The world is torn by whether we should increase drillings for new sources of fossil fuels. Some people champion this crude notion justified by the current increasing demand while I personally believe that the environmental disadvantages far prevail the preceived positiove outcomes. As this demand increases, so does the chance of optimizing better replacements like solar energy relegating fossil fuesl to history.
Combustion of fossil fuels is environmentally hazardous, let alone encouragement of their further extraction. It has become a common yet controversial topic that fossil fuels drive our planet towards a climate change. Politicians and businesses are filing their pockets with oil money while polar bears approach extinction, or glaciers melt away. To illustrate, since the Industrial Revolution, the planet Earth has experienced a increase of 1.2 degree celcius in its average temperature from which scientists have forecast serious outcomes ranging from drowned cost-line cities, to extinction of many species. Therefore, many environmentalists have tried to inform others to reduce their carbon foot print in order to create a safer biosphere for our children. If we were to increase the exploitation of these energy sources, not only would we increase their usage, bult also pave the way for prospective catastrophes.
Despite the aforementioned repercussions, some people are stuck at a present bias, as cognitive scientists call it, justifying expanding of the fossil fuels market by stablizing the economy and ignoring its calamitous consequences plaguing future generations. Indeed, we do need fossil fuels if we want to survive. Having been dependent on them for so long, people seek new ways to provide sufficient resources, stabalizing a market that would crash the global economy otherwise. For instance, every time we hear a oilfield has been sucked dry, the crude oil price will rise to a new high. Hence, authorities try to cater for the demend in the market by any means possible, preventing a casscade of price hikes. Replacing these cursed fuels is far from straightfoward, otherwise governments would substitute them at a glimpse. This process takes time and we have to continue our drilling in order to survive.
The bottom line is that we are using fossil fuels, daunted by the fact that what might happen to our offspring and legacy. While some people like to enjoy the bias that makes us blind to the future, prompting them to increase drillings and explorations, I contend that those are in the wrong side of history. We are silently killing the future for our children and other creatures if we continue to let our greed decides for us. Therefore, serious measures have to be taken lest we further harm the biosphere.