The chief disadvantage of EV’s is that they usually can travel no more than 100 miles before their batteries must be charged (Harverdink, 1). While on the other side I only need to fill up the gas tank every 200 miles. Now, if you’ve ever been to Sitka, Alaska then of course you realize that from one end of the island to the next it is only about 14 miles, which is just the main road. There are all sorts of smaller roads that lead to more houses and stores. Being a teenager like myself, in a small town all that you can do is cruise around to kill some time. My boyfriend and I pretty much drive 100 miles in a day. Just from going back and forth and back and forth. Then we at least have one more day of doing that before we have to fill up the tank again. So for me, I think that it is better to have a gas car rather than electric.
I think gas powered vehicles are better because they function better when the weather gets cold. Cold weather hurts EV battery performance. When the outside heat falls below freezing, usable range drops to 20 miles or less making the EV practically unusable in cold weather climates (Peters, 3). We live in Alaska so the winters here are pretty much freezing or below so an EV here probably wouldn’t be good in the wintertime. Also in the cold weather it makes the charging time a lot longer than it would’ve been if it were warm out.
Drinking Water Scarcity and Conservation
During times when many of us have our minds on matters conceivably much more critical than environmental ones, it is difficult to concentrate on the more mundane matters of clean drinking water and clean air. Unfortunately, while our nation’s attention seems fully consumed with the whereabouts of terrorists, water and air continues to be overused and/or contaminated. In reflecting on this odd state of affairs, we begin to understand how easily it is for us to forget about one of the basic necessities of humanity — clean drinking water.
Considering that water constitutes about 60 percent of our body weight, it is not surprising that it is a critical resource to human beings. (Even larger percentages of water are found various parts of the body: the human brain (70 percent); blood (82 percent); and, lungs (90 percent).) Given its material chemical importance, it is no wonder that we have to replenish our individual water content on a regular basis. On a collective basis we also need huge volumes of water to ”feed” our agricultural needs, such as corn, soybeans, cows, etc. Seeing how reliant humans are upon water, it would appear that we would be much more informed about its distribution and availability.
On a global basis fresh water, or drinking water, makes up only a very small amount of all water. Most water on Earth is in the oceans (97 percent). The remaining portion (~3 percent) is in frozen (in glaciers) or is below the land surface, i.e., groundwater found in aquifers. Amazingly all the water in lakes, inland seas, rivers, and the atmosphere amounts to only 0.023 percent (or two parts per ten-thousand) of all the water on our planet. Of the fresh drinking water available to us, 72 percent is frozen, which leaves…
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…ter for irrigating nonfood crops with great success (Gleick). Lastly, a few nations, especially those with very limited access to groundwater, have made great strides in the process of desalination (i.e., the removal of salt from ocean water). This process is well-developed but still prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people on Earth, but may become more feasible as renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, become more widespread. These efforts represent a starting point for humans willing to take our water resources more seriously in order to avoid future international conflict and instability, something all of us surely desire.
Sources Cited
Enger, E.D.