What if there were never any fossil fuels in the world? What if, for whatever reason (aliens came and stole them all 40,000 years ago), human civilization had yet never and yet never could ever encounter any fossil fuels of any description, be they coal, petroleum, or organic gas, or even stuff like peat? Would we still be at the same level of development as 200 years ago, or would society have progressed in different ways?
I mean, obviously we’d have progressed in different ways, but where would we be today? Would, for instance, European imperialism still have occurred in Africa and Asia? Would the internal combustion engine have been invented to run on methanol? Would the ecosystem be destroyed by deforestation? Would it have taken us a thousand years to jump from wood-burning steam engines to nuclear power?
I am too small a mind to think of such things; I lay it before the infinite wisdom of the Dope.
(Edit: I reported this thinking we were in GQ, not GD. Mods, please disregard the report.)
Where would we be without petroleum? I imagine we’d still be utilizing coal-based fuels for energy. The world would be smaller, as petroleum has made automobiles and airplanes viable for easy, fast travel to the corners of the earth. Other than that, I can’t see why we wouldn’t still have made a move to nuclear energy.
I think it actually could have been better for all of Us, because then, I believe, scientists would have been concentrating on developing electricity. After all the first electric motors were designed sometimes around 1820, so now We would now have 200 years of relentless developing.
Who knows, We could now have those nuclear powered family cars.
Or We might have something even more dangerous and polluting…
We’d still have access to solar and hydroelectricity. Hard to say how that level of civilization would have developed without coal in the first place, though.
Never any at all? I’d say in that case we’d still be back at a much, much lower technological level…probably something like iron age technology would be the best we could manage. Steel would still be a hand made and expensive affair. Possibly we’d be having serious tree shortages, since afaik charcoal would be the only alternative to make stuff like steel, and we’d still need it as a major fuel source. I think chemistry would still be rudimentary.
All of this assumes no other highly concentrated fuel source exists that could be exploited.
I don’t believe it’s possible for us to have developed nuclear energy without fossil fuels. Or solar either. We could use wind, but it would be pretty rudimentary. Almost all of the technologies that go into our modern world came about through the use of fossil fuels, even when they weren’t directly dependent on them.
Just one example that I used earlier…steel. Where would you get the steel necessary to build the containment vessels and reinforcing for your nuclear power plant? How would you have ever gotten to the point where you could develop nuclear energy without fossil fuels?
But do you get the steam engine without coal (CIV jokes aside of course)?
Consider that you have to use energy to reduce the wood to coke/charcoal and then burn that in the steam engine. So instead of a single extraction you have two with the associated efficiency losses. That makes rail and steam more expensive. Not impossible I guess and you could see military applications and state sponsored forests to fund them.
There’s a huge span of time between the iron age and the industrial revolution. That’s what I was questioning. As far as tech past steam engine goes, it depends on how optimistic about mankind you are. We could have developed fantastic ways to harness electricity like lightning farms, or waterpower, etc. Or we could just be stuck in a 18th century way of life. Europe would be marginalized because of the halt of progress that the Industrial Revolution would have brought and the concentration of power would be a lot more evenly distributed.
Before fossil fuel-based steam engines became the standard, the main source of steady concentrated energy was hydraulic. You’d see dozens of factories crowded along appropriate river passages.
It might have been possible to make the leap directly from direct hydraulic power to using hydraulic power to generate electricity. But I think it would have been a larger leap than using fossil-fuel based steam as a stepping stone.
You have to remember it’s not just an issue of what can built. There’s also a major economic issue of what can be built at a profit. Fossil fuel was a cheap, easily accessible, and easily transportable source of energy - it made it easy to plan out some industrial project without worrying too much about where the power was coming from. If that equivalent amount of power had required some source like water or wind, it might have tipped the balance against the project.
Actually, the chemical industry started from the dye industry, as did the drug industry. Bayer was a dye maker! At least, according to a book I read not long ago, which I’ll post later as I can’t recall the name.
Nonetheless, I agree.
The metropolises of 1900 might not have been possible without coal, but even if they had, they were drowning in horse manure. Most people don’t realize that the auto saved us from an environmental disaster, one that was mounting in large cities just as the auto hit the scene. The impact of an auto (and the industry behind it) seems foul to us now, but it’s due to the enormous numbers. Compared to a horse, they’re incredibly clean (though admittedly less biodegradeable.)
Another important factor is the “energy intensity” of modern economies. Hopefully someone with a better understanding of econ can explain this better, but our economy is extremely sensitive to energy cost; the lower the cost of energy, the greater our GDP. Admittedly, the low cost of energy contributes to wasting it, and with more expensive energy we’d be more efficient (and have a lower energy intensity). Still, it’s pretty obvious that cheap energy is really good for an economy.
Of course, that’s a short term outlook, ignoring the penalties like a global warming catastrophe. But since the OP’s question is “to date”, fossil fuels have been an enormous boon to humankind. Looking forward, it might not be so sweet. Thus the heated debates!
Where do you think coal comes from? Life concentrates carbon (mostly from the atmosphere). We aren’t likely to find coal or anything like coal on Mars, Venus, or the Moon.
Or overfishing them into extinction because you don’t want to ease back while those heathens over there get the last of it. There would have been a wood crisis, too, perhaps with protected forests dedicated to government purposes.
Maybe we could have bred oil pigs and fire rushes.