Fossil fuels helped humanity improve our health, living standards and longevity in just 200 years
Paul Driessen
Thanksgiving is a good time to express our sincere gratitude that we no longer “enjoy” the “simpler life of yesteryear.” As my grandmother said, “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.”
For countless millennia, mankind lived on a precipice, in hunter-gatherer, subsistence farmer and primitive urban industrial societies powered by human and animal muscle, wood, charcoal, animal dung, water wheels and windmills. Despite backbreaking dawn-to-dusk labor, wretched poverty was the norm; starvation was a drought, war or long winter away; rampant diseases and infections were addressed by herbs, primitive medicine and superstition. Life was “eco-friendly,” but life spans averaged 35 to 40 years.
Then, suddenly, a great miracle happened! Beginning around 1800, health, prosperity and life expectancy began to climb … slowly but inexorably at first, then more rapidly and dramatically. Today, the average American lives longer, healthier and better than even royalty did a mere century ago.
How did this happen? What was suddenly present that had been absent before, to cause this incredible transformation?
Humanity already possessed the basic scientific method (1250), printing press (1450), corporation (1600) and early steam engine (1770). So what inventions, discoveries and practices arrived after 1800, to propel us forward over this short time span?
Ideals of liberty and equality took root, says economics historian Deidre McCloskey. Liberated people are more ingenious, free to pursue happiness, and ideas; free to try, fail and try again; free to pursue their self-interests and thereby, intentionally or not, to better mankind – just as Adam Smith described.
Equality (of social dignity and before the law) emboldened otherwise ordinary people to invest, invent and take risks. Once accidents of parentage, titles, inherited wealth or formal education no longer controlled destinies, humanity increasingly benefitted from the innate inspiration, perspiration and perseverance of inventors like American Charles Newbold, who patented the first iron plow in 1807.
Ideas suddenly start having sex, say McCloskey and United Kingdom parliamentarian and science writer Matt Ridley. Free enterprise capitalism and entrepreneurship took off, as did commercial and international banking, risk management and stock markets.
Legal and regulatory systems expanded to express societal expectations, coordinate growth and activities, and punish bad actors. Instead of growing, making and buying locally, we did so internationally – enabling families, communities and countries to specialize, and buy affordable products from afar.
The scientific method began to flourish, unleashing wondrous advances at an increasingly frenzied pace. Not just inventions like steam-powered refrigeration (1834) but, often amid heated debate, discoveries like the germ theory of disease that finally bested the miasma theory around 1870.
All this and more were literally fueled by another absolutely vital, fundamental advance that is too often overlooked or only grudging recognized: abundant, reliable, affordable energy – the vast majority of it fossil fuels. Coal and coal gas, then also oil, then natural gas as well, replaced primitive fuels with densely packed energy that could power engines, trains, farms, factories, laboratories, schools, hospitals, offices, homes, road building and more, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
The fuels also ended our unsustainable reliance on whale oil, saving those magnificent creatures from extinction. Eventually, they powered equipment that removes harmful pollutants from our air and water.
Today, coal, oil and natural gas still provide 80% of America’s and the world’s energy for heat, lights, manufacturing, transportation, communication, refrigeration, entertainment and every other aspect of modern life. Equally important, they supported and still support the infrastructure and vibrant societies, economies and institutions that enable the human mind (what economist Julian Simon called our Ultimate Resource) to create seemingly endless new ideas and technologies.
Electricity plays an increasingly prominent and indispensable role in modern life. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine life without this infinitely adaptable energy form. By 1925, half of all U.S. homes had electricity; a half century later, all did – from coal, hydroelectric, natural gas or nuclear plants.
Medical discoveries and practices followed a similar trajectory, as millions of “invisible hands” worked together across buildings, cities, countries and continents – without most of them ever even knowing the others existed. They shared and combined ideas and technologies, generating new products and practices that improved and saved billions of lives.
Medical research discovered why people died from minor wounds, and what really caused malaria (1898), smallpox and cholera. Antibiotics (the most vital advance in centuries), vaccinations and new drugs began to combat disease and infection. X-rays, anesthesia, improved surgical techniques, sanitation and pain killers (beginning with Bayer Aspirin in 1899) permitted life-saving operations. Indoor plumbing, electric stoves (1896) and refrigerators (1913), trash removal, and countless other advances also helped raise average American life expectancy from 46 in 1900 to 76 (men) and 81 (women) in 2017.
