alt Hacker News> Look at fossil fuels
WHAT?! Do you think we as humanity would have gotten to all the modern inventions we have today like the internet, space travel, atomic energy, if we had skipped the fossil fuel era by preemptively regulating it?
How do you imagine that? Unless you invent a time machine, go to the past, and give inventors schematics of modern tech achievable without fossil fuels.
Replies
The internet was created in the military at the start of the fossil era, there is no reason, why it should be affected by the oil era. If we wouldn't travel that much, because we don't use cars and planes that much, the internet would be even more important.
Space travel does need a lot of oil, so it might be affected, but the beginning of it were in the 40s so the research idea was already there.
Atomic energy is also from the 40s and might have been the alternative to oil, so it would thrive more if we haven't used oil that much.
Also all 3 ARE heavily regulated and mostly done by nation states.
Maybe not as fast as we did, but eventually we would have. Maybe more research would have been put into other forms of energy if the effects of fossil fuels were considered more thoroughly and usage was limited to a degree that didn't have a chance cause such fast climate change. And so what if the rate of progress would have been slower and we'd be 50 years behind current tech? At least we wouldn't have to worry about all the damage we've caused now, and the costs associated with that. Due to that damage our future progress might halt while a slower, more careful society would continue advancing far into the future.