3 ms·
I've seen writing from about 100 years ago worried that the world would run out of coal, the dominant fuel of the day, thereby causing the railroads and factori
by jacoblyles 17y ago
I've seen writing from about 100 years ago worried that the world would run out of coal, the dominant fuel of the day, thereby causing the railroads and factories of the industrial revolution to cease.
Of course, we have plenty of coal today.
- david927 17y agoWhew. It's good to know that if we were wrong in the past on some topic we'll always be wrong. Oil is not renewable. The crux of the argument for peak oil, as I understand it, is not that we'll run out of oil but that extracting it will become quickly very expensive. And building alternatives, as we already know, is very expensive. So that we'll have a period of time where we'll have a dramatic decline in our standard of living. It doesn't matter if we'll always have oil if very few people will use it.