Bibliography

• http://www.articlesbase.com/nature-articles/what-are-renewable-resources-and-how-can-they-benefit-us-569005.html
• http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-280.html
• Why aren’t we using more renewable energy?

Resources to help gather information

• An article regarding what steps need to be done to live a more "green" lifestyle.
• Websites that address the past climate changes and how this pattern will continue to change.
• An article concerning the cost of changing to solar or wind power, as well as how that power would be transported to homes and businesses.
• An article giving more detail as to exactly how this plan of transitioning to renewable energy would occur and what it would require of all energy-using people.

Possible Solutions

While some solutions that some people would consider is cutting down on nonrenewable resources and increasing our use on renewable resources, that in itself would not fully remedy the problem. We believe that what would be more important is changing our energy use in terms of technology and our lifetime living styles. This is to say that we need to increase the efficiency of technologies. For examples, cars that get more miles per a gallon, and applicances that use less electricity. In addition to this, though it may not be a popular idea, critical changes critical changes need to be made in the lives of humans, in America particularly. This means, using the car pool more, or conserving water and just being more low maintenance in general.

What do we need to know to understand the problem?

We need to take a closer look at the rate of energy use in the world throughout this past century and use the pattern to estimate a future rate of energy use in order to determine exactly how much energy we will have to generate. We need to figure out how to make our lifestyles more "green" and understand what that would take. What is the strain that changing to renewable resources would be as far as cost?

Cost vs. Practicality

We are not able to continue the use of nonrenewable reasources because they will soon run out, but the transittion to renewable is difficult because it is not cost effective and would require all new changes in our energy system. The nonrenewable reasources are harmful to our planet, which gives us a timeline that shows us we need to shift to the renewable resources.

Energy 1

1. We believe that there is a problem due to the fact that only 6.7 percent of the energy we use is renewable. That means that 93.3 percent of the energy sources we currently use will someday be gone. This will be a big crisis because then we'll have to rely on the small portion of renewable energy to power our whole world once the other sources run out. Also, no renewable resources are currently able to power any manufacturing. This entire industry would collapse if these non renewable energy supplies were to be depleted. The renewable resources are able to be sustained forever, so we should work to rely more on it, because we would not have to worry about it running out. However, many see these sources as "expensive and impractical". It is true that it takes a lot of money to establish these collectors of renewable energy, but still many agree that if people are willing to look from a non-purely-economic standpoint, renewable energy would be better in the long run. This is not only because of the crisis that awaits us ahead if the fossil fuels run out but also because of Global Warming. It has been an issue for years and though many scientists are still in speculation over it, the idea is widely accepted. Generally, it has been found that the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This carbon dioxide is not good for our planet, it builds up and creates holes in our ozone layer, which is our only protection from harmful radiation from the sun. This creates a greenhouse effect which heats the Earth to an unhealthy temperature to the point where our glaciers are melting and the polar bears and other species are sutrggling for survival. As far as electricity goes, 2.2% of the power for it comes from renewable energy, while the other 97.8% comes from non renewable resources. This means when we run out of our resources, we'll have to find a way to make those renewable resources stretch to cover all 100% of electricity, or else we won't be able to power our homes or businesses in the near future. A huge amount of technology would become virtually useless. When it comes to heating, the only renewable resources used for it are the sun, geothermal, and biomass. The rest of it comes from natural gas and propane. Last, a huge amenity that humans use is transportation. Currently, the majority of power for it comes from the non renewable resource petroleum, while a small portion comes from biomass. The basic idea is that we rely far too heavily on non-sustainable resources for our energy and if we don't change that, no matter what the cost is, our world will be unable to run. The existing problem as to our resources needs to be fixed.