On March 07, 2007, Petro-Canada announced that a fire reduced production at its refinery near
As we all know today, fossil fuel combustion causes many environmental problems. More than 90% of greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming, come from fossil fuels combustion (US EPA, 2000). Air pollutants, which induce acid rain, smog and radioactive dusts, are generated by the combustion of fossil fuel as well. Moreover, mountaintop removal for coal mining, offshore oil drilling, and oil leaking from tanks, can severely damage ecological systems. Although our planet is a self-healing system, adverse effects of devastating emissions and human activities are far beyond the earth’s buffering capacity. Now, we learned the lessons from arisen problems, such as abnormal climate changes, poisonous atmosphere and ecological crisis. But the situation could be much worse if we do not start to limit use and production of fossil fuel.
Besides fuel, many important industrial materials can be refined from coal and oil. These industrial materials, which can be produced into pharmaceuticals, plastics, and textiles, become vital elements for a nation’s economy. However, the global stock of fossil resource is very limited. Energy Information Administration of U.S. reported that, considering the present usage tendency, oil on earth will be finished up 32 years later (US EIA, 2000). In a conceivable future, the exploitation of fossil resource may cause severe international conflicts when we encounter shortage of fossil resource. Hence, despite of the short term adverse effects, such as increased fuel price, controlling fossil fuel production becomes necessary progressively.
Indubitably, our societies today are highly energy demanding due to the huge world population and the nature of modern industries. It seems that, without burning fossil fuel, even we try our best to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy wasting, but we can not fulfil the requirements to maintain the rapid developing economies or our living conditions. Fortunately, scientists have invented many methods to gather various energies, including nuclear energy, water power energy, wind power energy, biomass energy and so on. Some may argue that many of these methods are not as practical as fossil fuel. In fact, this impracticality is not caused by the natures of these new energies, but by the demanding of them. Since the new energy sources currently require more expensive production and processing technologies than conventional petroleum reserves, they are unlikely widely adopted. But the principle of “supply and demand” suggests that, as fossil resource diminishes, fossil fuel prices will rise. Consequently, higher prices will lead to increased alternative new energy supplies as they become sufficiently economical to exploit (
Thus, we can conclude that fossil fuel is hazardous to our living environments; fossil fuel can be replaced by renewable energy supplies; fossil fuel will be completely consumed eventually. Today, our natural environment is in deep danger after years of damage; the fossil resource is in extremely low stocks after years of barbaric exploitations; and the new energy resources are ready to serve as renewable clean suppliers. Then why are we still waiting? It is time to limit fossil fuel production and start a new clean flourish.
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