Fossil Fuels And The Modern World - 1002 Words

The human population is an advanced system that does many complicated tasks. It has developed technological breakthroughs that primitive people could not even begin to fathom. Understandably, the modern human race’s technology uses immense amounts of energy that comes, usually, comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are great in the short term for many reasons, but mostly because they are already in use for a majority of the world and they are easily accessible. Unfortunately, the great energy source that is fossil fuels is indirectly destroying the humans’ environment, earth. The burning of fossil fuels, the process where energy is harvested from fossil fuels, releases greenhouse gases. The result of long-term release of these gases is†¦show more content†¦Consequently, the average person didn’t see why they would have to switch to something else, especially when that something is not as convenient to switch to. However, it was not only the publicâ€⠄¢s rigidity to change that hindered the adaptation of alternative energy; alternative energy was bad for most people, in short. For land owners and investors it was detrimental, specifically the wind power aspect of alternative energy. A graph on the effect of wind turbines on property value shows that if wind turbines were even near a property in 2008 it reduced its value by 24% to 39% (Kielisch). This devastated the push for alternative energy by making landowners, essentially, afraid of wind turbines. The unintentional effects of alternative energy explains why the public rejected it. Nonetheless, activist, the few that believed in the power of alternative energy, fought on for more sustainable practices. In 2006, in the United States, twenty-one of fifty states pushed for a portion, an average of about 14.88%, of their energy to come from renewable sources (â€Å"Pushing†). The states’ governments showed little motivation to adopt alternative energy widespread. Mo st of the states did not even push for any alternative energy while the others barely showed interest. Although, at the end of the decade, organizations started to accept that the world needed alternative energy, and they even began to fight