue is that the whole world is built on these unsustainable practices, and that money can allow things like illegal dumping and emission credits. These practices contribute significantly to the destruction of the environment. Businesses are allowed to do this because they can bribe people, either observers or higher up officials with things like positions or invitations into groups.
Fossil fuels must be handled or else our planet will die, yet for all we do, there are those who would try to keep using fossil fuels, or people who turn a blind eye to its destruction. This must be changed anyone who knows the truth of fossil fuels must work to change the fact that we use them at all. We need to as a species commit to removing fossil fuels and switching to sustainable energies that can keep our atmosphere clean. Otherwise, our ecosystems and our people will die due to a massive shift in temperatures around the world. It may not be now, but it's coming, and we must divert our course or otherwise we may lose our home, and if there is no way for us to leave this planet then we could lose humanity itself.
Reference page: