No easy energy but also not nearly as much co2 long term. It's hard to imagine people discovering nuclear power or being able to use it without fossil fuels in between, mining fissile material is pretty intense.
Horses and animals probably still used at a daily mass scale. Hard to imagine cities getting huge but places like Teotihuacan, Beijing, Vijayangar, etc all had pretty big populations (sub 1 million though). Probably more rural and pastoral life.
Waterways even more important than now. Ships are pretty much how you could transport a lot of stuff. London used to have tons and tons of boats up and down the river, I don't know when that stopped (maybe even only middle 20th century) so just imagine traffic on the river of whatever town you're in.
You'd probably need postal mail way more. They used to mail babies so they could visit relatives, believe it or not. Sears catalogue would ship you an IKEA diy house with materials and instructions.
No plastics either. Everything is metal, glass, paper, felt, hemp, concrete, etc. I bet you'd have way more airships, that'd be like THE cool way to get around, just need massive helium... or try hydrogen anyway its not like you have fossil fuels to burn on board and risk hindenberg disasters.
Offices, if around, would be loud as fuck. Type writers everywhere just clacking away all day. They probably don't have personal computers for a long time. Multiple phones on your desk instead of call waiting or a single phone with multiple lines at least until cellphones - but it'd hard to see miniaturization being successful without plastics, imagine the cell phones they'd have if they can only use wood or metal. I guess iphones are aluminum, right?
A lot of modern agriculture uses fertilizers derived from natural gas. No more green revolution, population caps out at what... 2 billion? Maybe intense famines by the 1970s. Could be like a Star Trek thing where they go through some very intense problems for a few decades but emerge with a much more equitable society.
Cities probably stink from the animal manure. At least indoor plumbing doesn't need fossil fuels. I bet there'd be nice gree parks and walkways, I wonder if there'd actually be grids or if the US would have a grid road network? It might all just be however makes sense in the natural landscape vernacular instead of imposing grids.
I think socialism might win sooner in this world. It'd be harder to get through the necessary accumulation of productive forces, but the bourgeoisie don't have as much power and aren't able to resist as hard. They'd try fighting back with way more propoganda and soft power instead of the Jakarta Method we had irl.
No fossil fuels means other means of a/c are necessary. The Harahappan or Indus Valley civ whatever it was used upwells in big buildings. Imagine you go into a local skyscraper and the bottom floor just has a massive, clean pool. It passively absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. And it's like that everywhere. Just a reception desk maybe a cafe and a big ass pool on the first floor.
You've made great points about agriculture (and I can't believe I overlooked plastics not being a thing), but I disagree with you on the abundance of boats. I believe that without fossil fuels, people would be forced to used wood for charcoal production instead of as lumber, which means the costs of building ships would've gone up.
I tend to disagree. Charcoal was a massive industry before the industrial revolution, and people still managed to make a lot of boats. Thing is, the amount of labor it took to dig up a bunch of coal made it economical to burn it by the ton to run industrial processes - the amount of wood it would take to make the same amount of charcoal would take so much more labor to produce that I don't think it would ever be economical to burn charcoal for steam engines.
No easy energy but also not nearly as much co2 long term. It's hard to imagine people discovering nuclear power or being able to use it without fossil fuels in between, mining fissile material is pretty intense.
Horses and animals probably still used at a daily mass scale. Hard to imagine cities getting huge but places like Teotihuacan, Beijing, Vijayangar, etc all had pretty big populations (sub 1 million though). Probably more rural and pastoral life.
Waterways even more important than now. Ships are pretty much how you could transport a lot of stuff. London used to have tons and tons of boats up and down the river, I don't know when that stopped (maybe even only middle 20th century) so just imagine traffic on the river of whatever town you're in.
You'd probably need postal mail way more. They used to mail babies so they could visit relatives, believe it or not. Sears catalogue would ship you an IKEA diy house with materials and instructions.
No plastics either. Everything is metal, glass, paper, felt, hemp, concrete, etc. I bet you'd have way more airships, that'd be like THE cool way to get around, just need massive helium... or try hydrogen anyway its not like you have fossil fuels to burn on board and risk hindenberg disasters.
Offices, if around, would be loud as fuck. Type writers everywhere just clacking away all day. They probably don't have personal computers for a long time. Multiple phones on your desk instead of call waiting or a single phone with multiple lines at least until cellphones - but it'd hard to see miniaturization being successful without plastics, imagine the cell phones they'd have if they can only use wood or metal. I guess iphones are aluminum, right?
A lot of modern agriculture uses fertilizers derived from natural gas. No more green revolution, population caps out at what... 2 billion? Maybe intense famines by the 1970s. Could be like a Star Trek thing where they go through some very intense problems for a few decades but emerge with a much more equitable society.
Cities probably stink from the animal manure. At least indoor plumbing doesn't need fossil fuels. I bet there'd be nice gree parks and walkways, I wonder if there'd actually be grids or if the US would have a grid road network? It might all just be however makes sense in the natural landscape vernacular instead of imposing grids.
I think socialism might win sooner in this world. It'd be harder to get through the necessary accumulation of productive forces, but the bourgeoisie don't have as much power and aren't able to resist as hard. They'd try fighting back with way more propoganda and soft power instead of the Jakarta Method we had irl.
No fossil fuels means other means of a/c are necessary. The Harahappan or Indus Valley civ whatever it was used upwells in big buildings. Imagine you go into a local skyscraper and the bottom floor just has a massive, clean pool. It passively absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. And it's like that everywhere. Just a reception desk maybe a cafe and a big ass pool on the first floor.
You've made great points about agriculture (and I can't believe I overlooked plastics not being a thing), but I disagree with you on the abundance of boats. I believe that without fossil fuels, people would be forced to used wood for charcoal production instead of as lumber, which means the costs of building ships would've gone up.
I tend to disagree. Charcoal was a massive industry before the industrial revolution, and people still managed to make a lot of boats. Thing is, the amount of labor it took to dig up a bunch of coal made it economical to burn it by the ton to run industrial processes - the amount of wood it would take to make the same amount of charcoal would take so much more labor to produce that I don't think it would ever be economical to burn charcoal for steam engines.