this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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We've discovered the breaking point of paradise. Hope the next sentient species is a little less selfish.
Unfortunately, I don't know if it would be possible for another species to reach our level of technology or civilization. We built up our society off of easily accessible energy resources (surface-level coal being our first source of industrial energy). This energy excess allowed us to develop other sources of energy, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. But if you tried starting from zero again, you could never get to this point, at least along the same path, as you need a high level of technology to access any available energy resources. Thus, if any new species took our place, they could only ever rise to the level of the pre-industrial revolution.
They wouldn't be able to take the same oath we did but that isn't saying they could never get to where we're at more or less.
The enlightenment spawn the industrial revolution but it didn't necessarily have to. Scientific inquiry could have eventually lead us to somewhere near where we're at now without fossil fuels. The path would look wildly different and there's a fairly high likelihood mass slavery could play a role in that but it's still possible.
Kind of a tangent here but the book children of time goes into some depth on how the author thinks a race of super intelligent spiders could overcome many of the same hurdles we had to in wildly different ways to become a space-aring civilization. It's science fiction and obviously not an in depth study into how feasible it all would be but it did get me thinking that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
I disagree. To unlock workable solar and wind powered electricity, you need something to carry you energetically through the 'tech tree.' I simply don't think you can get to that level of technology without some fossil fuel use.
Solar maybe not but i could see an intelligent species figuring out that if they wrapped some copper wire around something under a waterfall that stuff happened.
Hell maybe they'd skip most of what we've done and just stick uranium into cars.
I really don't have enough scientific knowledge to offer in depth arguments as to the how of it but I think it's reasonable to assume that at least some. If not most. Of the discoveries we take for granted in modern times could have happened without oil. It would be a very different world for sure. Though.