Back to my posts on energy. This time it's not about the negatives of fossil fuels, instead it is time to see the alternatives. Lets begin with solar power.
Solar power might just be the most slap in the face "well duh" power that we have. You think that we would have harnessed Earth's most abundant resources a long time ago, but we didn't, and now we face a dilemma. Read More »
As a senior, one of my required classes for graduation is Government. Before school started, I didn't really want to take this class because I had no interest in our government system. I thought I knew enough about it to get me by in the world. But now, 2 months into it, I really enjoy that class, even though the teacher isn't the best, I am learning things that my ignorant self didn't know. You could have asked me what federalism was a couple of months I ago, and I would have made up some bogus answer to make you think I knew what it was. But now in the class, we are reaching the part of government that I don't care for at all, political parties. Read More »
Of the many thoughts and quandaries that go through my mind, this is one that has recently reappeared. It is the thought of what the world would be like if all of the wars and genocides had not happened. I have thought about this for a long time, and in January I read a National Geographic article about the genocide in the world in the 1900's, and it really made me think.
The world today has a healthy population, several billion, and we still have room for growth, but too much growth and we are going to run out of resources, even more growth and land may start to become an issue. Right now, we have many millions of unused square miles of land, so it is not a limiting factor as of yet. Now think about how many more people would be living here is the wars and genocides had not taken place. Read More »
I have talked about what coal pollution can do to you. Now lets see how much coal we actually use.
Alomst 50% of the electricity produced in this country is from coal. Thats 2,013,179 thousand megawatt hours. This is the most by far with nuclear coming up second with 781,986 thousand megawatts. From all of this comes 2,513,609 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide, 10,340 thousand metric tons of sulfur dioxide, and 3,961 thousand metric tons of nitrogen oxides. All of this in just one year. And every year its rising. Read More »
Time to take a break from my normal type of blog posts. I went to the post office to mail a package today, and like normal I didn't buy any insurance on it. As I was walking out to my truck, I thought about insurance on packages. Why do you have to pay more for it?
You are paying them for their service of getting your package from point A to point B. I shouldn't have to pay more for it. If you take a kid to the babysitter they don't make you pay more for insurance just in case they drop the baby. If they drop it and it is injured, they pay. Shouldn't it be the same for packages and other mail? It seems like companies these days aren't really concerned about the consumer and just want to make a quick buck. O wait, its always been that way. Read More »
It may be a couple of days old, but it is still news. Bush had made another bad decision by appointing a former mining executive to head of Mine Safety and Health. Richard E. Stickler was finally appointed even after the Senate rejected the appointment twice before. Read More »
There is nothing quite like taking a big, fresh breath of pollution. All of those lovely chemicals going to your lungs and blood stream, leading to all sorts of diseases. And where are most of these pollutants coming from? Your neighborhood coal fired power plant.
There is an energy crisis in America. Not a crisis involving shortages or lack of power, but a crisis that is damaging our environment. Our thirst for electricity is leading down a path of smog, asthmatic kids, and premature death. Today, in our country, we can create the most technically advanced products, but we cannot stop our craving for fossil fuel power.
This topic of debate is the hottest for myself. America’s gluttony is leading to its self-destruction. Changes that should have happened years ago are just coming into place. But are these change too little to late? Not only does our country depend on it, but our world.
