| HN Mirror

On the contrary, I think it's far too pessimistic. Expecting that the technological and scientific progress would stop where we started using fossil fuels is ridiculous. The changes started much sooner in the renaissance, with printing press, scientific method and calculus.

The printing press made spreading information much cheaper than it used to be. The scientific method allowed systematic gathering new knowledge instead of relying on traditions. Calculus allowed precise calculations of things that could be only estimated previously.

Iron, steel, bricks, mortar, cement and glass all predate widespread use of fossil fuels by millenia. Chemicals and plastics are made from oil because it's cheaper that way. The main chemical produced from oil is ethylene, which could be easily made from alcohol. (The only reason why drinking alcohol isn't made from oil as well is because it's illegal.) Nitrogen can be fixed with bacteria.

Fossil fuels helped in many ways, but in others lead us astray, with lots of effort spent on inferior dead end technologies only because fossil fuels made them cheaper. Of course you could power combustion engines with wood gas, but why would you develop them in the first place? Many people assume that combustion engines are used because they are superior to other technologies, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

Combustion engines are a poor choice for powering vehicles in almost every way imaginable. They work well only in a narrow range of speeds, have low torque, are relatively large for the power they produce, can't start on their own... The only reason why they won over electric motors is that the fuel used to be incredibly cheap and easily transported. Almost all progress was about finding workarounds for their inherent drawbacks. You could remove the whole drivetrain and stick electric motors directly to the wheels and you would have a better car than the best combustion engine car. There is a reason why electric cars are not allowed in races.

Almost everything is made of plastics because it's cheaper that way, even where a slightly more expensive alternative would last basically forever. Agriculture started relying on easily available pesticides instead of developing resistant strains or practices that prevent the evolution and spread of pathogens. Many plant diseases adapted specifically to the few commercialy grown variants, so that inordinate amounts of pesticides are needed to keep the plants no more healthy than they used to be without pesticides. And as the plum pox shows, diseases may be even beneficial in some ways. The few widely grown strains affected by it were replaced by a wide variety of different plums.

The industrial revolution probably wouldn't be that different, only with steam and combustion engines skipped and starting straight with electricity.