Many people have difficulty conceptualizing exactly how much energy the world uses and from what sources that energy comes from.
With so many metrics for measuring energy such as kilowatt-hours, BTUs, barrels of oil, cubic feet of gas etc, it can be hard to understand what the big picture is.
Hew Crane of SRI International created a new, more simple metric. Its called the cubic mile of oil (CMO). In 2006 the world consumed roughly 3 CMO's of energy.
credit: SRI International
Michael Kanellos wrote an informative article on CNET expanding the picture of global energy consumption. He paints a fairly grim picture for weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, as in, nice thought but it won't happen anytime soon.
Fortunately, he also ties the subject to other important issues such as the coming water crisis which is already beginning to impact the global population. Water is one of the clearest areas where the effects of global warming can be seen.
Global warming, caused by the fossil fuel emissions creating the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, means that although we may not run out of fossil fuels anytime in the next century, is it ethical to continue accelerating the rate at which we use them?
There is the contention that fossil fuels with carbon capture technology must play a key role in providing energy for a growing world, and I generally agree with that.
Here's the problem though: we can roughly quantify exactly how much time each fossil fuel that was created over millions of years will provide us. Each year we use more of those precious fuels than we did last year. By most estimates we may have 100-150 years worth of all fossil fuels to feed us. Which will only be valuable to us if we find away to remove the greenhouse gases that are associated with burning fossil fuels.
So we can see the end-point from here. We have the knowledge that the task to develop renewable energy is formidable, seemingly unfathomable. Where is the balance between pursuing carbon capture technologies in order to clean up our growing fossil fuel appetite and an all out abandonment of fossil energy in pursuit of and mass investment in developing economies and societies that are fully dependent on energy that is renewable, sovereign, independent, and clean?
I understand that the solution to growing energy needs is a cornucopia of technologies applied to each energy source existing and being developed now. However, I feel like all of the energy expended in cleaning up fossil fuels is energy taken away from renewable energy. So while those efforts had good intentions, in the end they leave us worse off than we were before. Deeper into our fossil addiction.







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