Act now to become less dependent on harmful fossil fuels

Ian Johnson

Special to the Gateway

I have lived on Fox Island for all of the 20 years my life, and I have been a part of this community since 1989.

At Tacoma Community College, I am taking the pre-requisite courses for the University of Washington-Tacoma’s Environmental Science Program. After TCC, I plan to apply for the U.S. Coast Guard to pay for my junior senior year at UWT in return for three years of service. Then I will attend Officer Candidate School and flight school to be a helicopter pilot.

In March, I went to an environment forum hosted at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo. The forum, which partnered with National Geographic, was “Powering the Planet: Energy for the Long Run.”

Throughout the three-day conference, I picked the underlying theme to be global warming and getting off the dependency of fossil fuels.

At this time, there are 1.3 million barrels reserve of oil, which is expected to last 43 years, and 1.2 million barrels of gas left, which is expected to last 161 years. In addition, there is 4.4 million barrels of reserve of coal, which is expected to last 417 years.

Although the dates are far in the future, we need to be thinking now about alternative sources of fuel. The main types are solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric.

Currently, wind and solar technologies are available to the public, but they are expensive and not very effective. The thing that needs to be done first is to find a more efficient way of storing the energy for when there is no sun or wind.

Daniel Nocera spoke of a process that needs only three pitchers of water where sunlight can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Global warming is evident with the rise in temperatures. Nowhere is it more evident than in the glaciers of Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, the Rocky Mountains, Bolivia and the Alps. As an example, the Columbia Glacier in Alaska retreated 1.25 miles from June 2006 to September 2008.

Glaciers are one of the best tellers of climate change. Their white color reflects the sun’s rays and helps to keep our climate mild. If the glaciers melt, the rocks will be exposed and collect the sun’s rays, which will result in a warmer climate.

President Barack Obama has a plan in place to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2025 and by 80 percent by 2050. I think that’s too far out.

If we want to stop climate change, we need to act now. If we don’t, the change will be irreversible and spiral out of control.

Wind and photovoltaics are the two most widely known renewable sources of fuel. Photovoltaics is the field of technology and research related to the application of solar cells for energy by converting sunlight directly into electricity.

What needs to be done before these clean sources of fuel can be widely used for power all over the United States and the world is a storage system.

Right now, the storage system for wind and PV is not that efficient. New and more efficient batteries or alternative storage systems need to be invented.

An alternative is geo-engineering, which is the direct interaction and changing of the climate through science.

Some people support geo-engineering because it may avoid or delay the difficult and expensive transition to a low-carbon economy. The environment doesn’t need people like that.

The environment needs people or individuals or countries to be willing to start now to transition to a low-carbon economy. It’s going to be expensive, but for the environment, it will be well worth it.

Ian Johnson is a student at Tacoma Community College. He can be reached at ian15157@yahoo.com.