Читать книгу Climate Change For Dummies - Elizabeth May - Страница 17

When you burn fossil fuels, such as coal and oil (named fossil fuels because they’re composed of ancient plant and animal material), they release vast amounts of GHGs (largely, but not exclusively, carbon dioxide), which trap heat in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are also a limited resource — meaning that humanity can’t count on them over the long term because eventually they’ll just run out.

The fossil fuel that produces the most GHG emissions is coal, and burning coal to produce electricity is the major source of coal-related GHGs. The second-worst offender is using gasoline and diesel for transportation, followed by burning oil to generate heat and electricity. In fact, if people could replace the coal-fired power plants around the world and switch away from the internal combustion engine, humanity would have most of the problem licked. This switch is happening now, more and more quickly, but industries that have been built on the fossil fuel bonanza, and their supportive governments and bankers, continue to delay the inevitable progress. (Check out Chapter 4 for more fossil fuel info, Chapter 13 for the scoop on energy alternatives, and Chapter 17 for an introduction to the disruption expected and feared by those industries.)