What are alternatives for burning fossil fuels?

Alexander Villas: For powering large areas, like an entire city grid, sustainable energy sources are the answer. These sources are wind, wave, tidal (in the right places), solar, and geothermal. They produce just as much electricity as a nuclear facility of a given size, and more energy than a fossil fuel plant. They are already in use on small scales, and are proven to work effectively and cheaply. All of these methods of generating power are *known* to work, and work well. Depending on where you are in the country/world, you'll use a different type of power (for instance, Arizona is a good place for solar and wind, but not wave).Nuclear energy is *not* the answer. It always has the potential for releases of radioactive materials or even complete reactor meltdowns, which are devastating. Water (hydroelectric) doesn't directly pollute the environment by putting in harmful chemicals, but the reservoir created behind the dam wipes out huge areas of habitat and thus, ! plants and animals that have the potential to actually go extinct. The sustainable energy is very clean, and has almost no impact on the environment. Basically, it doesn't stop, and it doesn't pollute.As far as driving your car around, purpose built electric cars are the future. They are actually better than our modern internal combustion engine, gasoline (and diesel) vehicles. The Tesla company builds 100% electric sports cars that are far superior to any other production vehicle, anywhere, built by anyone. If we can't make the direct leap to electric cars, the answer is the middle step of ethanol powered vehicles, that use clean-burning ethanol, which is derived from corn, sugar beets, and other normal crops that can be used sustainably (because unless somthing horrible happens, you'll always have at least one crop every year). Finally, the production of ethanol is clean, and in an ethanol engine it is 30% more efficient than a gasoline engine....Show more

Sam! my Hatzenbihler: Solar or wind power. We can use solar panels ! and wind mills to generate energy without polluting the atmosphere with fossil fuels. The problem with wind mills though is that they make a lot of noise and they are expensive to build/maintain. A lot of houses in Europe already have solar panels on their roofs to help heat them.

Nancy Mansell: Nuclear power for industrial electricity generationStorage batteries for all small scale mobile uses (vehicles etc.)The other solutions put forward are hopelessly insufficient and inefficient, with the exception of hydroelectric power. This has the drawback that you have to drown valleys to make the dams, and this is not always a popular or practical option....Show more