In an alternate history work of fiction, what would be a good way to rationalize/justify a world in which there is no usage of fossil fuels?
I think in this alternate history / worldbuilding idea, the physical matter still exists - there is coal, oil, etc, in the earth, but I am wondering if we can come up with a satisfying reason why humans could not make use of anything more efficient than peat in production. Is there a scientific-sounding explanation that could be given to make a world in which coal and oil are useless in industry?
I have been reading “The Future is Degrowth” and “The Origin of Capitalism” and that is what inspired this. The first book says something along the lines of “the capitalism we know, of endless accumulation, is fundamentally a fossil capitalism”. The second book makes a very convincing case that what existed in England centuries before fossil fuels was already distinctly (agrarian) capitalist. Interest in everyone’s thoughts and ideas about how this could be constructed, and what sort of events could play it out in the cradle of capitalism but also worldwide.
I’m no chemist but if you go very science fantasy you can maybe try and justify the lack of existence bit by saying that some specific microscopic lifeform is able to decompose the material relatively fast even in real-life inhospitable conditions, which makes the formation of fossil fuels very scarce. Probably gonna have to handwave a lot of the ecological and biological implications of that though. It’s important to note that even if fossil fuels were never abundant, there are many forms of fuel that are just as harmful that could also be used in such a world, so that would probably go into direct contradiction with the notion that capitalism is dependent on fossil fuels.
But there’s always the possible alternative that humanity never properly figured out thermodynamics and heat engines, and steam engines never got advanced enough for widespread use. That way things like metallurgy, pitch torches, pyres to the Outer Gods, Greek fire and other fossil-fuel-based fun stuff can exist, without any “Industrial Revolution” based on automation. In either case slavery and serfdom should probably play a very large role in your fiction as that’s usually the second favourite thing of the powerful classes after automation. I think capitalism is still possible in such circumstances, but a global capitalist hegemony would prove very difficult without the mass production of bullets and tools to maintain control of the colonies. You could even have some minor (compared to the current one) humanmade climactic events like the Roman Warm Age under such conditions.
Thank you, great ideas here, I especially like the idea of a microorganism decomposing a great deal of it in order to explain a scarcity of fossil fuels. I’m interested in what forms of fuel you mean that would be enough for such an explosive economic growth as our timeline? Charcoal and vegetable oil? I didn’t mean to suggest that capitalism is dependent on fossil fuels neccesarily, but our timeline’s capitalism certainly was and is in love with them. Actually it’s the suggestion that capitalism could progress for hundreds of years in a different direction without fossil fuels that I think could be interesting.
If it’s charcoal and vegetable oil that fuel an industrial revolution instead, I suppose the capitalists would try to get a really good seed oil crop developed, like if some breed or modification of rapeseed. And they’d probably grow it on plantations at huge scale like sugar and tobacco were, or even more than those? Could a society with a capitalist mode of production but no fossil fuels eventually take a crack at nuclear power like our timeline did?
Yes, charcoal and vegetable oil but also sugarcane ethanol has proven to be a very effective fuel for smaller engines such as those of cars. In the end though, if such a large portion of the energy economy is supplied by large fuel-producing plantations, hydroelectric dams may look more palatable than nuclear power plants due to the skipped developments in coal mining and such. But now I think my speculation is reaching “it can be whatever the writer wants it to be” levels.
What alternate and harmful forms of fuel would be abundant if it weren’t for fossil fuels? Curious to read.
I mentioned it on the other reply and I’m by no means an expert in the area. But besides just good ol’ charcoal, there are many kinds of fuels synthesised from organic matter and specifically alcohol fuels that have basically the same general pros and cons as their fossil counterparts, but in varying degrees. There also other technologies that substitute some of the work of fuels, such as hydroelectric dams and wind turbines that have their own set of pros and cons that are conceivable in a world without fossil fuel given how wind/watermills have existed for way longer than factories or gasoline. Could be a fun world-building idea to have factories setup along coastlines for pre-electricity local wind power.
No technology is perfect, it just turns out that fossil fuels are both really cheap on human labour and also really terrible everything living. But imagine a world where more than half the population is cutting sugarcane to make urbanites somewhere else happy though, and you’ve accidentally imagined tropical Latin America before the abolition.