Energy Problems and Climate Change: Is It too Late For Humanity Now?

 As the modern humans kept progressing and progressing with their fancy new technologies and their industries built upon mass production and hard labor, in the last couple of years we had to learn a new concept that has been becoming more and more scary: Global warming. Our issues with consumptions and our energy problems cost us unimaginable damages already, and the list of harms is getting longer with each passing minute. In a state like this, we have started to wonder, “Have we missed the last train of hope”. Well, not really, but it is not that simple. In order to answer this tricky question we have to go over the reasons for our energy problems, what global warming really means and what we can do about it.

What Causes Our Energy Problems?

Firstly, we all have to agree on the fact that the modern civilization suffers greatly from energy issues. Energy consumptions and the need for energy resources in the markets keep on demanding more and more from the earth, which at this point started to get hurt from our demands. This, however, is an important issue as it makes up the majority of the story. From the moment we have invented steam machines that work by burning coals and went into the industrial revolution era, we have been increasing the sizes of our economies, our markets and most importantly our industries have been expanding enormously. This makes up the majority of the reasons why we demand so much from the natural resources of earth. We simply grow too much. The population, costs of nutrition and heating around the world, financial crises’ that forces the common worker to work harder even more so for a cheaper price, which in the end creates an opportunity for manufacturers and company owners to be even more greedy… All of these reasons and many more have created the monster that we all know today. We are talking about our energy problems and energy problem’s devilish child: Global warming. Growth isn’t necessarily a negative thing. On the contrary, it should be positive in common sense. However, the main issue is that we based the foundation of our growth on a soil that cannot be trusted. This faul foil was fossil fuels.

Fossil Fuels and Global Warming: How Did We Get Here?

Since the innovation of steam engines and the industrial revolution that came after it, humanity has been doomed with an upcoming hazard that might be the end for earth. We are, of course, talking about global warming. Global warming has started to become an issue from the times we have mentioned. The systems and machines that the industrial revolution brought us rely on burning fossil fuels, mainly coal, in order to create energy. This issue still hasn’t changed as later on, we ditched burning coal for petroleum-based fuels, another form of fossil fuels. When burnt, these fuels release greenhouse gasses that trap heat into the stratosphere, causing the temperatures over the globe rise dramatically. The situation has become so severe that the global warming rates of the last ten to twenty years doubled the rate of the first half of the 20th century. After the first periods of technological inventions and breakthroughs, mainly happening towards the world wars era, came a period of increasing development and improvement where everything started to become energy focused. All of a sudden everyone needed TVs, fridges, washing machines, cars and many more inventions that all relied on the consumption of fossil fuels. You might be wondering how gadgets that use electricity can be harmful to the ozone layer. Well, the energy plants the governments use to distribute electricity to cities still burn fossil fuels to create that energy. Therefore, even using the main electricity in your houses contributes to global warming. When the situation is like this, it is no surprise that we have got to this point where things are a little blurry.

Can We Even Stop Climate Change Anymore?

Now that we know how we got here, where everything looks so dark and grim, you of course want to know if we can stop it at all. And to that we say yes, we can stop it and start healing the world, but like we mentioned it is not how you might have guessed it. Firstly, let’s get sci-fi type of solutions out of the way. We are not going to mars anytime soon and even if we did, the chances of us building a habitat in which we can live, produce and prosper does not seem likely. So, what can we do? Is awareness to the issue and regulations the answer? The truth is, not likely. See, the biggest causes for the issue at hand are big corporations and companies that are under the governance of governments and their laws, but those laws don’t really do much in order to stop climate change. For a long time we had all sorts of evidence that global warming is real and it is getting out of hand but governments and laws haven’t done anything to prevent it, as this would cost too much for the capitalist economies we are used to living in. So, what is the answer? Well, it seems like science is our savior once again. We are getting closer to finding a once-for-all solution and it seems like climate change won’t end us for many decades, though it will cost us a lot. So, the best thing we can do is to stay alerted and spread awareness while our science finds the solution.