Clean Energy

“We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.” - Jimmy Carter

In this week’s article I’ll be talking about clean, efficient, and cheaper forms of energy.

              

  Right now in the United States we buy most of our oil from the Middle East. The area itself is a dry dessert that was once a paradise, the decayed plant life developed into oil. These are a people who are almost in a constant state of war, very poor where electricity is a luxury and the wealthy prey on the ignorant. Every time the Middle East is thrown into disarray our oil prices go up and many lose their jobs because it. Saudi Arabia is where we buy most of our oil from. They have plenty of oil; we drill some from the gulf and off the coast of Alaska. We don’t drill further off the coast because of the environmental risk, made very clear with the Gulf spill.

 

Currently the United States has been pushing for cleaner forms of energy, mainly due to a liberal office. Our first step was to make use of Wind Energy. We utilize wind energy by putting up wind turbines. Wind turbine’s work a lot like the hydro turbines. Gases behave a lot like water and flowing currents. The air flows through the turbine spinning the blade; from there kinetic energy is then transferred into electric. 

 

We could also use solar power.  Calculators, some cars, and homes currently use solar power. They do not work at night; have a high price that pays for itself in the end. With recent advances we can put solar panels on water, around round objects, building windows, roof tops, and pretty much anywhere the imagination leads you too. If you generate enough power, you can actually sell it back to the electric company. Solar power, wind, and hydro, are all forms of energy we can have within 5-10 years. Bio fuels, fusion, and so on would take a long time to develop, which tends to be what oil companies like BP want.

After we have finally begun to compete with the big bunch in clean energy we will be doing much better. Without having to  worry about having enough fuel we can start worrying about helping the Middle East, rather than hurt them by being their crutch. I can only imagine how much better a place it would be if they started working on other industries rather than oil. Even if we do stop our reliance on them we could still have a use for it.