[bklaasen]

You'd hope so, wouldn't you? However our markets aren't free. I can highly recommend Clive Ponting's "A New Green History of the World". The weight of historical evidence is against us finding a fix. We have tended to over-exploit every resource until it's depleted. For instance, we switched to coal because the wood and whales were running out, not because coal was a better source of energy.

(My main concern with the book is the lack of references; for each chapter he provides " further reading", but I'd have preferred to see a source for each claim.)

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

Parent's point was that "whale oil scarcity" had a natural mechanism to get people invested in alternatives because as whale populations dwindle and it becomes expensive. That was the problem and it was solved to our satisfaction.

It also helped the whales, but that was purely incidental. Without fossil energy, the whales would be gone.

Today, there is unfortunately too much oil and coal to force the search for alternatives. And the "whales" are the the climate and, again, that problem doesn't have the feedback loop because the atmosphere, like the high seas, does the tragedy-of-the-commons thing.