Saving the World: One Solar Panel at a Time

In our glorious planet that we call home, environmental problems have become very real and relevant on a daily basis. As humans living on Earth, we must take immediate responsibility for our actions that have negative affects on this planet. Through our high demands of energy, we have brought upon various problems with our own environment. Our need for immediate energy supplied by fossil fuels hurts not only our environment now but will affect our future generations environment as well. By investing in renewable energies we can take small steps to getting our environmental issues back on track. Solar power in particular is the most accessible and beneficial energy in the renewables economy today. By first analyzing what these environmental problems are, we can take the next step into investigating what we can do to help out our planet. Specifically, in the United States, there has been an exponential increase in use of electricity over the past few decades. With technology advancing, everyone feels the need to stay up to standards. But, what comes with these new technologies is not as beneficial to the earth as they are to us. The United States Environmental Protection Agency recently posted a “Guide to Purchasing Green Power” which explains that our electricity is mostly made through fossil or nuclear fuels that harm not only our environment but ourselves as well. Some examples of fossil fuels are coal, natural gas and petroleum. These electricity techniques give off lots of pollution and significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions (2). Looking specifically at coal, there are many ways in which it causes environmental issues. Herman Daly explains that to retrieve the coal, miners must take the coal out of the earth, which can leave the surface with detrimental issues. The leftover rock that was extruded with the coal is now contaminated and left in piles, which