Imagining a world without fossil fuels

Can you imagine a world without fossil fuels? In this video, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres outlines her vision of a world that's entirely free of fossil fuels.

Do the preparation task first. Then watch the video and do the exercises. Remember you can read the transcript at any time.

Preparation

Video zone: Imagining a world without fossil fuels – preparation

Transcript

Imagine a world without fossil fuels. None at all.

Imagine a world where you never need to smell the fumes of a passing car, bus or truck and where traffic noise is massively reduced.

Imagine a world powered by something you can't touch, which will be abundant for billions of years.

Imagine a world where every single home has electricity, no matter how far it is from the grid.

That's the future beyond fossil fuels.

Imagine governments no longer needing to subsidise fossil-fuel production or spend fortunes protecting their underground fuel sources, pipes and transmission lines.

Trillions of taxpayer dollars are freed up.

Smog and greenhouse gases plummet. Public health improves. This healthy future is closer than you think. Our energy system is undergoing an unstoppable transformation. The coal-fired power industry that took a century to build is being rapidly replaced by sun and wind power, forces of nature which cannot be dug out of the ground or sold on commodity markets.

In this totally fossil-fuel-free world, electricity belongs to everyone. It's home-grown in the true sense, bringing power to the 1.3 billion people who are currently inexcusably without it.

The Paris climate agreement bound nations of the world to work peacefully for a fossil-fuel-free economy. But we need to move fast. We must harness the power of the sun and work at the speed of light.

Our collective mission is to bend the curve of emissions now so that renewable energy outcompetes fossil fuels as the best new source of energy in all markets around the world by 2020.

So let's thank fossil fuels for all they have done. Their contribution to humanity has been nothing short of extraordinary. However, now that we understand the dangers and the side effects and have exciting, everlasting alternatives, it is time to retire them. Pronto!

The journey to our fossil-fuel-free future is the most exciting, the most innovative, the most necessary, the most inclusive and far-reaching global transformation we have ever seen.

This is the answer to so many challenges in the world. The energy newtopia. The only question now is, how quickly can we get there?

Task 1

Video zone: Imagining a world without fossil fuels – 1

Task 2

Video zone: Imagining a world without fossil fuels – 2

Discussion

How do you imagine the world's energy in the future?

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Language level

B2 - Upper intermediate

C1 - Advanced

C2 - Proficiency

Topics

environment and nature

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How do you imagine the world's energy in the future?
I imagine the world energy without fossil fuels, no pollution in the air, and road will be clean. I would imagine our environment is a clean, healthy, and peaceful life without noise.

I imagine a world with lots of solar power panels everywhere and where wind power will be abundant. All the cars will work with electricity and the oil will have a moderate use only for necessary things.

Many scientists broadly agree that curtailing our use of fossil fuel would have significant benefits - like improving health and reducing the number and severity of natural disasters - but it's not yet clear what can replace them. Wind and solar are increasingly popular sources of energy, but the sun does not always shine, the wind doesn't always blow. Batteries to store their intermittent energy are not yet cheap and powerful enough to fill the gaps. Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases directly, but the current generation of reactors has other problems. Solutions like storing carbon dioxide underground or turning it into clean fuel are promising, but they need much development. None of the possible solutions is without challenges.

The world' energy in the future will be replaced by alternative sources of energy not as damaging as fossil fuels because people have been destroying the land and looking such as we wouldn't know the consequences about it so that nature doesn't have the capabilities and skills to recover as quickly as the population around the world need. Furthermore, the earth needs a breath regarding humanity. So I think that the future will be filled with challenges and people should find alternative sources out of energy to live, understanding that resources within the planet are not unlimited or saying on the other way resources are scarce.

I´ll describe it being totally fossil fuel-free, but as the video presenter does, the million-dollar question is "how quickly it will be". In the last few years, electric car sales have been increased in developed countries, whereas in developing countries there is still a lot to do, this happens mainly because the electric system in these countries is not fully prepare to supply these cars with electricity, nevertheless, step by step we will see that the transition will be successful all around the world. Obviously all of this is great if the electric source is solar or wind otherwise it would not have sense.

An exciting new global world is coming!

In the encouraging future, the world will be more green, the houses and appartments will have sun energy, the part industry will work wind power and the electrecity will be aviable for everyone no matter the country.

Quite contrary to the above. While we have the freedom to imagine all that, unimaginable germs such as the Corona virus have gone beyond our expectations to overturn the current and future innovative - environmental friendly plans that we so steadfastly hold in our minds. Now, the whole world is in much awe and doubt about life ever being the same again! So, dreaming of a world without fossils is purely fictitious.

A world without fossil fuels would be amazing! But unfortunately, most of the countries have not done enough in order to make this possible since they are more worried about money. I think this might be a reality in many years unless we start to work very hard in order to make a tremendous progress and live in a cleaner, healthier and happier environment. Let's improve our world!

A fossil fuel-free future had never been a more challenging journey. The problem at issue is that the authorities should give the grants for environmental friendly contributions and innovations, such as the recent electrical recycling method, or persuade the public to utilize renewable resource solar panels and wind power, rather than spending a colossal amount of fortunes on underground fuel mines and pipes. There is a growing exasperation within the government at the failure of the policies to bend the curve of emission, which we should concern more carefully, and yet more practices should be done to minimize the aftereffect.