Won't You Meet the Powers?

The Power Family, clockwise from top-left: Petey,The Gas Man, Blacko, Professor Ace "The Kid" Cooltoppers, Nukers

You can't pick your family.

The assemblage of American energy sources is a mixed bunch.  Some of them are as old as the Union itself, while others are still in their infancy.  They've served us ever so well over the years, but change is in the air.  A new generation is bearing down, with exciting technologies that spell opportunity no matter how you look at it.  Won't you meet our family?  

Petroleum: 37.1%

Mmm, petroleum, can you do no wrong?  Aside from all your wrongs?  Ol' Petey gives us the most foreign flare of the whole gang, being a quarter domestic and the rest a mutt variety of Canadian, Mexican, Saudi Arabian, Venezuelan and Nigerian.  Petey's always on the go, more than two-thirds of which is dedicated to the transportation sector.  The tricky thing about Petey is how hard he is to find!  There's not much more of him left, with some estimates indicating less than 50 years of supply remaining.  Petey can get a little tipsy from time to time, and when that happens, watch out.  I'm specifically talking to coastal aquatic wildlife.  Seriously, keep your head on a swivel when this dude's around.

Natural Gas - 23.8%

Mostly domestic in nature, The Gas Man zips around the country by pipeline or is hauled by tanker and is comprised almost entirely of methane.  But to get the methane into usable form, it requires one s-load of processing, incurring great costs and emitting greenhouse gases along the way.  Once ready for prime-time, The Gas Man produces electricity, heats home, cooks food, flies planes and surfs the internet (I assume). 

Coal - 22.5%

How's your lungs?  That cough there, regardless of where you live, might be due to our made-in-the-USA homeboy bituminous coal.  See, we pull it off mountaintops and mine it from holes in the ground, then burn it, which drives a turbine and spits out shiny electricity on the other end.  The burning of coal is the most injurious activity for the stability of the climate, and the idea of carbon sequestration, while technically feasible, is so cost-prohibitive as to be ignored entirely.  Hey Blacko, are you missing a pupil?  You know what, you got us through the 20th century, why don't you go sit on the bench for a little while?

Nuclear - 8.5%

The Nukester!  Nukerstein!  Nuuuke!  Once hailed as the panacea to our energy needs, nuclear use in America ground to a halt in '79.  Ahem.  AHEM.  I'm ahem-ing at you, one single guy who misread a gauge at Three Mile Island Generating Station and ruined our nuclear future.  While nuclear energy production doesn't spew CO2 like its older brothers, it presents two problems - one being where to put the radioactive gook left over, the other being blowy-uppy.

Renewables - 7.3%

Did a chorus of angels just sing in your ear?  Oh, it's just Ace, America's Cleanest Energy.  Look at him!  My God he's hip!  Rockin' a military-style field cap kinda to the side like that, he was clearly just listening to music - are those...yeah, those are Beats By Dre!  Man I just wanna get a beer with you!  Comprised mostly of hydroelectricity, the renewables sector exploits the always-on nature of the Earth's cycles: the water flows, the biomass grows, the wind blows, the sun shows, and geothermal...also...exists.  I dunno, thought that would work better.

It'll be interesting to watch the members of this family continue to evolve in one way or another.  If the country would just get ballsy enough, Professor Cooltoppers* might just be the king of the hill in just a decade and change.

*Also considered: Baron Johnny X. Greenstamper, Emperor of the Solarwinds, Citizen Zero the Energy Hero, Steve Jobs