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Comment by hesdeadjim | Hacker News Reader

A jump from coal straight to nuclear and renewables would have been possible.

That said, there are an innumerable number of side effects from cheap fossil fuels that would change present reality as we know it were they removed.

Removing cheap fossil fuel energy could have drastically slowed down emigration from cities to the burbs, so it’s also fun to imagine a different present where there’s dozens of New York Cities spread around the nation, connected by mass transport, and separated by vast swaths of mostly empty land. As EV tech and internet became widespread, it’s likely that the development of suburbia would only just begin to be happening now. Or not. Like you say though, fun thought experiment.

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Most of what oil provides you can get from coal and some chemistry, even liquid fuels. I think a world without coal would have been significantly different though.

Metals would be much more expensive, so most structures would have stayed would or stone. I think electric street cars would have been possible based on hydropower and minimal metal usage. That means cities would end up with mid density suburbs based on row houses like san francisco. More dramatic is the lack of cars means dramatically higher density by default without parking etc.

Wind power would have been a much bigger deal never really falling out of favor. Eventually solar would have become a major deal which probably scaled back to most of what we are used to.

It’s weird to think if we hadn’t had fossil fuels at all how badly it would have hampered human development. Could we have even got to modern development level without so much free power? It doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps the challenge would have forced us to come up with more imaginative solutions - I mean there’s oceans full of hydrogen for starters. And the sun would still be shining and the oceans still full of waves!

> Could we have even got to modern development level without so much free power?

It's only free if you don't consider externalities to be a cost.

Yeah of course, we know that now. I just mean could we have got to where we are now without it. How could we have done it differently?

I wonder what could have replaced all the plastic though?

And what would China be like if they never got to grow by making so much cheap plastic stuff to get them up the ladder to making so much tech stuff.

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