Washing visible hands with soap (1850) further reduced infections and disease. Wearing shoes in southern U.S. states (1910) all but eliminated waterborne hookworm, while the growing use of window screens (1887) kept hosts of disease-carrying insects out of homes. Petrochemicals increasingly provided countless pharmaceuticals, plastics and other products that enhance and safeguard lives.
Safe water and wastewater treatment – also made possible by fossil fuels, electricity and the infrastructure they support – supported still healthier societies that created still more prosperity, by eliminating the bacteria, parasites and other waterborne pathogens that made people too sick to work and killed millions, especially children. They all but eradicated cholera, one of history’s greatest killers.
Insecticides and other chemicals control disease-carrying and crop-destroying insects and pathogens. Ammonia-based fertilizers arrived in 1910; tractors and combines became common in the 1920s. Today, modern mechanized agriculture, fertilizers, hybrid and biotech seeds, drip irrigation and other advances combine to produce bumper crops that feed billions, using less land, water and insecticides.
The internal combustion engine (Carl Benz, 1886) gradually replaced horses for farming and transportation, rid cities of equine pollution (feces, urine and corpses), and enabled forage cropland to become forests. Today we can travel states, nations and the world in mere hours, instead of weeks – and ship food, clothing and other products to the globe’s farthest corners. Catalytic converters and other technologies mean today’s cars emit less than 2% of the pollutants that came out of tailpipes in 1970.
Power equipment erects better and stronger houses and other buildings that keep out winter cold and summer heat, better survive hurricanes and earthquakes, and connect occupants with entertainment and information centers from all over the planet. Radios, telephones, televisions and text messages warn of impending dangers, while fire trucks and ambulances rush accident and disaster victims to hospitals.
Today, modern drilling and mining techniques and technologies find, extract and process the incredible variety of fuels, metals and other raw materials required to manufacture and operate factories and equipment, to produce the energy and materials we need to grow or make everything we eat, wear or use.
Modern communication technologies combine cable and wireless connections, computers, cell phones, televisions, radio, internet and other devices to connect people and businesses, operate cars and equipment, and make once time-consuming operations happen in nanoseconds. In the invention and discovery arena, Cosmopolitan magazine might call it best idea-sex ever.
So, this holiday season, give thanks for all these blessings – while praying and doing everything you can to help bring the same blessings to billions of people worldwide who still do not enjoy them.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.
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The example “”The internal combustion engine (Carl Benz, 1886)”” is out of place. The important advance was the Otto 4 stroke cycle of 1876.
A nice retort to the ‘doomer’ mentality, I’ll just post this little reflection of the high-minded ‘goodies’ who think they know better and can stand in judgement of humanity and advancement.
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“Industrial Revolution – From Wikipedia
Opposition from Romanticism
During the Industrial Revolution an intellectual and artistic hostility towards the new industrialisation developed, associated with the Romantic movement. Romanticism revered the traditionalism of rural life and recoiled against the upheavals caused by industrialization, urbanization and the wretchedness of the working classes. Its major exponents in English included the artist and poet William Blake and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The movement stressed the importance of “nature” in art and language, in contrast to “monstrous” machines and factories; the “Dark satanic mills” of Blake’s poem “And did those feet in ancient time”. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein reflected concerns that scientific progress might be two-edged. French Romanticism likewise was highly critical of industry.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
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As seen from that paragraph, “The movement stressed the importance of “nature” in art and language, in contrast to “monstrous” machines and factories; the “Dark satanic mills” …”, that mentality has not changed, and nor has their excuses and doomer/alarmist psyche and prophecies.
So we probably should not be expecting different. Basically, ignore them and get on with it, laugh at them if you feel it will help, but they aren’t going to change much. That anti-advancement behavior and attitude is like a ‘standing-wave’ in the backwaters of human culture.
One of the most important reasons for mankind’s rapid improvement since 1800 is coming out of the Little Ice Age and the crop failures, famines, and plagues that were initiated by the climate. History shows that mankind advances when it’s relatively warm, and declines when it gets cold. And if we think we’re so advanced to be out of danger, then consider what just a 10-year cold spell or medium sized meteorite impact would do. Do we store enough food to last even 10 years? I don’t think so. We could all end up hunter-gatherers again. Plan ahead.
