Josh Krause
12/12/11
AP English Hove
th
Sustainability, in present-day terms, is usually associated with, the more popular, topic of “sustainable development”. A United Nations conference, also known as the
Brundtland Commision of 1987, formally defined sustainable development as
“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainable development is most popular now because our current generations are advancing so fast that sometimes we forget to preserve the needs that our future generations depend on; oil, for example, is a natural resource that is persistently questioned as to how our future generations will conserve this precious fuel. Transportation has become an inevitability on such an enormous planet like ours, but the transportation that we depend on now-a-days is fueled by an un-renewable resource that we cannot afford to lose.
The frustration of distance has become insignificant due to the introduction of the automobile. No longer did it matter how far an individual lived from their place of work, because with a car the 10 mile walk became a 5 minute car ride. Our past generations had introduced a revolutionizing advancement in transportation, but they failed to recognize the troubles of sustainable advancement. Those before us underestimated the amount of oil that truly lied beneath the earth’s surface. As we slowly run out of this “black gold”, scientists are frantic to develop alternative fuel sources.
There are numerous alternative fuel sources, of which most are mixed with the gasoline that we so dangerously cling to, but one stands above the rest. Electricity is a renewable resource that will forever be at the disposal of mankind. Ever since the

discovery of electricity, the use of the resource has encouraged the human race to advance like never before. The electric car was first developed in the mid-19 th century, but has been revived due to the current energy crisis. Now, we are starting to see mass production of electric vehicles. Electricity is both environmentally friendly and cost efficient. Without a need for the diminishing supply of fossil fuels, the costs of the copious electrical fuel source will be exponentially less than that of gasoline. Also, electricity will have no effect on the surrounding environment because electrical power isn’t burned off and there are no emissions.
We are a clock-work society today and time is everything. This is another reason why we still depend on gasoline as a fuel source. We have a ready supply of it with a minimal refill time. Refueling an electric vehicle, on the other hand, is a time-consuming process. As opposed to the mere minutes it takes to refill a car at the gas station, recharging an electric car can take hours. Another anxiety that our ever-expanding communities struggle with is the range of an electric car. You can only drive so far with an electric motor and when the charge runs out, there’ll be a long wait just to get back on the road.
With automobiles, we don’t worry too much over distance. If we run out of our precious oil and all we are left with is our low-mileage electric vehicles, our major city infrastructures would collapse. Families would not be able to get to work and back with a low-mileage charge, the companies would lose their employment force, and eventually the economy would collapse. This is a radical conclusion, but there is still a good amount of fossil fuels left that we can use until the development of a more distance-friendly, electric vehicle.

Our future generations depend on the natural resources that our planet provides and the use of fossil fuels in our cars creates a pollution that can kill these natural resources. Electric cars have no emissions; therefore, no pollution. They are environmentally friendly and will ultimately support the future generations and their need for natural resources. I support the use of electricity as a fuel source and as a nature preservative and as an individual, I could go out and purchase an environmentallyfriendly vehicle as such. In the future, I can continue to support the solution to fossil fuels with anti-gasoline campaigns that explain to the public how electric cars could help stabilize the down spiral that our fuel-source market has taken.
Thinking of sustainable development, the type of fuel we use as a community will greatly affect the needs of our future generations pertaining to the preservation of natural resources. Transportation has become a need of modern-day society and cannot simply be stopped, but it can be improved. This is exactly what the alternative fuel source of electricity is doing. In order to preserve the needs of future generations, we must first take the necessary steps to improve ours.
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