On a national and global scale, humans have developed growing and life threatening addiction to energy in order to provide electricity and heat. As a potential solution, natural gas is highly abundant throughout the world and can help nations like the United States become less dependent on fossil fuels. Despite relentless talks of a global energy addiction, it seems that too few of actions are actually being taken toward weaning the world off of its fossil-fuel addictions. The questions involve how we interpret the term "energy crisis". Two essential questions are, Is the energy crisis really the environmental issue of safer and healthier means of mining and utilizing energy resources and how has energy crisis affected us now as well as has it been predicted to occur in the future at our global rate of resource consumption? .
The true energy crisis is that of an ecologically sane and stable means of obtaining sufficient energy without destroying our environment. The energy crisis exists because our common global methods of obtaining energy are still primarily through fossil fuels and highly detrimental to the environment. Nuclear energy eventually creates large quantities of radioactive waste and can contaminate the surrounding environment (Macfarlane). Burning coal creates massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causing illness and aiding global warming. Burning fossil fuels like oil creates green house gases and mining oil contaminates the ground and wildlife. Burning natural gas also creates greenhouse gases. There are two types of solar energy systems; solar thermal and photovoltaic. They both capture the natural energy from the sun, but they work in different ways. Solar thermal systems absorb the natural energy from the sun to generate heat. Similarly, solar photovoltaic systems absorb the natural energy from the sun, but they then convert this energy into electricity.