Here we go again: energy, resources- natural resources, renewable and non-renewable resources. Do these terms sound very familiar and if so by how far? If you wonder why again I am writing about this topic you may bear with me. Again, as I am learning about all these interesting stuff, I figured some topics are intense and important for us to explore them more. How are we able to fulfill our everyday needs by using the earth? How does everything like the ecosystem work perfectly to keep things in balance? How can the earth supply all we really need to exist? These are questions that may have floated into your mind at some point in time and although I can’t answer most of them, I can answer this: The earth is in fact fully equipped… So, how does it work?
Stay tuned, ‘RESOURCES’ is my key word here. There are so many different equally important components that make this earth work as it does and without some of these everything could fall apart. One of the biggest components are resources or to be more precisely, natural resources. A resource is something that is useful to a living being and natural resources occur naturally in the Earth that humans need or can exploit to make something else! Examples of natural resources are plants, animals, light, air, water, oil, natural gas, minerals, and fossil fuels, to mention few. The truth is we (people) need some of these natural resources to stay alive. Ever imagined how long you can survive without air!
Well many of the natural resources I mentioned can be more categorized.
- Category 1: There first type of resources I will touch base on is renewable resources. A renewable resource is a resource that regenerates naturally and can be used again. Such as; forests, sunshine, moving water, wind, and biomass.
- Forests – are renewable resources because they are part of the plant family who reproduce with their seeds. The way forests are exploited is by deforestation (when forests are cut down). This may be because those who cut the trees down need the wood or are clearing space for roads, buildings and/or for farming land. The bad things is, the trees will not have enough time to reproduce because the big trees you see in the local park or forest or in your school yard take 30 to hundreds of years to grow. Also trees are the lungs of the earth and they are being destroyed and if they do, what will become our home, the earth if the lungs needed to keep us alive, don’t function anymore?
- Category 2: The second resource is non-renewable resources. A non renewable resource is a resource that does not regenerate itself or exist in fixed amount. Once these resources are used up can hardly be replaced!! Examples include minerals and fossil fuels.
- Fossil Fuels – are decomposed organic matter that produces energy and heat when burned. However, when fossil fuels are burned, they release a gas that is the cause of Global warming and that is carbon dioxide. This is both bad for our health and the earth itself. The carbon dioxide could enter into the fields and ecosystems and kill plants and animals alike. It is also very harmful to those who have breathing problems such as asthma. Oil, uranium, coal and natural gas are examples of fossil fuels.
- Minerals – A mineral is an inorganic chemical body that consists of rocks. Examples include gold, copper, silver, diamonds and zinc among many more. Minerals can be very useful because they are very solid. If they are well taken care of they can last a very long time. The thing is, people throw out the appliances that they may or may not know have these minerals in them.
And then there is one category which is special and hardly known. Permanent resources. A permanent resource is a resource that regenerates at the same time as it is exploited. Therefore it is always present. We use permanent resources to produce proper energy such as hydroelectricity, solar energy and wind energy.
Overall, the earth is made up and is reach with all these resources and we are very lucky to have it all. We should be grateful and careful but many of us are not. Or maybe we don’t do our best towards the earth for the generation to come. We exploit too much, for example… we mine so much to get oil which is a non-renewable resource. Soon we might not have anymore because there is no way to get it back once it’s gone. We seem to think that oil powers almost everything, which is quite true but there is one resource that is permanent and very useful but we rarely ever use it and that is the SUN! Did you know that the energy that we get from the sun in an hour is the equivalent of years’ worth of the energy that is extracted from the earth? That means that if we used solar panels more often and use less of the resources that we will never get back, we could save our earth and get a lot of energy. There is so much we can do if we try and if we work together. Do your part!!
Serena Wambura