american history 3010

we live in a consumer culture. the byproduct of our culture is that we demand our products and services to be provided as quickly and inexpensively as possible. in return, producers choose their methods in order to maximize the amount of a product that demand entails. in many industries this means turning to the latest technological advances, streamlining production to an efficiency unattainable with manual labor alone. in others it means perfecting a tried and true method. when the system works it leads to innovations that catapult an industry into the future. unfortunately, sometimes the product itself can hold an society back. one product that exemplifies this problem is energy, or specifically, energy production. though technology has advanced exponentially in the past 100 years, the way we power it has remained largely the same. coal, which has been used for hundreds of years to provide heat and power is still the most widely used power source in the nation. petrol, another post-centennial fossil fuel, is still the standard for powering automotive, aeronautical, and marine vehicles. despite their effectiveness, the side effects of their use outweigh the benefits. though there is ample research to suggest that the burning of fossil fuels is causing considerable damage to the atmosphere, new technologies have been slow to develop or be adopted by the industry. it is also a well known fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource. knowing this, fossil fuel producers have been inclined to steadily raise prices to compensate for the diminishing supply. when one considers that alternative energy sources have been in development since the 1950s, and have existed in principle since the early 19th century, it's safe to assume that future generations will view our willingness to accept such an archaic and inefficient practice with bewilderment.