I. Watch the cartoon and fill in the blank spaces using the extra info if necessary.

Post Carbon Institute presents The Ultimate Roller Coaster Ride An abbreviated history of fossil fuels

It all started with a 1) _____. Wait, we don't have to go back that far. The Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. No, still too far. Try this: It's the 2) _____. People in Britain run out of firewood and start burning coal, but they use up the coal on the ground. Miners dig deep. Coal mines fill with water. 3) _________ invents a coal-burning steam engine to pump out water so miners can keep digging. 4) ____________ makes it practical for other uses. Now we have ingredients for the Industrial Revolution fossil fuels and a way to put them to work. All hell breaks loose. Coal miners bog down lugging coal. Rails make it easier. Rails and steam engine combined make a railroad. 5) ___________ makes the first electric motor. 6) ___________ invents alternating current. Soon, utility companies start burning coal to generate electricity. Meanwhile, 7) ____________ drills the first Rock Oil well in Pennsylvania and 8) __________ builds an automobile running on petroleum. Coal tar and oil are turned into industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals that prolong life. More population growth. 9) __________ start oil fueled aviation. 10) ____________ make fertilizer from fossil fuels. Fertilizer and oil powered tractors expand food production, feeding more people. World War I is the first fossil fueled conflict. Then comes World War II, giving us guided missiles and atom bombs. In between is a great depression partly caused by 11) ____________. Powered assembly lines make products faster than people need them. Advertising executives invent consumerism to soak up overproduction. It's the 1950's. Advertisers use television to hook new generations of consumers. In the 70's there's an oil shock. Everyone's shocked to realize how dependent they are on oil. With the energy crisis, the environmental movement is born. But oil prices fall and everyone forgets energy shortages. There's a showdown between market and planned economies. Market wins. Goodbye evil 12) ___________. Politicians decide the market will solve everything. Personal computers arrive. Globalization takes over when the market notices labor is cheaper in 13) ________. Suddenly everyone has a cell phone. But world oil production stalls out. China's now burning half the world's coal to make export products. But where will China get more coal and oil to fuel more growth? Environmental problems everywhere! Rising 14) ___________ lead to record heat waves, floods, droughts. Oceans acidify. Top soil erodes by 25 billion tons a year from industrial agriculture. Ancient forests disappear. 15) _______ go extinct at a thousand times normal rates. Fresh water's scarce or polluted. Oil companies drill in miles of sea water because the easy oil is gone. But a deep water oil platform explodes and fouls the Gulf of Mexico. Manufacturing moves to polluting countries where labor is cheap while the US becomes a casino. The financial sector is forty percent of the economy! But Wall Street is over-leveraged. Banks fail. Unemployment soars. 16) ____________! The economy is on the verge of collapse! Ok, present time. It's amazing how far we've come in two hundred years. Just three human lifetimes from the beginning of industrialism until now. But where are we headed? We can't keep doubling human population. We can't keep 18) ___________ in the atmosphere. We can't keep 17) ___________. We can't keep growing population and consumption or basing our economy on 19) ___________. We can't just print more money to solve the debt crisis. It's been an exhilarating ride but there are limits. No, it's not the end of the world but we have to do four things fast. Learn to live without fossil fuels. Adapt to the end of economic growth as we've known it. Support seven billion humans and stabilize population at a 20) ____________, and deal with our legacy of environmental destruction. In short, we have to live within nature's budget of 21) ____________ at rates of natural replenishment. Can we do it? We have no choice! Alternative energy sources are important but none can fully replace fossil fuels in the time we have. Also, we've designed and built our 22) _____________ for transport, electricity and farming to suit oil, coal and gas. Changing to different energy sources will require us to redesign cities, manufacturing processes, health care and more. We'll also have to rethink some of our cultural values. None of our global problems can be tackled in isolation and many cannot be fully solved. We have to prepare for business as unusual. Our best goal is 23) ___________, the ability to absorb shocks and keep going. If we do nothing, we still get to a post-carbon future but it will be 24) ________. However, if we plan the transition, we can have a world that supports robust communities of healthy, creative people and ecosystems with millions of other 25) _________. One way or the other, we're in for the ride of a lifetime. Understand the issues and pitch in. It's all hands 26) _______.

Extra info

Thomas Newcomen (shortly before 24 February 1664 – 5 August 1729) created the first practical steam engine for pumping water, the Newcomen steam engine. He was an ironmonger by trade and a Baptist lay preacher by calling. He was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England, near a part of the country noted for its tin mines. Flooding was a major problem, limiting the depth at which the mineral could be mined.

James Watt (19 January 1736 – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.

Michael Faraday (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include that of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. He is best known for his contributions to the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. Tesla's patents and theoretical work helped form the basis of wireless communication and radio. His many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism were based on Michael Faraday's theories of electromagnetic technology.

Edwin Drake. The most important oil well ever drilled was in the middle of quiet farm country in northwestern Pennsylvania in 1859. For this was one of the first successful oil wells that was drilled for the sole purpose of finding oil. Known as the Drake Well, after "Colonel" Edwin Drake, the man responsible for the well, it began an international search for petroleum, and in many ways eventually changed the way we live.

Carl Daimler produced the first lightweight high-speed gasoline engine (using a surface carburetor and open- tube ignition) in 1883.

The Wright brothers (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who were credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.

Haber was a professor in Karlsruhe when he demonstrated the feasibility of ammonia synthesis in 1909. Bosch, an engineer at BASF in Ludwigshafen, then overcame some unprecedented engineering problems associated with the enormous pressure required by the process. Commercial production started in 1913. Within a few decades, the super- exponential effect on the world's population became obvious (right).