Chapter Sixteen 
Fossil Fuels and the  
Environment 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES        We rely almost completely on the fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) for our energy needs.  However, these are nonrenewable resources, and their production and use have a variety of serious environmental impacts.  This section should foster your understanding of materials covered in the text about our energy dilemma with respect to fossil fuels, and why we will eventually have to switch from fossil fuels to other energy sources.  CASE STUDY  - The Fossil Fuel Dilemma.         We are faced with a delimma--a situation in which a choice must be made between undesirable alternatives in the use of fossil fuels.  Fossil fuels provide 90% of the energy we use now, but at a price of urban air pollution, acid rain, and potential global warming.  Continuing to rely on fossil fuels, with the attendant environmental problems, is one alternative.  The other alternative is to change energy use to other sources, such as nuclear energy, hydropower, or losar energy.  Unfortunaley, such a change might bring about undesirable consequences for the world economy.  Regardless of the choices we make now, eventually we will have to find alternatives to fossil fuel, because they constitute a nonrenewable resource that is being rapidly depleted.         Although fossil fuels have been used by people for thousands of years, they really began to be exploited during the past 100 years.  The world's fossil fuel resources, which took millions of years to form, will be used up in a period of about 500 years.  In the long run there is no real dilemma because there is no real choice; we will eventually have to find alternatives to fossil fuels.  The short-term dilemma--the choice we face now--is in determining when the shift will take place.  Should we go ahead and burn all the fossil fuels as long as they are available, resulting in a degrated planet?  Or should we make a shift to the other fuels now to try to minimize the potential for environmental degradation (recall the discussion of hard path versus soft path in CHapter 15)?    FAQs . . Photo Credit: Environmental Protection Agency