Chapter 15 - Playing Chicken with the Apocalypse

No matter what you do, the world as we know it is going to end. Well isn’t that depressing? After reading this article I wanted to become really indignant and say that things are a lot better than Sumner and Heinberg are making them out to be, but just as I started to write this, I noticed that my air conditioning was broken and it’s 95 degrees outside. After relocating to the much more comfortable air conditioned apartment of my best friend, I realized that maybe, just maybe, things are as bad as they seem in this article. I realized that maybe I am a little too reliant on the cheap energy that is (or was) fueling my air conditioning, because the thought of sitting in the sweltering heat was a little too unbearable for me. And maybe if my parents, my grandparents, and I weren’t so reliant on cheap energy to make us comfortable at all times, it wouldn’t be 95 degrees right now.

But I’d like to be a little more optimistic about the future than this article was. I’d like to believe that if we start making changes now and really embrace this whole “going green” thing, then maybe the future of the earth has a brighter outlook. But I guess as Sumner said, that’s really all we can do. It’s human nature to believe that things can get better.

All that being said, this article (and my broken air conditioning) has really opened my eyes to the importance of “going green”. Solving the energy crisis must the number one issue of our generation, and since we take so much from this earth, it’s not much to ask that we give a little back. I believe that things can get better, but we have got to start making changes in the way we live now. We have to find alternative sources of energy before all of the earth’s natural resources are completely tapped and we're out of options. Our future and the future of our children and grandchildren depend on it.