Innovation Vs Sustainability

Innovation and Sustainability

The two production and two consumption habits I have chosen are gas and oil. Both of these substances are not only used by humans, they have become a dependency. Even though alternative sources for both these products have been found, we as a race have refused to step into the alternative future of life without combustion.

Everyday we tear our planet up while we seek these resources. We drill, blast and erode our planet in search for more gas and oil. In fact, we have even started wars over this crude means of combustion. We spend billions of dollars on equipment and labor to pull these resources from our planet instead of letting it all go. The problem is, we are running out of both gas and oil. These substances are not in endless supply. Everyday new vehicles, buildings and military supplies are built that are dependent upon both gas and oil.

In the past few years different car dealerships have decided to branch out and build what is exceptionally economical, vehicles that run off of electricity instead of gas. Not so surprisingly, these vehicles are not in high demand. Electricity does not give the horsepower gas does and too many people have become used to the power a vehicle offers. On another note, it is conceivable to speculate that even if a vehicle was built that could run on water, the major oil and gas industries would not allow such a vehicle to be built. Considering the trillions of dollars that are tied up in both the oil and gas industry, it should not come to any major surprise that these kinds of vehicles are not in production.

Because we have become so dependent on crude oil and gas we have literally destroyed major parts of our planet. From the oil spills in the ocean, the ozone layer being destroyed and the threat of global warming you would think that as a race we would simply stop using gas and oil as our major resource, but we have not. We continue to excavate these substances from beneath our planet with minimal thought or concern to the damage we are doing.

The well is becoming empty. Do I have any real proof of this, no? But common sense tells me that we cannot simply hope not to run out of both gas and oil. Eventually the well must go dry, and considering the consumption use over the past 40 years it would not be a big surprise to find out that the well is running on empty (Pavlova, 1997).

As a race, we consume more oil and gas than we do food or water. We drive around in a state of ignorance, hoping that we do not run out of oil or gas within our own lifetimes. I do not doubt that we have enough gas and oil to last the next fifty years. What I do believe is, as a race, we must find and start utilizing other sources of energy or suffer the consequences of knowing that the future children will not have any means to survive.

The person is smart, the people are stupid. As individuals