• Question: How different do you think the world would be if there wasn't any fossil fuels. Would we be more sustainable?

    Asked by 585nepk47 to yoyehudi, Oli, Nina, Kerrianne, Ed on 8 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      It might be more sustainable! I also wonder if we’d have advanced scientifically as far as we have. It’s hard to imagine a world without fossil fuels. How would we get about? We wouldn’t have cars, or at least not as we know them. Trains are powered by fossil fuels, too. So we might have bicycles! I *think* bicycles could probably exist without any plastic – the tyres are usually made of rubber and most other essential parts are metal.
      Would the industrial revolution ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/history/industrial_era/the_industrial_revolution/revision/2/ ) have happened without fossil fuels? Possibly not – trains were a big part of the industrial revolution, and if we can’t have trains (they ran on coal) then how can we transport all the goods that are being made as part of the revolution? It’s hard to predict what life might be like today without fossil fuels.

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      I think if we managed to very quickly change over to using clean and renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal then our existence would be much more sustainable. However if we just abandoned fossil fuels immediately or they suddenly ran out, I think the world would be thrown into utter chaos – they’re essential to so much of our everyday lives, and to basically everyone around the world. We probably couldn’t sustain ourselves without them at the moment, but as quick a change as we can safely manage would definitely be a good idea 🙂

    • Photo: Nina Jordan

      Nina Jordan answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      It would be very different! We would essentially still be living like 10,000 years ago, being farmers, or hunter-gatherers. There’d be no cities, no public or private transport and nowhere near the number of people living on the planet now. Standard of living and life expectancy would be lower. Back then, people had to be more sustainable because they had no other choice. If they used up a resource in their area they had to make do without or move to a different area. Life was much harder compared to today but potentially more ‘pure’…

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