The book, “The Use of Energy”, is about how people are using up energy resources and about energy coming from the earth, as well as, how we are going to use up more energy than we have on earth. The author also talks a lot about how the agriculture companies, are not being resourceful, because, they waste perfectly good resources such as horse manure. As the author Berry has said,” energy is at once to live and to die”, (Berry, 1986) the significance of this quote is literal and explains how the energy we use (fossil fuel) is going to run out, because we use these resources way too much. In addition, he adds on to how we do not actually pay attention to where we are getting this energy or how much we are wasting daily.
Throughout the book ,Berry, the author, states how energy is always being used up by people either eating food, using technology and how it takes the earth a long time to replace the used up energy resources. (Berry, 1986) The problem with energy is that earth has only so many resources and most are nonrenewable, so we cannot get them back. Soon everyone will need to discover a renewable resource to use other than the nonrenewable energy, because we will not have a choice but to limit ourselves, so everyone should get a head start before we run out. The big agriculture companies should get a head start too, but they are wasting resources too. They are not using the horse manure as a resource and they need to because it helps the soil become rich so that they can keep planting crops. Instead they are wasting it, and it’s a bad idea to not use valuable resources, because they are available. It is like how we are using up energy and wasting most of it and not even realizing how or why it’s important not to use it all up. Instead people could ride their bikes but most people don’t and drive. People also could limit their time on their laptops or turn down the heat in their homes, but many of us do not. As a whole I think that everyone needs to stop wasting energy and notice that most energy, once you use it up does not come back; it is not coming back like plants do in the circle of life (Berry, 1986).
Berry, W. (1986). The Use of Energy. In The Unsettling of America:Culture & Agriculture . San Francisco: The Sierra Club Books.
