Fossil fuels - we can’t stop burning them, but one day they will run out

Since the Industrial Revolution, our world has run on fossil fuels. So what are they, and where do they come from?

Fossil fuels are defined as “any of a class of hydrocarbon-containing materials of biological origin occurring within Earth’s crust that can be used as a source of energy”. What that means is that fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas - are the remnants of fossilized plants and animals from millions of years ago.

The main difference between coal and oil / natural gas is that coal formed from plants, whereas oil and natural gas formed from microscopic plankton. This video from Student Energy explains a bit more about how fossil fuels form.

Fossil fuels are considered non-renewable resources because they will not replenish themselves at a pace that keeps up with consumption. In fact, most of the coal that exists was created during the Carboniferous period that took place between 360 and 300 million years ago. And according to Professor Iain Stewart in the BBC documentary How the Earth Made Us we are burning as much oil in one year as it will take the Earth 3,000 years to replace.

So even if we didn’t know that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change, we’d still need to replace them one day because they’re going to run out. And given air pollution associated with them also causes about one in five deaths worldwide, maybe it would be a good idea to give up fossil fuels sooner rather than later?