Remarks Prepared by Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, USN Chief, Naval Reactors Branch Division of Reactor Development U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Ships for Nuclear Propulsion Navy Department For Delivery at a Banquet of the Annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association St. Paul, Minnesota May 14, 1957 We live in what historians may some day call the Fossil Fuel Age. Today coal, oil, and natural gas supply 93% of the world's energy; water power accounts for only 1%; and the labor of men and domestic animals the remaining 6%. This is a startling reversal of corresponding figures for 1850 - only a century ago. Then fossil fuels supplied 5% of the world's energy, and men and animals 94%. Five sixths of all the coal, oil, and gas consumed since the beginning of the Fossil Fuel Age has been burned up in the last 55 years.