The reading this week comes from chapter 1: Energy Fundamentals, Energy Use in an Industrial Society. In class this week each group presented one section, and the section I presented was 1.2- Why Do We Use So Much Energy? The section discusses the amount of oil used per capita in an industrialized nation compared to that of a unindustrialized nation. A quote straight from the reading which might clarify the point is “A citizen of a developing country might use the energy equivalent of less than one barrel of oil per year, compared to an annual energy equivalent of 20 to 60 barrels per capita for the most industrialized countries.” The fact is people from an unindustrialized nation might use less oil, but if they had access to the same technologies as people from an industrialized nation they would most certainly use more. It’s in human nature to be as lazy as possible, and we will exploit any resource we can in order to do so. Fossil fuels have given man the power to shape the earth anyway he so chooses, but at what cost? At the cost of using up all of the oil reserves, and depleting the energy source we depend on so greatly.
Fundamentals of Using Energy
Advertisement
