The America-Iraq war, which used to be on the headings of top-tier newspapers and has been until now a heating topic in numerous discussions, has been long condemned for its meaninglessness and terrible detriments humankind had to suffer in the aftermath. Surprisingly, however, it is propagated that the US started off the war with Iraq for a very heroic cause – seeking revenge the sin terrorists, most of which came from Middle East countries, did to America – the 9/11 event. But, considering the fact that Iraq produces roughly 3 million barrels of oil per day and holds a world oil share of nearly 3%, it is the promisingly large amount of discovered and hidden oil wells throughout Iraq that drove Uncle Sam to ignite the war with them. What lesson can be drawn from this? The thirst for energy, once again, just like money which has been crucified as nauseum for its ability to corrupt people, is the cause of such horrendous act of the US. Indeed, the role energy is playing on world stage is becoming more and more essential since at present, those countries that have access to more energy are very likely to prosper economically.
Worriedly, the current discovered amount of oil can’t sustain human life if it is still used at such an inflating rate.
“IF EVERYONE CONSUMED AS
MUCH ENERGY AS THE AVERAGE SINGAPOREAN AND U.S. RESIDENT, THE WORLD’S OIL RESERVES WOULD BE DEPLETED IN 9 YEARS”
The need for sources of energy which are more sustainable is becoming more urgent than ever! Luckily and admirably, Brazil has taken the initiative by growing sugarcane on large scale and fermenting them to make ethanol, a very eco-friendly yet effective liquid fuel. Sugarcane used to be the top-list commodity exported to Europe. However, not until Brazilian government put concerted effort into imposing laws which gradually mould Brazilian citizens to switching from using pure oil to using ethanol did Brazil fully witnessed itself being transformed into a more eco-friendly country. It all started in 1976 when Brazilian government compelled its citizens to use blended fuel, which was a combination between ethanol and gasoline, with the percentage of ethanol in the compound fluctuated from 10% to 22%. This move led to the disappearance of pure gasoline in the whole country. At the turn of the 1990s, a federal law was passed that fixed the ratio of ethanol to gasoline in the concoction at 1:3. Currently, that ratio is a shockingly admirable figure since not so many countries have reached that. But Brazilian government doesn’t want to stop there since it is planning to bring up the percentage of ethanol higher in the future. Once environmentally friendly and renewable sources of energy are used at mass, countries gaining most of their income from fossil fuel – based transaction with other countries will be very likely to undergo a very burdensome period of massive radical changes.
What can we pull out from this table? The sun provides more energy to the Earth in one hour than humankind currently uses in an entire year! (Dr. Gurinder Shahi). Opportunities are everywhere, but some are hidden and seemingly not implementable. But as has proven over the course of human history, the more effort humans put into doing anything, the more likely they will succeed in what they have been trying to do. The current technologies do not provide people enough capacity to extract all of the energy in sunlight but I believe that in the future, given the concerted effort put in by the whole human race, sunlight will become the main source of energy on Earth.
With respect to the current situation, there are still some ways to cut down the usage of environmentally hazardous fossil fuels, each of which has its own pros and cons. The approach is to launch educational campaigns to raise the people’s awareness of the negative effects using fossil fuels may impose on environment as well as the promising future and tons of benefits renewable of renewable energy sources like solar power, wind power or hydraulic power. Although this method is inexpensive and very easy to apply, it is usually not persuasive enough to change the mindset of people and more importantly, it is not mandatory so people don’t have any incentives or motives to mould themselves into certain habits. Drafting and formalizing laws seemed to be a very promisingly effective method since people are forced to refrain themselves from using non-renewable energy sources, but then economy may suffer. Seems like there is no utopia right now.
Basically, this session is somehow enlightening, even though all the issues touched on are rather old. However, I believe this session could have been further improved if some issues such as how to increase the amount of energy humans can extract from wind or sunlight, as well as how come some countries use more energy than others even though some of the former are not as rich as the latter or have halted to develop economically.
Overall rating: 7.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment