Diagnostic Essay

Caileb Newby

English

Mrs. Anthony

January 23, 2013

Wind Power Solution to Global Energy Crisis

            The global problem of running out of energy to sustain the world-wide populations’ needs has scientists looking for alternative renewable energy sources that have the lowest impact on the environment.  The fastest growing type of sustainable energy is wind turbines. It has become America’s most famous landscape of power. Wind power seems like a perfect solution to the energy crisis because it creates no global impact, contaminates no soil, and leaves no permanent or dangerous waste.

            In an article in the Journal of Geographic Review, Martin J. Pasqualetti describes wind power as a realistic solution to the worlds growing energy need. He also brings up the dilemma of the costs of creating these turbines with low environmental impacts, and the cheaper initial costs of burning nuclear and fossil fuels with a high environmental impact. This debate has an easy solution when you think long term. The turbines will eventually pay for themselves and the reward of lowering the human population’s impact of the environment makes the investment worth it.

            The only flaw of Wind power is the space that the turbines take up which led to public opposition.  The public view of wind turbines is that it takes up too much space and it ruins the scenery of the landscape in those locations. According to Mr. Pasqualetti, “Modern development of wind power has been called a new way to rape the countryside. “ (Morality, Space, and the Power of Wind-Energy Landscapes) The public should change their way of thinking to consider all the advantages to this clean energy.

            When power is extracted from fossil fuels it must first be refined, which takes time and money. A facility is built to refine the fossil fuels into different grades of oil and gasoline. In wind power, there is no refinery process which makes the electricity more efficient to produce. The turbines can be set up and taken down easily and can be placed in distant locations far away from populated areas. Currently fossil fuels supply 85-90 percent of the nation’s electricity demands.  And according to Paqualetti, “An area about the size of New Jersey – could satisfy 20 percent of the nation’s demand for electricity. “ (Morality, Space, and the Power of Wind-Energy Landscapes)

            It is no question that the world’s supply of fossil fuels will eventually run out. When this happens we will have to start finding other ways to supply our electricity needs. We need to think about the future and choose energy that has less of a global impact on the environment. Wind power is a great solution to this problem because of its efficiency, non-polluting, and renewable characteristics.

Sources:

Pasqualetti, Martin J. "Morality, Space, and the Power of Wind-Energy Landscapes." Journal of Geographic Review 90.3 (2000): 381-94. JSTOR. Web. 21 Jan. 2013.