How Fossil Fuels Have Affected Our Environment and Lives
In the beginning, human progress was limited by the amount of work in single day. This is only to feed themselves and their families. At that time, the economy was largely rural as a result. In the early of 19th century, more intelligent human began to looking for energy resources to support their lives. They began to develop coal, oil, and other stored energy to supplement their prime energy source: sunlight. Sunlight energy results in overgrown plant and animal growth over huge and dispersed areas and geologic time periods. There was, and will continue to be, abundant solar energy sources available to get more fossil fuel, to do research on how to exploit these resources more efficiently, and to use them in daily life and changing their cultures.
By the year 1990, we were using energy as much 80 times as what being used in 1800. Most of this energy is fossil fuels and its derivative. Due to the abundance of this energy resources availability has enabled people to produce more for their activities and in consequences is to consume more. This energy resources has caused a fast adaptation to be used much more efficient means of agricultural jobs – such as mechanized farming - which required the use of fossil fuels. The effect of improvement in farming tools and technologies has brought increase in food supply, this is then fostered population growth. By early 2000, human population has exploded to about six times what it was in 1800. All of these trends are related, each one helping to advance the others.
Clearly, one of the most important results of industrialization, which is push by these energy sources is abundant of food. A generation of industrial society, which have better knowledge in using sunlight to grow food than their predecessors. I strongly believe, we no longer eat food made from solar energy, we now eat potatoes made partly of oil. This is also the same case in the growth of animals for both meat and dairy products. Not only in the farm, but also in the factories where machinery is made. It is thus important to note that our society is develop around a “fossil fuel capitalization” which somewhat supplemented by a other source of energy like nuclear energy.
Before the extensive use of fossil fuels, air pollution affected environment only cities more than it did in rural areas. This is due to combustion engines concentration in cities. In contrary, people who lived in cold-climate urban areas kept warm by burning wood. As this limited supply result, wood then became expensive. People then burned comparatively little amounts of wood and heated their homes less.
Even as smoke abatement continued, however, cities acquired new and more complex air pollution, this is the obvious fossil fuels problems. As cars became commonplace—first in the United States during the 1920s and then in Western Europe and Japan during the 1950s and 1960s—tailpipe emissions added to the air pollution already flowing out of chimneys and smokestacks. Auto exhaust system contained different kinds of pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and lead. Therefore cars, together with new industries, such as the petrochemical industry, complicated and intensified the world’s air fossil fuel environmental pollution problems. Photochemical smog, which is caused by sunlight’s impact on elements of auto exhaust system, became a serious health menace in cities where abundant sunshine combined with frequent temperature change. The world’s worst smog was brewed in sunny, car-clogged cities, such as Athens, Greece; Bangkok, Thailand; Mexico City, Mexico; and Los Angeles, California.
During the late 20th century, human activity began to take its toll on the atmosphere. The increased level of carbon dioxide in atmosphere, which are mainly a consequences of burning fossil fuels, raised the efficiency with which the air retains the sun’s heat. This more than ever heat retention brought the treat of global warming, an overall increase in Earth’s temperature. Now this fossil fuels effect are the main concern of governments in the world.©
