Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ter sources, which are basic indicators for human well-being, hygiene, and health in general, went up as
well.
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Developing countries in the sub-Saharan and East Asian region have been particularly impressive; East
Asian developing countries now have an average life expectancy at birth of seventy-three years.There is
much credit to be given to industrial-scale energy, primarily, as we have seen in previous chapters, from
fossil fuels. Without a large amount of affordable energy, the vast majority of the people whose lives were
drastically improved in recent decades would still sit in the dark mourning their dead children and friends,
if they were ever born in the first place.
Many energy-intensive technologies influence our overall health in a positive way. Food production,
modern medicine, and sanitation require cheap, plentiful, reliable energy to make them available and af-
fordable to as many people as possible.
All of this is part of the big picture of fossil fuels' impact on our lives, health, and environment.
To summarize, fossil fuels improve our environment by, among other things, empowering us to fight
the otherwise overwhelming health hazards of nature. Like all forms of energy, they have risks and by-
products, but they also give us the energy and resources to minimize, neutralize, or even reverse those
harms. More broadly, if health is our concern, fossil fuels underlie the food and medical care systems that
have created the longest life expectancy in history.
Once again, we see that an alleged negative of fossil fuels, its impact on environmental quality, is in
fact a tremendous positive.
We have a choice to make. Will we use fossil fuels to maximize human well-being in all areas of life,
including our environment? Or will we continue to see fossil fuels only through negative glasses, blind to
the tremendous benefits that have come so far, and the tremendous ones that can come in the future?
