Matthew Ambrose
October 2,2007
English Comp II

“Optimism for the Future”

With a world of rapidly depleting fossil fuels, there is a hunt for new technology to keep our way of life alive. Everything we do contributes to the burning of fossil fuels, especially when we go to school, work, or go shopping. But the age of the personal vehicle is not over. We as a culture will find someway to keep them running, and keep them on the roads.
Of course there are people who disagree, like James Howard Kunstler, who say that we will be reduced to living like our great grandparents, without personal transportation. We’ll be forced to rely on public transportation like buses or mass transit, like trains, to get to any kind of distance. Kunstler is an advocate to return to a simpler time by destroying the technology that has led us to this state.
Some people may agree with this to a degree, but most would vote to not get rid of all our technology. Duane Elgin is one those advocates. Buy less and rely on yourself more; he says to get rid of our excessive urge to waste. Maybe if we stop buying things that rely on so much packaging, we’ll consume less energy to get to places, and start to alleviate the problems we have to contend with.
While some people may think like this, there are others who think that the technology we have developed has created the possibility to save, if not improve our way of life. These people already see a trend of staying at home; whether I is to shop online, go to school online or the biggest growing trend, working from home. Each one of these activities save the individual person fuel and money because products are getting shipped to us, knowledge is transmitted over cabling that runs the length of the country, and so is our paychecks.
While talking with my friend Michael Irwin, who has been working at the Lowe’s distribution for five years now, he is around large tractor trailers, and small delivery trucks for most of his shift. He firmly believes that IF there is a world for our great grandchildren, it will be a mortal hell, unless we start to fix that now. When the questions came to personal vehicles, a point was raised about synthetic oils which spawned into creating synthetic fuel. If we can do it with lubricants, why can’t we do it with fuel. We could create them using alternative forms of creating electricity, such as hydro-electric dams, wind powered turbines, nuclear energy, and even the amounts of fossil fuel that is left.
Lets face it, if we don’t start building up now to prevent, or at least soften the effect of a major disaster, we as a species are going to annihilate ourselves. We are a nation of great excess, waste, and consumption, then we are furthering the idea of “Humanity is a virus; we take what we need or want from one area, and then move onto the next pile of resources,” as Irwin puts it. If we don’t curb our appetite for new entertainment and just keep building into this cycle of waste, then we are only adding to the problem of the planet.
Somehow, as we face the inevitable end of fossil fuels, we will start to switch gears, and begin to create alternative fuel sources, such as wind powered turbines, hydro-electric dams for larger cities, and even start to build more nuclear power plants. However, it IS up to OUR generation, and the generation to follow to invent new technology that will allow us to create these kinds of things that we will need as a nation, a culture, and a race.
Even though wind power turbines have the draw back of requiring a lot of space, and maintenance, wouldn’t the benefits of that outweigh the costs? Hydro-electric dams create problems with waterways, and are only temporary fixes to problems of flooding. Then is raised the question about what happens to the people upstream of the dam who are now flooded out of their homes. Nuclear power is a terrifying idea just within itself, and yet it holds such great potential. There is the possibility of nothing going wrong, and the same possibility of everything going wrong, the reactor going critical, and taking out a few major cities while poisoning the rest of the world. Chernobyl is an example of that effect, Europe is still feeling dealing with problems. But even taking the risks with it allow for new possibilities to be created.
The frontier of space is coming into the human perspective now. With satellites as a space station, how could we continue to keep them functional? Maybe someday, as a race, and not individual countries we can get to space, we may find a completely different form of creating energy entirely, dealing with plasma, or magnetism.
Of course you can see the optimism that has been added, due to a trust of human ingenuity will be able to see us out of the problems that we have created for ourselves. If we learn current technology, and figure out a way to make it better, build it faster and more economically, and build it stronger to prevent damage and necessary replacement, we may just be able to power vehicles like hybrids, electric cars, and possibly even synthetically fueled cars. It is up to us to create a way out of this increasingly dangerous path that we as a civilization travel down, so strike a flare, and find our way back where the light comes a bit more naturally through clouds, and not smog.