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There is no shortage of energy on the planet
The energy that reaches the earth from the sun is about 35,000 more than all the energy that humans are currently using. Not only that, but the sun’s energy is 100% natural and 100% clean. There is also an abundance of geothermal energy.
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Energy is not the problem. Ordered energy is
Since there is no shortage of energy on the planet, energy is not a problem. Getting useable energy is the real issue. While people keep finding more and more reserves of fossil fuels, it takes more and more energy to get the energy from those reserves. At the same time, new technologies make it cheaper to get the energy from new reserves.
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The crisis is about environmental energy policy, not energy
Solar power is just one of the examples. There’s no shortage or solar energy, so there is no solar energy crisis. To harness the power of the sun, people need machines that convert photons into ordered energy. The creation of such machines usually involves doing much harm to the environment and that’s what environmental energy policies are about.
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It takes energy to produce energy
People use bigger amounts of energy to extract and refine new energy than they do for anything else. When you plug a lamp into an electric outlet, you tap into an extremely complex system that includes coal-burning plants, railroads, turbines, electric meters and so on.
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Energy politics is complicated
Energy is money and energy is power. For this reason, there is a lot of politics that comes into play when governments develop energy policies. In democratic societies such as the United States, people have an opportunity to reshape energy policy and energy usage.
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To grow, societies need energy
History shows that societies need energy to expand and develop. Societies that can’t create enough energy simply can’t sustain themselves. This means that governments need to allow for more energy creation and expand the availability of inexpensive energy if they want their respective countries to grow.
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Alternative sources of energy are good for the United States
Developing more alternative sources of energy means importing less fossil fuels from other countries, which leads to energy independence, control, and more stability.
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Alternative sources of energy can be distributed
This means that alternative sources of energy can be located in a huge number of places on a micro level. For example, if most households of the United States were meeting at least a part of their energy needs by using solar panels, then one large event disrupting the import of fossil fuels would have much less impact on the country.
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Renewable energy is not necessarily good for the environment
Technically speaking, wood is renewable energy. Burning wood can be very inefficient. Some other types of renewable energy may require equipment that uses a lot of energy to produce and polluted the environment, too.
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Sustainable energy can run the planet in perpetuity
Sustainable forms of energy, such as solar energy, can run the ecosystem of the planet forever. Probably the most important idea behind sustainable energy is that using it does not hurt future generations and the well-being of people, other living organisms, and the planet.
