Dear Editor:
Mother Nature is one tough lady; you live or die by her rules, and she doesn't tolerate ignorance as an excuse for what might happen to you. It's always your decision!
One of the most significant abuses of her rules today is the worldwide greed and consumption of energy. But, under her rules, mankind cannot create new energy. All we can do is change one form of existing energy into another more useful form.
Unfortunately, under her rules, there is always a detrimental loss known as "thermal efficiency." When converting one form of energy into another, you always lose a significant portion of the original form of energy. For example, changing coal energy into steam to make electricity, the best possible thermal efficiency is only some 30 to 40 per cent. This means that some 60 per cent of the coal's energy goes to waste heat and air pollution.
The realities of thermal efficiency were graphically illustrated by Lord Kelvin of England in 1850 and are still the subject of billions of dollars in engineering research to try to improve it. Nevertheless, today's nuclear power plants apparently have a thermal efficiency of only some two per cent, and the radioactive, polluting waste has to be adequately and safely stored for hundreds of years.
The world's energy resources like coal, crude oil, natural gas, wood, wind, water power, tidal or solar, all have serious limitations. Once most of these are gone, they are gone forever; like the empty gas tank in your car.
Today, one of the most significant demonstrations of this detrimental characteristic is what is now happening in the United States of America.
Right after the Second World War, the U.S.A. launched itself into a whole new lifestyle based on higher energy consumption of gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, natural gas and electricity. However, this significant increase in consumption quickly depleted its own local resources and it had to resort to higher levels of more expensive imports. Today the U.S.A. alone consumes some 25 per cent of the entire world's demand for crude oil.
The ever-increasing use of the automobile required a greater demand for roads and expressways, which also resulted in the disappearance of a lot of city public transit systems. Also, the significant increase in the demand for electricity made necessary the fast building of large coal-fired power plants. Today some 75 per cent of U.S. electricity comes from coal-fired polluting power plants.
In the 1960s and '70s, the United States outsourced most of the basic industrial manufacturing, such things as clothing, electronics, auto, etc., to China, Japan, India and elsewhere, and now local industries are not there any more to support its citizens.
What has happened in the United States is a graphic warning to all nations of the world that all forms of energy are limited and that how you consume them you do at your own peril.
As our future unfolds, it is becoming more and more obvious that the United States is looking hard at its closest (and friendliest) neighbour, Canada, to help solve its energy problems and its consequential financial problems. Already several large U.S. firms are financing our energy resources such as tar sands and natural gas - all of which have limited life spans. Their subsequent depletion will have a significant impact on all future Canadian citizens.
Both crude oil and natural gas are now used in many chemical industries, and it would be in Canada's best interests to provide Canadian jobs in these important industries instead of just exporting these resources.
Another concern is the availability of adequate supplies of drinking water and food - because of drought.
Mother Nature is one tough lady, and we must abide by her rules - or else.
Joe Foster West Vancouver
