In cold, deforestation-ridden England, coal hit like crack. They switched to fossil fuels not because they could, they did so because they had to. Contrast this

In cold, deforestation-ridden England, coal hit like crack. They switched to fossil fuels not because they could, they did so because they had to. Contrast this with the abundance of biological resources in Brazil: if you want growth, you simply cut down some more forest. Much easier, much more predictable, negative long term effects are only starting to be fully understood today and the understanding is still not sufficient to make it stop. It does not scale though, like the once-in-a-planet's-lifetime escalation of productivity that the switch to fossil caused in Europe. But they did not know that there either. If England had not grown out of the limited biological resources of their island, the industrialization might have never happened. Quick googling led me to this scan of an article from 1977: https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Nef_1977.pdf https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Nef_1977.pdf "An Early Energy Crisis and Its Consequences", looks like a very interesting read.