Earth's Resources and Energy

In survival games, you gather wood, stone, coal, and iron to craft everything. Real life works the same way. Your phone, your house, your car, the electricity in your outlet, and the food on your plate all come from Earth's resources. The question is: how much is there, and how do we use it wisely?

A natural resource is anything from nature that people use.

• Renewable resources are replaced naturally as fast as we use them, or faster: sunlight, wind, flowing water, trees and crops (if managed well).
• Nonrenewable resources take millions of years to form, so once they're used up, they're gone for any human timescale: fossil fuels, metals, and minerals.

Some resources sit in between. Soil and groundwater are technically renewable, but if we use them faster than they're replaced, they can run out.

Fossil fuels formed from the remains of ancient living things, buried and cooked by heat and pressure over millions of years. They store ancient sunlight as chemical energy.

• Coal: formed from ancient swamp plants. It goes from peat, to lignite, to bituminous, to anthracite, getting harder and richer in carbon at each step. Mostly burned to make electricity.
• Petroleum (crude oil): formed mainly from tiny ocean organisms. It's refined into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and plastics.
• Natural gas: mostly methane. Often found with oil. Used for heating, cooking, and electricity. Cleaner burning than coal.

Oil and gas move up through rock until they're trapped under a layer of nonporous rock. Companies drill wells to reach them. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) pumps high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals into rock to crack it open and release trapped gas and oil.

Pros: fossil fuels pack a lot of energy, are reliable 24/7, and supply about 80% of the world's energy. Cons: they're nonrenewable, and burning them releases carbon dioxide and air pollution. Mining and drilling can damage land and water.

Nuclear power plants use nuclear fission: splitting atoms of uranium releases massive heat, which boils water into steam to spin turbines.

• Pros: no carbon dioxide while running, tons of energy from tiny amounts of fuel, works 24/7.
• Cons: radioactive waste stays dangerous for thousands of years, and accidents, though rare, can be serious.

Idaho connection: Idaho National Laboratory, just west of Idaho Falls, is the nation's leading nuclear energy research lab. In 1951, its EBR-I reactor became the first to make usable electricity from nuclear power, lighting four light bulbs. In 1955, the town of Arco became the first city in the world lit by nuclear power, using a nearby test reactor called BORAX-III.

• Hydroelectric: flowing water spins turbines at dams. It's the biggest source of electricity made in Idaho. Big producers include dams on the Snake River.
• Solar: solar panels (photovoltaic cells) turn sunlight directly into electricity. Southern Idaho gets plenty of sunshine.
• Wind: wind turbines spin generators. Idaho has wind farms on its open plains.
• Geothermal: uses Earth's internal heat. Boise has heated buildings with geothermal water since the 1890s, one of the oldest systems in the country.
• Biomass: burning plant material, wood, or turning crops into fuels like ethanol.

The catch: solar and wind only work when the Sun shines or the wind blows, so they need storage like batteries or backup power. Dams can harm fish like salmon by blocking their migration. Every energy source has trade-offs.

Remember ores from Chapter 4? Minerals and metals are essential:

• Metals: iron for steel, copper for wires, aluminum for cans and planes, gold and silver for electronics.
• Critical minerals: lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements for batteries, phones, and electric motors. Idaho is home to one of the only U.S. sources of cobalt.
• Nonmetals: gravel, sand, and limestone for concrete and roads; phosphate for fertilizer (mined in southeast Idaho); salt; gypsum for drywall.

Idaho's mining history is huge. The Silver Valley around Kellogg and Wallace has produced over a billion ounces of silver, one of the richest silver mining districts in the world.

Mining methods: surface mining (open pits and strip mines) scrapes away soil and rock to reach shallow deposits. Underground mining digs tunnels to reach deep ones. Afterward, laws require reclamation: restoring the land.

Water and soil are resources too, and you can't survive without either. In Idaho, water rights and irrigation from the Snake River and its aquifer make farming possible in a semi-arid climate.

Conservation means using resources carefully so they last. The classic three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for about two hours, according to the EPA.

Energy efficiency means getting the same result with less energy: LED bulbs, insulated homes, fuel-efficient cars.

Sustainability means meeting our needs today without wrecking the ability of future generations to meet theirs.