It's entirely possible we'll find a better way to do this. Maybe we'll have to "undertake dramatic changes" to avoid an even bigger disaster.
The importance of coal and oil in modern society cannot be understated. It has been enormously transformative.
I'm not saying things aren't good, or that capitalism hasn't been a factor, but that if we're not careful we'll get stuck with terrible legacies rather than more opportunity.
For example: Undoubtedly we have access to more resources than ever before, yet these resources seem to flow up to the 0.1% at a rate that's unprecedented, and the rate of depletion of essential resources is increasing even as supplies are becoming more constrained.
One by one we're hitting "peak" everything: Peak oil, peak water, peak education, peak fish. We really need to radically re-think how we're approaching things when unchecked geometric growth is no longer an option.
So let's learn from our successes and failures and show a little forward thinking. In the 1900s people would go to work day after day for their whole life building things designed to last a hundred years. Today we smack together something over the course of a weekend and spin it off into an IPO a year later. A little long-term thinking would be nice.
1950 is the earliest that would be OK for me - I had cataracts. In a world before cataract surgery, I would be blind.
One thing about the early European replacement lenses is that they were transparent at least some way into the ultraviolet. It turns out that the human retina can see a short distance into the ultraviolet, but the lens blocks it. The replacement lens let the person see further into the ultraviolet than ordinary people. The OSS used these people as guides on commando raids. There would be a parachute drop of supplies, for example, and they'd put a UV beacon on it. The commandos couldn't see the beacon, and neither could the German soldiers. Only the old person with cataracts (and surgery) who was guiding the commandos could see it.
"Cataract surgery in its simplest form is at least 4000 years old. Couching for cataract was the earliest method at about 2000 BC, and even then was evidently practiced in the Tigris / Euphrates area, as well as India and Japan. The earliest records are from The Bible and The Red Sea Scrolls as well as early Hindu records of Susruta’s time."
http://www.rila.co.uk/issues/free/001/2001/v4n2/p61_65/p61_6...
Isn't this also our future? The future is unevenly distributed... Detroit hasn't reached you yet, but its only a matter of time.
For someone living an agricultural lifestyle things weren't great, you did have to appease your land-owner, but usually that was facilitated by paying a portion of your crop as rent. During the winter months when you had little to do other than care for livestock, things were pretty laid back.
We're a lot less self-sufficient than we used to be, and this is perhaps irreversible. Nobody can be expected to make their own medication, to build their own computer from sand.
It's already possible to do this: give up your toys, transport, access to medicine... everything you rely on your broader community for, and join a commune or live in the rural third world. Basically, join a self-sufficient community. It's going to suck when someone breaks a leg or has complications in childbirth, but you'll be free of the work required to maintain modern living standards.
I'm still hoping for a 'favor' economy like a story I read "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell.