[nonbirithm]

For our civilization the time to proliferate electric engines before ICEs is gone, though. I have to wonder if there's something inherit to the properties/efficiency of petroleum combustion that ensures that intelligent civilization will proliferate it first over electric engines.

It sounds like the bottleneck is lack of foresight. Our ancestors were incapable of seeing the end result of ICEs everywhere when they were first used. How is any future civilization supposed to combat this when they aren't handed the correct answer by some forebearer civilization that destroyed itself first? It feels like not only humans but all future intelligent life with access to petroleum would fall into this trap over and over again.

It's as if the only way to avoid the current scenario is to discover all the petroleum and then not touch it for the rest of time. About the only guardrail that could incentivize that behavior in my mind is the blind faith of religion.

[ChatGTP]

It was lobbying, it had little to do with psychology or prehistoric urges or anything like that. Greed of a few mostly.

Read up about the world class tram system in Sydney, bicycle networks in LA and what killed all that. Take a look at all the coal lobbies in Australia. Wars for oil in the Middle East, it just goes on and on.