Civilisation started heavily relying on coal a few hundred years ago. The Earth was well-dominated by humans by then. It very probably would have taken a lot longer to get to where we are now, but I don't think there was any danger of seventeenth century civilisation falling to dust because there was no coal to be found.
All coal was produced during a 50 million year window when the earth lacked a decomposition process that could breakdown lignite. Once that evolved the formation of coal around the planet halted abruptly.
There’s a possibility humans might consume that resource dooming all subsequent civilizations to what you point out.
It's possible that absent coal, oil, or natural gas we would have leap frogged directly into solar power first with directed mirrors powering a liquid turbine, wind, and eventually conventional solar panels made from silicone.
There's really no reason to use fossil fuels. The fact that we do actually let's us waste a ton of it. If we had to ration it to the bare essentials we'd be able to get away with using only 5% of the energy we currently use. Our current solar energy production in the United States is 2% but that 2% would have been more than enough to power the entire country in the 1920s.
Wishful thinking with no basis in reality. If we couldn’t use coal, we would cut down and burn trees unsustainably long before we magically manage to invent renewable energy tech without all the benefits of modern infrastructure.
> There's really no reason to use fossil fuels.
Except for the critical dependence on them in almost every aspect of the economy sure.
> If we had to ration it to the bare essentials we'd be able to get away with using only 5% of the energy we currently use.
And how exactly are supposed to organize society into this perfectly energy constrained system?
There were plenty of dangers. One such threat could be the reliance on charcoal (burning trees) for high heat tasks like smelting metals. If you don’t have coal you’re gonna have a tough time making something like steel in an economically viable fashion. You will, in time, run out of trees to burn. And no, comparisons to modern day don’t count. You need to discount our ability to import tree biomass from other areas against the dependence on fossil fuels that enable that cheap transportation of goods.
