Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Most of Earth's surface is covered with water. The problem is that most of it is naturally in a chemical
state unusable for our high standards and purposes. Most of the water is saltwater in the oceans. Most of
the fresh water is trapped in massive ice sheets in places like Antarctica or Greenland. Some is part of
a large water cycle of clouds and precipitation. Some portion is naturally “poisoned” brackish water of
low quality in soil layers deep below the surface, containing too much salt and too many metals and other
chemicals to be of any use without energy-intensive treatment. Nature does not deliberately or consistently
produce “drinking water” able to meet a rigorous set of human health specifications.
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We need to transform naturally dangerous or unusable water into usable water—by moving usable wa-
ter, purifying unusable water, or desalinating seawater. And that takes affordable energy.
If you were to turn on your faucet right now, in all likelihood you could fill a glass with water that you
would have no fear of drinking. Consider how that water got to you: It traveled to your home through a
complex network of plastic (oil) or copper pipes originating from a massive storage tank made of metal
and plastic. Before it ever even got to the distribution tank, your water went through a massive, high-en-
ergy treatment plant where it was treated with complex synthetic chemicals to remove toxic substances
like arsenic or lead or mercury. Before that, the water would have been disinfected using chlorine, ozone,
or ultraviolet light to kill off any potentially harmful biological organisms. And to make all these steps
work efficiently, the pH level of the water has to be adjusted, using chemicals like lime or sodium hydrox-
ide.
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Natural water is rarely so usable. Most of the undeveloped world has to make do with natural water, and
the results are horrifying. Billions of people have to get by using water that might contain high concentra-
tions of heavy metals, dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas (which produces a rotten-egg smell), and countless
numbers of waterborne pathogens that still claim millions of lives each year.
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It's a major victory for any
person who gains access to the kind of water we take for granted every day—a victory that fossil fuels
deserve a major part of the credit for.
ERADICATING DISEASE
Potentially the worst, deadliest force in an environment is disease—the greatest predator of man. Some
estimates have put the total number of human deaths caused by the bubonic plague, smallpox, and malaria
alone at around one billion people.
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While in the modern world we are taught to focus on any little particle
emitted into the air by a power plant, we are not taught to appreciate the incomparably worse
diseases
those power plants have helped us get out of our air or made us safe from through mass production of
pharmaceuticals and vaccinations.
Disease is on the decline—in large part because of the increased wealth that exists in the world and
the increased
time
for scientific research—both products of cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. For example,
Figure 6.2 illustrates the worldwide trend for tuberculosis, a major killer and one of the few diseases that
is reported with any kind of consistency.
The tuberculosis trend just begins to indicate what is possible. Developed countries can use energy and
technology to transform their environment to be totally rid of diseases that ravage underdeveloped coun-
tries today and that once ravaged all countries when they were underdeveloped.
