In 1492, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean and became one of the most legendary figures in history when he discovered the American continent. It is believed that even before Columbus, the Norwegian explorer Leif Erikson traveled and formed a settlement in Canada. Whether Columbus or Erikson actually made the discovery is irrelevant. Columbus' three-ship fleet is said to have left Spain on August 3, 1492 and took approximately five weeks to reach their destination. In 1805, it took Lewis and Clark more than two years to make a round trip to the Pacific Ocean from St. Louis, Missouri. In 2014, it takes approximately seven hours to fly from Boston, Massachusetts, to London, England. Plus, it only takes about a week and a half to drive from Missouri to Oregon and back. How is this possible? Well, the answer to this question is highly complicated and scientific. However, a fairly simple reason why we are able to travel so fast is the fact that we use vehicles powered by fossil fuels, instead of the old ships powered by the wind or a horse and buggy. Fossil fuels are what power planes, trains and cars. to take us from place to place every day. What would we do without the large, powerful SUVs that take us long distances (sometimes up to a few miles!) to school and work every single day? Driving from place to place definitely saves a lot of time and effort that we can now spend watching cat videos on the Internet and eating fast food out of a window (another wonderful innovation brought on by our obsession with cars). Oil is also known as crude oil that is pumped from the ground. This crude oil is actually the remnants of animals and plants that have died over millions of years... middle of paper... that anyone above a certain body fat percentage would need to go to one of these camps as long as they lost weight . This plan could help Americans continue to live our wasteful lives as we always have, without worrying that one day we will run out of fuel to keep going. Sure, it would cost a few billion dollars to set up the camps, round up all the homeless and fat people, and enforce these rules, but isn't that better than trying to develop a fuel source from something we already have? How ridiculous would it be to invest in harnessing solar and wind energy when we can simply exploit the homeless and fat people who are becoming such a big problem in our country? It would be completely and utterly useless. Raise the price of petrol to have a better chance of saving? That would be terrible. No one wants to give up their lazy lifestyle to simply save energy.