In our world we depend on our use of various energy sources. Many of the energy sources affect the environment. How long will the earth cope with our growing use of fuels and our increased pollution that damage our planet? That is a question that no one can answer. But one thing is clear, if we continue our pollution of the earth we will have a very uncertain future lying ahead. Nowadays there are many alternative energy sources in development. More and more environmentally friendly methods are used to give us our energy. Solarpanels are an effective way, not only because that’s good for the environment but its getting less expensive to use as well. The energy that the sun is bringing down to earth is 10 000 times more than the entire population is using during a year. However, the carbon based fuels is a hard opponent to defeat. It is the money that is going to decide what we’ll use in the future.

What is it going to take? The energy sources of the future must be very effective and have a low cost. We must make the environmentally friendly sources more profitable than the "bad" energy sources. Things like fuel taxes and other sorts of taxes is one way to make people choose "the better thing". But what can a third world country do when there is no money left to invest in other energy sources? It costs too much to for example build wind power stations or hydroelectric power stations to replace the, for the moment, much less expensive but more harmful ways of getting our precious energy.

Our civilization is growing and developing and it’s going to take more energy. Perhaps some more cooperativeness between countries wouldn’t be bad. More money is needed in the research for new energy sources. The future The nuclear power is very important in the world today. The energy that the nuclear power gives cover more than 20 % of the world’s energyneed. Also in this case it’s going to be hard to replace this energy source for something more safe and at least as efficient. Is this a matter of compromising?, Is it better to use up all the oil and maybe destroy all living things on the planet, or should we perhaps build more nuclear power plants that can result in a disaster when the nuclear waste is piled up in great mountains and Tjernobyl 2 and 3 begin to leak? This is of course an exaggerated scenario but all I’m saying is that we must start taking responsibility for our actions and start thinking of the future. Maybe we should slow down a bit and look for what alternatives we have.
© 2002 Freeway
Writers: Martin Rylander (sp04-39@park.se
HTML by: Lars Olsson (te04-41@park.se).