What about aluminium? It's pretty much the reverse--hard to mine, easy to work. So that's a big bonus pre-fossil fuel society didn't have, the aluminium is alre

What about aluminium? It's pretty much the reverse--hard to mine, easy to work. So that's a big bonus pre-fossil fuel society didn't have, the aluminium is already mined and out there. Now on the other hand, I find it puzzling how so many people in this thread (and also part of the assumptions in the article) seem to forget all the things we could do perfectly well without fossil fuels. Glass? Brick? Mortar? Is it maybe because in America you don't see as many obviously before-fossil-fuel buildings that contain all these materials? I don't see many people mentioning specific years, neither could could I find a clear number on several WP pages, but considering most of the graphs about production/consumption, we didn't start using fossil fuels until about 1800-1850 (with coal), with significant numbers not even beginning to appear until after 1850. Any idea what sort of technologies we already had before that? It's not too bad :) Yet, the Industrial Revolution was already on its way since 1760. We had microscopes, architecture, surgery, books, printing presses ... And just because most things today are made out of plastic doesn't mean they have to be. A lot of those things exist only because plastic is so ridiculously cheap it's not even cost-effective to develop an alternative. Remember old things being built to last? That's how you make up for the ridiculous cheapness of plastic. It almost sounds cheesy and old-timey to repeat, but if you do the mental math it adds up: a styrofoam cup is maybe 1000x as cheap, so it made economical sense to consume and throw away. I already easily use a coffee mug on average 1000s of times (daily coffee times a bunch of years) before it breaks, and that's without even trying. Some of the plastic things, like shopping bags, don't even really last if you try (shopping bag, used four times before it rips somewhere?) that's the sort of thing we'll stop making as soon as the margins stop being insane and use the resources spent on something 1000x more durable instead of 1000x as cheap. Remember that oil and/or plastic won't just 100% disappear, suddenly. It's a really weird luxury state we live in at the moment, but plastic is still pretty awesome as a material even if it's quite expensive and not as plentiful (just look at glass or fine pottery), in particular as durable alternatives become economical again.