Hooked on Fossil Fuels

Just as in the days when I was Hooked on Classics, it looks like humanity is going to be ‘hooked on fossil fuels’ for awhile longer. According to British Petroleum’s chief scientists, Physicist Steven Koonin, we’ll be stuck with the nasty for decades to come.

Speaking to a crowd gathered at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center to hear the annual Drell Lecture, Koonin decided to follow in the steps of the great environmentalist Al Gore with a slideshow to make his point. According to a report from Stanford University the ‘lines on his chart representing worldwide energy demands in coming decades went on a steady upward trajectory.’

Sadly, these are the same years that we as a population need to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, those created by fossil fuels.

Koonin pointed to the industrialization of India and China in the years to come as a driving force in world energy demands increasing. China is continually opening coal plants expelling carbon in to the atmosphere at the rate of one a week and India will slowly but inevitably turn to coal.

BP’s chief scientist is pushing the research at his company in to biomass fuels as a potential replacement to the commonplace fuels we have today, ‘but that all the means of alternative energy such as wind and solar would likely be unable to halt the increasing use of fossil fuels.’

Photo Courtesy of cjohnson7 via Flickr