In just the past 23 years, carbon emissions have risen by approximately 11 percent. This continuous exponential growth over time is finally forcing countries to sit up and take notice. With an awareness that such harmful emissions cannot continue, nations have started looking at alternative resources, such as wind, solar, and nuclear energy. While these all offer a potential solution, none of them are as impressive as geothermal energy.

The ability to power our world literally rests below our feet; moreover, it is an incredibly environmentally friendly option. Unfortunately, current cost and efficiency related issues have meant that geothermal energy remains under-utilized. If money, therefore, were not a problem, investment in improving this technology so it could be used on a mass-scale would be the answer to solving our global warming problem.

 The first area that needs addressing is reducing the cost of drilling for geothermal energy. Currently, the drilling technology is inaccurate in finding the areas that will serve as sources of energy. This extra work taken to find minable areas means that excessive labor and other costs often get wasted for little return. Therefore, by increasing investment in the development of drilling technology, the process of extracting geothermal energy will become far more affordable.

Second, just as the drilling process is expensive, it is also currently requiring vast sums to build and maintain geothermal plants. Like a great portion of the manufacturing industry, cost goes up when production is limited. Thus, the only way to overcome this problem is to ramp up the production of these plants to make the overall cost drop. Furthermore, more research is needed, just like was done with nuclear power plants, to find the most practical way to produce these geothermal plants. Once a suitable method is found, the plants can be rolled out in a cookie-cutter process all over the world.

Ultimately, geothermal energy is the solution to all our problems with global warming, but there needs to be strong initial investment to make it practical. People like to say that money makes the world go round, and that is true when it comes to considering that without this fiscal investment, the world might come to a stop.