Final
Depleting Fossil Fuels
By
Marci Peterson
As human beings, we need energy for just about everything that we use in daily life. We need energy to heat our homes, to fuel our cars, to watch television in addition to industrial and agricultural purposes. Question is how often do we stop and think about where all this energy is coming from? Energy is formed and disbursed through an industrial process that is performed using numerous different sources.
Although there are numerous sources, there are only two types of energy, renewable and non-renewable. In time, renewable energy sources will naturally replace themselves. Because of this factor, there is little concern about running out of these energy resources. On the other hand non-renewable energy resources are totally opposite. Since non-renewable energy resources do not replace themselves in short periods, they have the potential to run out.
Fossil fuels are currently the most widely used source of non-renewable energy today. We use these sources of energy to generate power for both commercial and personal use in an abundant of different ways. “In 2005, more than 3/4 of total world energy consumption was through the use of fossil fuels” (Environmental Literacy Council, 2008). Oil, the most widely used energy resource produces 43.4% of our world’s energy. Natural Gas, the second most used resource produces 15.6% of the world’s energy followed by coal, which produces 8.3% of the world’s energy. As you would have thought, North America is the number one consumer of non-renewable energy resources, consuming approximately 25% of the fossil fuels that are extracted from the earth (Environmental Literacy Council, 2008).
The reason fossil fuels are not a renewable resource and reproducing these resources is not possible, is because of the decomposing remains of plants and animals many millions of years ago formed them. Wide-ranging periods of time in addition to extreme heat and pressure transformed the...
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