Word: fossils
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...Deal. In many parts of the world, it hasn't even happened yet. About 2.5 billion people have no access to modern energy services, and the power demands of developing economies are expected to grow 2.5% per year. But if those demands are met by burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas, more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will hit the atmosphere. That, scientists tell us, will promote global warming, which could lead to rising seas, fiercer storms, severe droughts and other climatic disruptions...
...more immediate concern is the heavy air pollution caused in many places by combustion of wood and fossil fuels. A new U.N. Environment Program report warns of the effects of a haze across all southern Asia. Dubbed the "Asian brown cloud" and estimated to be 2 miles thick, it may be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory diseases...
...need to diversify is now more urgent and the consensus to do so greater than when OPEC first played bully. Global energy demand is expected to triple by midcentury. The earth is unlikely to run out of fossil fuels by then, given its vast reserves of coal, but it seems unthinkable that we will continue to use them as we do now, for nearly 80% of our energy. It's not just a question of supply and price, or even of the diseases caused by filthy air. We know that global warming from heat-trapping carbon dioxide, a by-product...
...soon we reach an era of clean, inexhaustible energy depends on technology. Solar and wind energies are intermittent: when the sky is cloudy or the breeze dies down, fossil fuel or nuclear plants must kick in to compensate. But scientists are working on better ways to store electricity from renewable sources. Current from wind, solar or geothermal energy can be used to extract hydrogen from water molecules. In the future, hydrogen could be stored in tanks, and when energy is needed, the gas could be run through a fuel cell, a device that combines hydrogen with oxygen. The result: pollution...
Ultimately, the earth can meet its energy needs without fouling the environment. "But it won't happen," asserts Thomas Johansson, an energy adviser to the United Nations Development Program, "without the political will." To begin with, widespread government subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy--estimated at some $150 billion per year--must be dismantled to level the playing field for renewables. Policymakers must factor in the price of pollution: coal plants are more expensive than renewable power when one includes the cost of scrubbers on smokestacks and the expense of health care for coal-related illnesses; nuclear energy costs...