If only there were abundant sources of energy around like maybe nuclear fusion from a giant orange ball in the sky? Or perhaps hydro electric from the plethora of oceans? It wouldn't be easy, but it would be possible to create enormous amounts of energy from the normal daily cycle of the waves if it became necessary.
There are plenty of ways to create energy given the abundance of resources on this planet, even before homo sapiens.
It would be multiple orders of magnitude more difficult, and for all practical purposes impossible. You’re drastically underestimating civilization’s historic reliance on coal.
Also, fwiw you don’t get hydro electric power from the ocean. Hydro power is from water falling. Tidal power is a thing but it’s not easily achieved.
Civilisation started heavily relying on coal a few hundred years ago. The Earth was well-dominated by humans by then. It very probably would have taken a lot longer to get to where we are now, but I don't think there was any danger of seventeenth century civilisation falling to dust because there was no coal to be found.
All coal was produced during a 50 million year window when the earth lacked a decomposition process that could breakdown lignite. Once that evolved the formation of coal around the planet halted abruptly.
There’s a possibility humans might consume that resource dooming all subsequent civilizations to what you point out.
It's possible that absent coal, oil, or natural gas we would have leap frogged directly into solar power first with directed mirrors powering a liquid turbine, wind, and eventually conventional solar panels made from silicone.
There's really no reason to use fossil fuels. The fact that we do actually let's us waste a ton of it. If we had to ration it to the bare essentials we'd be able to get away with using only 5% of the energy we currently use. Our current solar energy production in the United States is 2% but that 2% would have been more than enough to power the entire country in the 1920s.
Wishful thinking with no basis in reality. If we couldn’t use coal, we would cut down and burn trees unsustainably long before we magically manage to invent renewable energy tech without all the benefits of modern infrastructure.
> There's really no reason to use fossil fuels.
Except for the critical dependence on them in almost every aspect of the economy sure.
> If we had to ration it to the bare essentials we'd be able to get away with using only 5% of the energy we currently use.
And how exactly are supposed to organize society into this perfectly energy constrained system?
There were plenty of dangers. One such threat could be the reliance on charcoal (burning trees) for high heat tasks like smelting metals. If you don’t have coal you’re gonna have a tough time making something like steel in an economically viable fashion. You will, in time, run out of trees to burn. And no, comparisons to modern day don’t count. You need to discount our ability to import tree biomass from other areas against the dependence on fossil fuels that enable that cheap transportation of goods.
Climate change is an existential threat. That doesn’t mean reed blade windmills are a viable substitute for fossil fuels.
It is utter nonsense to think you could have fueled human growth with such technology to a remotely similar scale.
Without fossil fuels you have no cheap transport fuel, no green revolution, no industrial revolution, many many metals, plastic, and probably many more things.
I am just pointing out that your measurement as growth might be amazing today, but if, for arguments sake, it is followed by catastrophic collapse, then maybe the schenario without fossil fuels which gives you 'slow and steady' growth could come out ahead at the end of the day.
We might face catastrophic collapse, but that doesn’t mean a slow and steady approach would work. Lack of coal just means you burn up less efficient resources to try and replace it. It wouldn’t be enough. Mostly that means trees. There is no slow and steady. It’s still a race to consume. You’ve just taken out the most plentiful and valuable energy resources humanity has been blessed with.
This view does not require any fondness for fossil fuels now, though realistically we are still highly dependent on them.
Ultimately, hydro power depends on oceans supplying abundant water vapor to precipitate over elevated topography. No oceans, no hydro power. You also need topography: no land, no hydro power.
Most fossil fuel deposits formed during the carboniferous period which would have been quite ancient even to the dinosaurs. One of the clues that an intelligent civilization never arose before us is that those deposits are still here for us.
Or that we're the only ones dumb enough to use those resources instead of leaving them on the ground and utilize much more accessible and renewable resources instead.
We ARE using the most accessible and economically efficient resources (coal and oil). The only reason we even have the phrase "renewable energy" in our vocabulary is because we were able to advance our civilization thanks to coal and oil far enough, that we can worry about the consequences and their mitigation.
The only evolutionary leaps to suboptimal energy production that I'm aware of occurred in cases where a more efficient energy source simply doesn't exist (eg geothermal vent communities on the ocean floor).
One would hope that fossil fuels are just a quick step in the technological bootstrap process on the way to clean/renewable energy, though I agree it's not looking too good at the moment. My guess is they are necessary though in order to go from pre-industrial to more advanced. Despite the negative externalities, the amount of energy they contain that is easily unlocked is remarkable.
There are plenty of ways to create energy given the abundance of resources on this planet, even before homo sapiens.