Everyone's talking about it but some of us are not sure what we can personally do about it.  A passing comment on the weather these days is likely to become a discussion on if it's warmer out than it used to be.  What I'm talking about is energy and global warming.  It is a complex topic so I must make some generalizations for the sake of brevity and clarity.

Worldwide energy demand is up; supply and production are limited so, as usual, we are all paying more for less. Since the major source of energy in the US is from fossil fuels, its rising price affects the cost of virtually everything we buy.   

However, the economic strain of the fossil fuel market is being overshadowed by the greater threat of global warming.  The correlation between man-made CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions and global warming is compelling. The 1903 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was one of the first to warn us that excessive fossil fuel combustion could eventually cause global warming.  A hundred years later, the effects are real.  We don't even fully understand its dynamics and its long term effect on living species yet we proceed merrily along.   

Even in the very unlikely chance that human-made emissions are not a significant contributor to global warming, we have only one planet so it is a gamble we can't afford to lose.  Nature and the physical laws can be very unforgiving and, as scientists know, many physical processes are not reversible, especially one of this magnitude. The U.S. alone, in 2006, spewed out 15,567,200,000,000 lbs. of CO2 equivalents  according to the government's Energy Information Administration.  CO2 equivalents are a compilation of several gases that promote global warming. The US, with only about 5% of the world's population, account for approximately 25% of worldwide CO2 emissions.  

When you turn on a light in your home, a typical power plant burns fossil fuel to produce the electricity to power your light bulb.  When the fossil fuel is burned, the carbon in the fuel combines with oxygen in the air to produce CO2 gas.  This gas is then emitted into the atmosphere. This is typical of all fossil fuel-burning technologies.  We burn fossil fuels to produce electricity, to power our cars, trains, planes, ships, to heat our homes, and on and on. They are called fossil fuels because they originated from decomposing organic matter millions of years ago.  The limited supply of these carbon-based fuels exists naturally in the earth in several major forms: coal, natural gas, oil.  

Although there are emissions-free alternatives to fossil fuels such as nuclear energy, many citizens are unconvinced of their safety and are not sure we have a workable plan to address their waste products. For now, the most cost effective & environmentally friendly way to help our planet is to reduce our consumption and develop renewable sources of energy. Currently, our electric energy use is so intense that we need large scale power plants to meet electric demand.   If we reduce our consumption, then smaller scale, renewable technologies -like solar, wind, biomass, biofuels and geothermal- can play a more significant role in meeting energy demand. It is a complex topic and I would write more but I am running out of energy. Stay tuned for future issues of this newsletter and I will keep adding to our shared understanding of our energy options.