Problems with a Fossil Fuel-Based Society
Our present industrial civilization relies on the consumption of enormous amounts of energy, much of it provided by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used not only in transportation and for generating electricity but are also the starting material of many other products of our daily lives, including such diverse products as plastics, pharmaceuticals, solvents, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and clothing.
Our continued reliance on fossil fuels will make it impossible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stop environmental problems such as global warming. It is clear that our present economic system will need a major shift toward effective alternatives, based on renewable energy sources and more efficient ways to use them.
The Social Costs of Fossil Fuels
For more than a century, burning fossil fuels has generated most of the energy required to propel our cars, power our businesses, and keep the lights on in our homes. Even today, oil, natural gas, & coal gas serve about 80% of our energy needs.
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Using fossil fuels has exacted an enormous toll on society and the environment, from air & water pollution to increasingly intense & unpredictable extreme weather events. A fossil fuel-based society faces major challenges, including climate change, water & air pollution, and natural resource depletion. These issues threaten human health, ecosystems, and global economic stability.
Land degradation
Unearthing, processing, & moving underground oil, natural gas, & coal deposits take an enormous toll on our landscapes and ecosystems. The fossil fuel industry leases vast stretches of land for infrastructure, such as wells, pipelines, & access roads, as well as facilities for processing, waste storage, and waste disposal.
In the case of strip mining, entire swaths of terrain, including forests and whole mountaintops, are scraped & blasted away to expose underground coal. Even after operations cease, the nutrient-leached land will never return to what it’s pre-mining condition.
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As a result, critical wildlife habitat is fragmented & destroyed, which affects breeding, migration, & other life cycle events, and increases the pressure on the planet’s biodiversity.
Water Pollution from Fossil Fuels
Coal, natural gas, & oil development pose myriad threats to our waterways and groundwater resources. Coal mining operations wash toxic runoff into streams, rivers, & lakes and dump vast quantities of unwanted rock & soil into streams.
Oil Spills & leaks during extraction & transport can pollute drinking water sources and jeopardize entire freshwater and ocean ecosystems. Hydraulic fracturing with its toxic fluids has also been found to contaminate drinking water.
Meanwhile, drilling & mining operations generate enormous volumes of wastewater, which can be laden with heavy metals & radioactive materials. Industries store this waste in open-air pits or underground wells that can leak or overflow into waterways and contaminate aquifers.
Climate Impacts
When we burn oil, natural gas, & coal, large quantities of carbon dioxide are produced, which traps heat in the atmosphere and leads to climate change. In the US, the burning of fossil fuels, particularly for the power & transportation sectors, accounts for about 75% of our carbon emissions.
Air pollution from Fossil Fuels
Air pollution is the leading environmental health threat to people worldwide. Fossil fuels emit harmful air pollutants long before they’re burned. Active oil & gas wells (and even the millions of orphaned & abandoned wells) can leak benzene and formaldehyde. Mining operations generate toxic airborne particulate matter.
Fossil fuels emit more than just carbon dioxide when burned. Coal-fired power plants are the largest US source of mercury emissions. These plants also emit arsenic & benzene, both known carcinogens, as well as particulate matter & sulfur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain. Meanwhile, fossil fuel–powered cars & trucks are the main contributors of poisonous carbon monoxide & nitrogen oxides, which produce smog on hot days.
Ocean acidification
When we burn oil, natural gas, & coal, the carbon dioxide that’s emitted makes the oceans more acidic. The world’s seas absorb as much as 30% of all man-made carbon emissions. As the acidity in our waters increases, the amount of calcium carbonate decreases, slowing growth rates, weakening shells, and imperiling entire food chains.
Geopolitical Instability
Economies that rely too much on a specific resource will experience price volatility and economic disruption as prices swing wildly based on global conflicts and supply chain disruptions. Competition for scarce oil reserves frequently triggers international wars and foreign policy tensions.
