Greentalk

To: Governor of California, Jerry Brown

From: Alan Haryanto

Subject:

Date: September 10, 2015                                                      

Purpose                                                                                                    The purpose of this engineering memo is to give support to whether the extraction of fossil fuels should be carried on to provide energy for the state of California or support the development of efficient technologies and sustainable energy for the young generations. This memo will provide background on the current climate situation and how the extraction of fossil fuels have affected our earth.  

Summary                                                                                                       This engineering memo is set up to help provide the National Society of Engineers (NSE) with the possible causes and information regarding the drastic change in earth’s climate from the past decades. Furthermore it discusses why National Society of Engineers should focus more and support the development of efficient technologies. In addition it inspects at some possible relation between fossil fuels and our daily activities, and giving the idea of the carbon footprint that are recorded by experts starting from 1800s until present time. This entire memo will give the National Society of Engineers a better sense of how bad the earth’s condition and to give the idea and insight on which activity and project to support.                 

Discussion                                                                                                                 Our Earth has plenty amount of fossil fuels buried underground, and thousands of years ago society had discovered that fossil fuels are the main source of energy. Since then, people nowadays has develop a dependence upon the use of fossil fuels. This phenomenon leads to the drastic increase in the demand for fossil fuels, which leads to the increase amount of fossil fuel extracted from deep underneath the ground. This issue has been brought up many times by many experts and most people agree that of the demand of fossil fuel such as oil keeps on increasing, it might not be able to last for any longer. As a result, this issue has brought my attention back to the National Society of Engineers. NSE should not support the extraction of fossil fuel but instead they should relocated their fund more on developing new ideas and innovation for efficient technologies and sustainable energy generation. If society keeps on extracting fossil fuels, the amount of carbon emissions will eventually rises up and this will cause the ozone depletion to occur. Moreover, the extraction of fossil fuels has lead us to many different catastrophe, besides ozone depletion, fossil fuels use is responsible for 80% of CO2 emissions (Cunnigham, p. 215). This indicates that by extracting more fossil fuels the amount of carbon footprints are also gradually increasing. It is confirmed that since the year 1850 there are approximately 1500 gigatons of carbon emissions emitted, and as discussed by Dr. Eugene C. Cordero there are only 500 gigatons of carbon emissions remaining for us to safely emit with an increase of 2◦C. Besides that there are 3000 gigatons of carbon emission estimate reserves buried underneath the ground and if we keep on extracting fossil fuels and using it at the current rate, there will only be approximately 15-25 years before all ozone will be completely depleted. Last but not least Dr. Eugene C. Cordero mentions that electricity, transportation and food are also emitting carbon emission and it is very important for us to reduce all of these aspects. Even different types of electricity, transportation, and food can result in reducing the carbon emissions. Dr. Eugene C. Cordero gave burrito as an example of how variety of food emit different amount of carbon emissions. He discovered that beef burritos emit more carbon emissions that chicken burrito.