Fossil fuels have been an integral and fundamental aspect of the industrial revolution. This diary looks at the history of their exploitation and use. They are connected to every aspect of our economic culture, industrial production, agricultural production, transportation, heating, etc. Any significant change in their use means major changes in that culture.
The diary which introduced this series can be found here.
Economics Of Alternative Energy
Human endeavors relied on animal power for many centuries. The earliest efforts at mechanical production of energy relied on wind power and water power.
Windmills were used to pump water and sails were used to power ships. Water power was commonly used to grind food. In the late 18th C as the industrial revolution began to take off, the early textile factories in England and the US were located near streams because they relied on water power to run their machines.
At the beginning of the 19th C the steam revolution arrived. Coal quickly became the primary means of producing it. Factories no longer needed to be located near streams. The development of steam powered locomotives began to create a transportation revolution. There was a rush to find and exploit coal deposits.
The boom towns of the industrial revolution such as Manchester and Pittsburgh were notorious for their air pollution.
The exploitation of oil was an American innovation. There is very little of it to be found in Western Europe. In the mountains of Western Pennsylvania it was close enough to the surface that it bubbled up into streams. It wasn't until the 1850s that anyone came up with an industrial use for the substance. It was first refined into kerosene to provide an alternative to whale oil for lightening. This development set off the world's first oil rush followed closely by its first oil related ecological disaster.
Valleys in the Pennsylvania mountains became polluted with oil and tar.
John D. Rockefeller had the greed, initiative and imagination to begin consolidating the ownership of the early oil drilling operations and refineries. His aggressive business practices soon became notorious.
Ultimately he was able to build the international empire of Standard Oil. He became perhaps the world's richest man and one of its most notorious robber barons. His descendants continue to control vast wealth and political power.
The refining of crude oil into gasoline opened vast new prospects for technology. Oil could be used as a replacement for coal in steam ships and various forms of industrial production. However, its greatest impact came with the development of the internal combustion engine that gave rise to the automobile. Early versions of this invention were essentially toys for the wealthy and served to frighten the horses. Then along came another captain of American industry Henry Ford. He pioneered the development of mass production of assembly lines and the regimented control of the American worker. The result of his efforts was the famous model-T.
You could have any color you wanted as long as it was black.
The automobile began to revolutionize not only the way people traveled but the way they conducted business and where they lived. The mass production of automobiles put the US in the forefront of the transportation revolution as they became affordable for an expanding portion of the population.
World War II provided the US with the incentive to mobilize its industrial and technological capacities to maximum capabilities. The range and power of airplanes were dramatically expanded. Cloaked in the deepest secrecy the most ambitious development program that the world had ever known produced the dawn of the awesome and awful nuclear age.
This entirely new form of power made its debut with the demonstration of its terrible power of destruction. Efforts to develop it as a peaceful source of energy have always been haunted by its potential for serious harm.
World War II left the US as the only fully functional industrial power still standing. Wartime industries were converted to the production of domestic products. The world's greatest consumer economy burst upon the scene. Young families were eager to get on with the business of living and growing. Their housing needs gave rise to the suburban housing tract. Levittown, PA has the distinction of being the first.
Melvinia Reynolds captured the lack of soul and charm with her folk song Little Boxes.
Prior to WWII when automobiles were still limited to people with a fair amount of disposable income, the US had developed extensive trolley networks in most major urban areas. After the war there was a concerted campaign by the automobile, oil and tire industries to close these down and build ever more highways for ever more cars. Suburban tracts spread over the entire country and with them came that great American creation the shopping mall. Older central urban centers began a long process of withering.
By the 1960s Americans were living higher on the hog than anybody else in the world. We could never get enough of hearing endless of statistics that proved us to be bigger and better at anything that really mattered. Energy consumption was the bedrock of this consumerist society. It was based on the notion that it would never run out and that it would always be cheap. To me the ultimate icon of that culture was the cars of the era. I remember how every year the public waited with breathless anticipation to see how much bigger the new models were going to be than the year before.
The next installment in this series will look at what did and did not happen when this world began to unravel.