Building a Clean Energy Future
The path toward a clean energy future is looking rocky. In addition to pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement and abandoning commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the federal government has canceled clean energy subsidies and offshore wind & solar projects, rolled back clean vehicle standards, and opened up coastlines for offshore drilling. Pollution standards that had been set for power plants to reduce toxic air pollutants have been relaxed.
The good news is that we are not locked into a fossil fuel future. We’ve made major progress in scaling up renewable energy and energy efficiency over the past decade. Through technological advances and scaling up production, renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels in many cases. Over 90% of the newly-commissioned clean energy projects around the world are cheaper than their fossil fuel alternatives.
Meanwhile, energy efficiency is our cleanest, cheapest, and largest energy resource, contributing more to the nation’s energy needs over the past 40 years than oil, natural gas, coal, or nuclear power. US jobs in this sector number 2.2 million, double the number of workers in the entire fossil fuel industry.
It is up to states, cities, & communities to keep the momentum going. Two dozen states have committed to upholding the goals of the Paris Agreement, and many cities have also stepped up with their own climate action plans. Achieving a clean energy future will require sustained and coordinated policy efforts, stepped up commitments from the private sector, and the collective power of people on the ground, pushing for change.
More About Fossil Fuels
Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are all considered fossil fuels because they were formed from the fossilized, buried remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. Because of their origins, fossil fuels have a high carbon content.
Petroleum & Natural Gas
Petroleum (literally “rock oil” in Latin), is a liquid fossil fuel made up mostly of hydrocarbons. It is found in underground reservoirs, in the cracks, crevices, and pores of sedimentary rock, and in tar sands near the earth’s surface. It’s accessed by drilling or by strip mining (in the case of tar sands oil & oil shale).
Once extracted, oil is transported to refineries via supertanker, train, truck, and pipeline to be transformed into usable fuels such as gasoline, propane, kerosene, and jet fuel, as well as products such as plastics and paint. Petroleum products currently supply about 38 percent of US energy needs.
Composed mostly of methane, natural gas is generally considered either conventional or unconventional, depending on where it’s found. Conventional gas is located in porous & permeable rock beds or mixed into oil reservoirs and can be accessed via standard drilling.
Unconventional gas is essentially any form of gas that is too difficult or expensive to extract via regular drilling. Hydraulic fracturing is designed to extract oil or natural gas from unyielding rock. It involves pumping huge quantities of water mixed with chemicals & sand deep into a well at pressures high enough to fracture rock and enable the oil or gas to escape.
Thanks to increased energy efficiency and the growth of renewables, US oil consumption has stayed relatively level over the past two decades, despite the economy growing by 50%. Natural gas production, however, has experienced a decade long upswing, due in large part to advancements in horizontal drilling & hydraulic fracturing.
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The US has been the world’s top producer of natural gas since 2009, and also the largest consumer, meeting 36% of US energy needs. Because its extraction far exceeds domestic demand, the industry has ramped up its export trade. US exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) grew a staggering 450% between 2017 & 2022. The US is the world’s largest LNG exporter.
Coal
Coal is a solid, carbon-heavy rock that comes in four main varieties, differentiated largely by carbon content: lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, and anthracite. Nearly all coal burned in the US is sub-bituminous or bituminous. Found in abundance in states like Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wyoming, these coal types are middle of the pack in terms of carbon content and the heat energy they can produce. In terms of emissions, it’s the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.
Coal is extracted via two methods. Underground mining uses heavy machinery to cut coal from deep underground deposits, while strip mining removes entire layers of soil & rock to access coal deposits below. Strip mining accounts for about two-thirds of coal sourced in the US. Although both forms of mining are detrimental to the environment, strip mining is particularly destructive, uprooting and polluting entire ecosystems.
Coal and the power plants that burn it account for only about 16 percent of US electricity generation, less than half the amount from its peak in 2008. Cleaner, cheaper alternatives, including natural gas, renewables like solar and wind, make coal far less economically attractive, and demand for coal has fallen steadily since 2014.
