[s1artibartfast]

It's pretty interesting question actually. I think for an honest accounting you would have to take into account the positive externalities as well.

One way to start thinking about the question is to benchmark society before gasoline.

Mass use of gasoline kicked off around 1900, with the popularization of the automobile.

You can compare life now versus 1900 to get one estimate. The world definitely had problems and Wars before 1900.

What the world would look like today had gasoline never been discovered is a lot more tricky, but my gut feeling is that we would be worse off than today.

[bumby]

I suspect you're right. That's why I think it's important to get a transition right, because it would be a shame to squander the type of bootstrapping that oil afforded us as a society.

>You can compare life now versus 1900 to get one estimate.

I think this is probably too broad because it assumes a causal connection between gasoline and all of those differences. The industrial revolution had been decades underway before cheap oil, and would have continued if oil was never found in Pennslyvania. But cheap oil definitely helped speed it along faster.

[s1artibartfast]

>The industrial revolution had been decades underway before cheap oil, and would have continued if oil was never found in Pennslyvania. But cheap oil definitely helped speed it along faster.

That is certainly true. I meant using it a benchmark to extrapolate from. In many ways it seems to me that the industrialization at that time had a pretty negative trajectory, with a heavy basis in coal and brutal industrial towns. It is quite possible that we are living one of the best possible timelines from 1900.

[bumby]

I don't think the fuel type, but rather the labor and regulatory environment, was the driver of those conditions. We can't know for sure, obviously, but had oil been used before coal, I have a feeling those towns would still exist.

[s1artibartfast]

I agree that's probably a big part of it. Another interesting thought is that if we never moved off of coal we would probably have a lot more electrification and mass transit because call makes more sense in terms of centralized power generation. Sounds like the makings of a steampunk novella