[troyvit]

I think it's most likely a symptom, not an end result of our stupidity. It's the short-sightedness that lets us keep doing this, that is the same idiocy that will lead us to nuclear or chemical warfare which reduces us back to a pre-industrialized society. Only this time we won't have readily available hydrocarbons we can use to dig ourselves out of it again. We'll be stuck burning wood to make coal.

[ifwinterco]

Interestingly in the UK the industrial revolution actually started with water power, not steam engines. It just so happens that the UK, especially England is actually fairly bad for hydropower potential (too flat).

We'll never know the counterfactual, but I think if coal didn't exist what you would have seen is an increased focus on hydropower instead. That would have meant industrialisation would have been slower and distributed completely differently geographically, but would still have happened in my opinion

[troyvit]

Oh cool! Sometimes taking away the easy toys enables us to innovate in completely different directions. Maybe there's hope yet (saying this as a guy who lives at the base of some pretty tall mountains too).