How else can we power the planet?

Tai Asks Why

CBC

Kids & Family

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nothing on our planet could function without pooower! Even though energy is all around us, harnessing that energy and turning it into power is a massive challenge. Powering our day-to-day lives makes up almost half of fossil fuel emissions, which is causing climate change! Tai tries to find out if there's a better way to power the planet. In this episode Tai talks to: - Richard Randell, engineer and PhD candidate at Stanford's Mechanical Engineering program - Daniel Ddiba, research associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute. He conducts research into how poop can be used as fuel for industries and other applications in African cities - Jim Green, chief scientist at NASA, who tells Tai how NASA's planning on providing power for future colonies on Mars, 140 million kilometres away. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/tai-asks-why-transcripts-listen-1.6747759

Transcript

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0:00.0	So the other day I was listening to the radio and they mentioned something about fossil fuels.
0:10.7	And I had this moment where I was like, wow, do we really get our power from these ancient
0:16.6	dinosaur bones?
0:18.2	Isn't that kind of weird?
0:24.5	So I did some reading about it and yes, we really do make fuels from fossils.
0:29.8	Not necessarily dinosaurs, but super ancient dead things.
0:35.6	That means that the process to turn on your bedside light started 4 billion years ago when
0:42.1	a bunch of plants and animals died.
0:44.8	All of that organic matter slowly got buried in the earth's crust over time and then just
0:50.1	over 200 years ago, us savvy humans realized we could burn it for energy.
0:56.2	So that's what cool gas and oil are, fossils that we learned how to burn.
1:05.6	And like I'm sure you've heard about this thing called climate change.
1:08.8	I actually already did an episode about it, but pretty much the problem is that all these
1:14.0	fossil fuels have carbon in them and when you burn them, a bunch of carbon dioxide
1:19.0	comes out and absorbs sunlight that would otherwise bounce back into space.
1:23.6	And now all that extra sunshine is heating up our planet and damaging our environment.
1:30.6	Oh, and even if fossil fuels weren't doing all this terrible stuff, the truth is we're
1:38.8	running out of it.
1:40.0	If we keep burning fossil fuels at our current rate, some people estimate that all our fossil
1:44.6	fuels will be gone by 2060.
1:50.0	Or an energy, or kind of a big deal, without it literally nothing could function.
1:56.4	So it seems like we really need to move on from these fossils and figure something else
	...

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