Eli5 if biodegraded waste naturally turns to fossil fuels after millions of years, how is it running out?
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Imagine that I had a piggy bank, and my parents put $0.05 into it every day of my life. And now I’m 20, so there’s $365 in that piggy bank, and my parents agree to keep putting $0.05 into it every day.
So I start taking a dollar out of the piggy bank everyday. It has so much in it, taking $1 out won’t be that bad, and more money keeps get put in it, right? But after a few days, I’m taking out more money from the piggy bank then we’re getting in new coins added to it. If I keep this up, using more money from the piggy bank everyday, soon it will run out. It doesn’t matter if $0.05 get put in every day, if I’m taking a dollar out everyday too.
That’s what’s going on with fossil fuels. It takes a long long time to make new fossil fuels, but we’re using them up so fast that the planet can’t keep up. Fossil fuels only get generated under very rare circumstances, and it takes a long time for that to happen.
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