Energy: Under the Lights

Essay by mebuckleCollege, UndergraduateB+, December 2012

download word file, 11 pages 0.0

Energy: Under the Lights

Part 1

Powering up a laptop, plugging in a cell phone, driving to work, and taking a shower are all perfectly commonplace things that thousands of people across America do everyday. However, the repercussions of these seemingly trivial actions are lost on most of us. Energy in America is severely used and abused. The two biggest problems the citizen ignorance of energy issues cause are terrible pollution and outrageous lack of energy conservation. The citizens of the USA use energy as if it is a renewable resource, which it is definitely not (at least not yet). At least 85% of our energy is from fossil fuels, including 95.5% of our transportation fuel and 68% of our electricity.� Since our consumption level is so high, we are making huge amounts of energy and it is this high level of production that causes pollution to rise to increasingly staggering heights.

With Americans using so much energy, we will eventually run out these crucial fossil fuels and leave the future generations with nothing left.� Energy is extraordinarily ordinary, but awareness of its effects and problems such as these need to be brought to light. The issues of US energy policy (including consumption, waste, conservation, sources, and politics) affect and are affected by domestic and foreign politics as well as private citizens, and therefore its problems and issues need to be addressed by all parties involved.

Pollution is the biggest issue of energy abuse because it is the most abundant, since every form of energy production produces pollution in one way or another�, and possibly the most serious. The energy conservation problem, however, is just as serious a problem since it is the stem from which pollution flowers. The lack of conservation causes the problems with pollution because when Americans...