Here in the United States, we are being purposely led astray regarding what the rest of the world is doing on behalf of environmental issues. The use of renewable energy sources is catching on worldwide, but we remain focused on non-renewable and expensive fossil fuels. It takes a tremendous, nearly unexplainable amount of energy to power the world, more so each day.
Some of our political leaders realize the problem, and are actually talking about it. Not that long ago, however, who would have ever predicted that California’s governor would be driving a hybrid car? Along with driving a hybrid, Schwarzenegger likewise got a $3,000,000,000 solar energy bill passed, proving himself as green as they come. The federal government, however, has been falling back far behind, particularly the Bush administration, what with their ties to the big oil companies. They had a hard time even admitting there was even an issue, much less doing anything about it.
This appears to give most people the idea that things are the same in the rest of the world, but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s simply that the US chooses not to take part. In Victoria, Australia, they have made a commitment to use renewable sources for 60 percent of all of its energy by the year 2016. Think about that being tried in the United States, and what it could do. Germany is a leader also; they presently are leading the way in both solar and wind energy utilization. Germany plans are to have renewable energy as the source for 20 percent of their total power supply by 2020. Norway has no crude oil powered energy sources, and uses 99 percent renewable resources. This has allowed them to become the 3rd largest exporter of fossil oil globally, while they import none.
Brazil could have fascinating political situations, but it has become South America’s clean energy giant. Their aim is to run their entire country’s transportation demands completely on ethanol eventually. Because ethanol can be produced using sugar cane, it costs more or less half as much as the average petrol. If the United States did the same thing, the savings on fossil oil would be close to 2 trillion dollars. Those are just a few examples of the steps being made in the rest of the world to clean up our planet.
Thus nowadays is the time to go for sustainable programs such as solar power panels, solar thermal or wind power as they provide substantial long term gains.If you opt for beneath the surface with geo or above the ground there are several geo thermal and solar heating companies about britain and Europe today to assist in the needs you have as the solar hot water engineering is not as revolutionary as it used to be.
In America they lead other countries in the production of greenhouse gases, being the world’s largest users of oil. The world can continue to do their part, but without the people in the US doing their part, the process will never be complete. As long as the US refuses to accept there is a problem, the problem will not go away.