It’s a parable many of us have heard since childhood: a hard-working man saves money his entire life to leave his two sons with a sizeable inheritance for when he dies, but one son, in an ultimate act of disrespect, decides he wants his share of the inheritance before his father’s death. According to tradition, if a son claims his inheritance before due time, he must be permanently cast out of his community. With his fortune, the son gladly exchanges his life in the village for one of frivolous spending which leaves him penniless. Left with no other option, he returns to his father and asks forgiveness. The father unexpectedly welcomes his estranged son back with open arms and a big party.

Over the past few billion years, life has flourished and died on a scale we cannot even begin to imagine. Comparable to the father’s careful saving, these organisms accumulate and are compressed over thousands of years, eventually resulting in a carbon-rich material. When humans realized how profitable this inheritance could be, we started squandering it without a thought to its transiency.

However, we are now at a point in our history where we pull our father’s inheritance out of our pockets and realize there is simply not enough. The age-old tale does not describe this moment in the irresponsible son’s life, but I imagine he first dug deeper in his pockets thinking, “There must be more. This cannot be all that is left.” In the same way, scraping what little oil we can find is costing more energy than it’s worth — sometimes only breaking even.

Then, I imagine the son attempted to subsist on the little he had remaining. Similarly, “green” initiatives are sparking across the country to increase the efficiency of fossil fuels. While increased efficiency is necessary, it is not enough to solve the overall problem: dependency on fossil fuels. Instead of investing in a broken infrastructure, shouldn’t we be using what little we have left to create a new, more sustainable method of energy?

You may think of energy only as what you put into your vehicle to get to work or what turns your light on when you flip a switch, but energy comprises much more. For example, if you are reading this article while on your lunch break, the food in front of you has traveled a combined 15,000 miles from the farm to your plate with many stops in between. Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals consume large amounts of energy to give us the medicine and healthcare we require to maintain healthy lives. Policemen and firefighters require energy to keep us safe. Basically, without a consistent, reliable source of energy, the necessities needed to maintain a civilization are unavailable. Currently, the source of energy we rely on almost exclusively is dwindling. Our generation should follow the example of the prodigal son and acknowledge the problem at hand and humbly make a change. How do we return home? Educate yourself, educate others, only elect officials who consider sustainable energy a priority and keep them accountable while in office.

Bailey Clark is a sophomore majoring in environmental science. She is the student coordinator for Focus the Nation.