China's thirst for industry and irrigation has combined with climate change to drain the aquifers, some of which hold fossil water that has lain undisturbed for millennia.
For example, how many gallons of water and fossil fuel does it take to produce and transport one gallon of corn-based ethanol?
Economic activities depend on access to ecological resources including water, biomass and fossil fuels.
Emily Baldry, five, from Chippenham, discovered the Rieneckia ammonite during a fossil hunt organised by the Cotswold Water Park Society on Sunday.
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From the perspective of displacing fossil-fuel use, solar thermal water heater systems are even more advantageous.
Sure, environmentalists will insist that more drilling in the U.S. will just continue our addiction to fossil fuels and will dirty up the air and water.
That is well above the base power load and the surge is supplied by less efficient fossil fuel power generators as well as some peak pumped water storage.
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And of course, reducing water consumption does not mitigate concerns about prolonging our reliance on fossil fuels or the inherently ugly nature of extractive industry, especially for local neighbors.
Green Party spokeswoman Jenny Jones urged the government to be more courageous in moving Britain from a "fossil fuel culture" to sustainable energy sources like wind, solar and water.
Inefficient energy use is what's bad for the economy, as is the collateral damage in terms of pollution, erosion of water resources, and international security that accompanies old-school fossil fuel and nuclear solutions on the supply side.
Opponents of the method, however, are saying that the conversion process uses great amounts of fossil fuels and that it harms marine life through its vast duct system whereby it pipes water into the desalination facilities.
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Among the energy-saving options, two promising technology switches are the electrification of transportation (electric vehicles can be about four times as energy-efficient as standard fossil-fuel vehicles) and the use of electric-powered heat pumps to deliver winter heating and hot water (heat pumps can be four times as energy-efficient as standard heaters).
Meanwhile, solar energy costs would be competitive today with fossil fuels if all of the external costs of the latter were counted, such as the effects on air and water quality, and ultimately on human health, Orts points out.
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