Drema Rollins, age 10, of Powellton, West Virginia, for her question:
What does this energy crisis mean?
Imagine a world without enough electricity to run TVs and refrigerators, to light our homes and cities and run the factories that produce the multitude of items for our daily lives. That would be a crisis indeed. Our present power plants are giving us all they can but every year we require more and still more.
The present energy crisis gives us a choice. Either we find ways to produce more electric power or do our work by muscle power. This sounds like quite a problem. But let's remember that human beings are mighty smart, especially when it comes to inventing easy ways to do their chores. It took about 50 years to set up the stupendous power systems that supply our electrical energy. There are enough smart people around to set up bigger systems and better ones.
However, naturally, there are a few problems. The worst one is people who believe in magic. They expect the job to be done this minute, just by waving a magic wand. The sensible folk expect it to take maybe 20 or 30 years, or even longer. They also expect that the job will be done better and require more work than we spent to set up our present system.
We know that our old style electric plants pollute the world's air and water.
Most of them burn coal or oil fuels to boil the water that makes the steam that turns the generators that send electric energy surging through the (wires. These fossil fuels give off polluting chemicals and they won't last much longer. True, some generators are turned by waterfalls or man made dams. Falling water does not pollute the world, but there is not enough of it to provide all the labor saving electric energy we need.
Actually our present energy crisis gives us a chance to invent cleaner ways to generate electricity and enough of it to do more work for lots more people. Some experts favor building many new nuclear power plants. Others argue that these cause hot water pollution and nobody knows what to do with their radioactive wastes.
It so happens that the earth has several suggestions to help us along until we complete the perfect job. Some experts are seeking ways to harness the enormous power of the tossing, tides. But at present, part of the answer seems the buried heat used by showy geysers, hot springs and smoky fumeroles. In California, this geothermal energy already is used to turn several generators. Other hot spots could provide enough energy to last us for ages.
However, most likely the future world will get its labor saving energy from the sun. Every day it sheds plenty of surplus energy on the earth. Inventors are striving to make small solar power units for homes and farms. On the sunny slopes of France, they do this on a very grand scale. A huge building of curved mirrors concentrates solar heat and focuses it to turn electric generators.
Post likely the energy crisis will be solved by all sorts of devices that convert our unlimited supplies of free, non polluting solar radiation. Another promising source of energy is the wind. Giant propellers facing the wind and attached to a generator can generate electricity for many homes.