A lot of the stuff we bring up out of the ground ought to be left there where it can exist at its highest level of safety. Humans have the propensity for picking up whatever we find as useful and using it without considering what dangers are associated with that stuff. Probably the first example of such a use-danger couple is that of lead. It was soft and easily formed into plates and bowls for serving and eating of food. It was easily flattened into sheets then rolled into long tubes for the transport of water that we drank. All the while we had no idea of the toxic nature of our exposure to lead.
We went even further with lead and mixed small quantities of the metal with glass to make exquisitely clear crystal glassware. Tin mixed with lead created the first alloys of pewter that was also popular in the preparation and consumption of food and drink. Early "tin" cans were soldered along the seams with lead and even until the latter part of the 20th century we were still soldering copper water pipes with lead. It took a lot of legislation to stop corporations from using lead in house paint and as an anti-knock additive to our gasoline.
We dig coal of varying grades out of the earth and burn it with great abandon. Although we have eliminated the burning of coal for residential heat in our urban areas, we still burn millions of tons of it for the generation of electricity. The fourfold negative impacts of using coal for energy are the waste heat that must be dissipated by dilution in the environment, CO2 which contribute to atmospheric heat retention and oceanic acidification, the coal leaves behind tons of ash that contains all the impurities that had been laid down with the vegetation hundreds of millions of years ago, and lastly, the mines leach their toxins into waterways that we depend on for potable water.
Oil is also one of those items that today ought to be left in the ground. When the first commercial oil well was drilled in 1850 in Oil City, Pennsylvania there were no cross country roads and only a few novel automobiles on the roads. The need for oil was minuscule by comparison to today but the legacy of death and damage done by our close association with the crude is long and storied. Referring to Oil City:
"The city was partially destroyed by flood in 1865 and by both flood and fire in 1866 and again in 1892; on this last occasion, several oil tanks that were struck by lightning gave way, and Oil Creek carried a mass of burning oil into the city, where some 60 lives were lost and property valued at more than $1 million was destroyed." ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_City,_PennsylvaniaThe energy paradigm of the 20th century cannot carry us through this 21st century. The billions of barrels of oil used each year add CO2 to the environment at a faster rate than other natural process can neutralize it. The atmosphere stores heat and the oceans warn and acidify. The well sites are dirty, toxic and prone to failures of a magnitude far beyond our meager human means to fix the damage.
Natural gas also presents its dangers. The biggest acute dangers appear to be in the transmission lines that send large volumes of extremely highly pressurize gas through the country side, our towns and cities leaving everyone who is nearby at risk for incineration not much different than those 60 people in oil City in 1892. The methods of extracting the gas from the ground brings up all sorts of toxic substances that lay long buried. Mercury, lead, arsenic, and radon all emerge from the well bore during the natural and properly operated drilling process. The newer horizontal drilling with the hydraulic fracturing have added a new layer of risk and damage as the result of the gas production process.
The deep rock layers are shattered in order to get the gas to flow more freely. While this is great for the backers of the gas well, each of those fractures also make it possible for methane and radon to leak more freely to the surface outside the purview of the drilling company. While radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas, its presence is exacerbated by the drilling and fracturing processes. It is one of those negatives that cannot be mitigated by more sophisticated drilling and fracturing.
Even our most "modern" electricity generation method, nuclear reactors, pose the huge problem of what to do with the spent fuel. First we dug the Uranium out of the ground. Then we concentrated it to make it fissionable. It in turn created massive amounts of even higher radioactive elements that we will have to store somewhere on the order of 10,000 years. I suspect that every rational scientist says, at least to himself, "The way we are going we won't be around long enough to have to worry about THAT."
In this 21st Century we have developed energy technologies that were not possible even a decade or two ago. Dozens of wind turbine systems exist today. Tidal energy capture, PV solar panels and heat concentrating methods make the sun a viable source of energy. It is possible to stop just finding resources somewhere in the ground and devise methods of creating what we need.
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