I agree Karl.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/17/oddly-quiet-sun-3-weeks-without-sunspots/#comment-2407423
[excerpt]
In 2002, I predicted that natural global cooling would commence by 2020 to 2030, in an article published 1Sept2002 in the Calgary Herald. I am now leaning closer to 2020 for cooling to start, possibly even earlier. I hope to be wrong. Humanity and the environment suffer during cooling periods.
I suggest that it is long past time for society to prepare for the possibility of moderate global cooling. This would involve:
1. Strengthening of electrical grid systems, currently destabilized by costly, intermittent green energy schemes;
2. Reduce energy costs by all practical means.
3. Development of contingency plans for food production and storage, should early frosts impact harvests;
4. Develop contingency plans should vital services be disrupted by cold weather events – such as the failure of grid power systems, blocking of transportation corridors, etc.
5. Improve home insulation and home construction standards.
The current mania over (fictitious) catastrophic global warming has actually brewed the “perfect storm” – energy systems have been foolishly compromised and energy costs have been needlessly increased, to fight imaginary warming in a (probably) cooling world.
I suggest this is the prudent path for Western societies to follow. It has no downside, even if global cooling does not occur, and considerable upside if moderate cooling does commence.
Best, Allan
Several things have made life better.
– Instant communication with someone half a world away. Back in the days of dial-up landlines, and before that, you were lucky to not have to be on a party line if you were out in the country. Party lines in rural areas were still in place in 1968.
– Better, certainly not perfect but better, weather forecasting. I’m still waiting for the possibly 12 inches of snow to show up, but it’s 33F here in northeastern Illinois and the humidity level is 91%, so if it’s anything, it’s a mix of snow and rain, or slop. I can live with slop. I know that in other areas, the temps dropped and the wind has been fierce, causing some trucking accidents and making it difficult to get around.
– Natural gas piped straight to my home for heat and cooking and hot water. Without central heating, it would be impossible to stay warm, even though my house is well-insulated. Without natural gas as a cheap, affordable fuel, I would have no heat, no way to cook food, and no hot water. Period.
– Low cost reliable electricity, produced by a natural gas-fired power plant. I keep getting offers for “clean, sustainable” electricity at 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour. My current cost is barely 6.45 cents per kilowatt hour. Why should I, or anyone else, pay ++50% more for an unreliable energy source, EVER?
But the ecohippies think all of this is dreadful and want to be in a more “natural” lifestyle. Can we please find them their own planet so that they leave the rest of us alone? If that is really so important to them, why have they NOT gone to living the way the Amish and Mennonites do? There’s never any answer to that, is there?
With the possible exception of solar panels, every solution to climate change the Greens have proposed is a revival of an old idea. Bicycles, trams, windmills, battery cars, biomass.. etc.
Thing is, if they studied their history properly they’d understand why those ideas were abandoned the first time round, and see that the reasons will likely still apply to an updated version of the same. The Romans stripped the countryside of wood to feed their hypocaust heating systems. Victorian horse carriage operators complained of the lawlessness and risktaking of cyclists weaving crazily through the traffic. Battery cars were popular in the days before the IC engine was a reliable product. Trams have fundamental issues, notably that a single breakdown blocks the line and brings the whole system to a halt. As for windmills, if they’d studied the work of early industrialists they’d know that they were a last resort, only to be used if steam or water power were not available because their output is too unreliable to base a business on.
If the Greens were “Fair dincom” (For real) they would get together and buy a island. Now they could then build windmills, no buying the commercially made ones, thery needed fossell fuel.
Let them find water, dispose of their bodely wastes, and of course find their own food. They can find a lot in the sea or on the beaches. Land can be cultivated, we will give them some seeds, not of course the commercially produced ones.
So just how many would take up such a offer to “Prove” that their ideas of Sustainability living actually works.
MJE
“So just how many would take up such a offer to “Prove” that their ideas of Sustainability living actually works.”
0.0000097% ?
LOL!
Progress always amounts to less dependency on land and nature.
In this regard, solar panels and windfarms, on a national scale, are backwardness.
Great essay.
How to promote these important truths in a public square dominsted by fear mongers and apocalyptic claptrap?
There is that cursed “average” again, skewing so-called life spans. Face it, if you are over 40 years old, that average life span never would have applied to you. Nor did it ever help the countless kids who died in their first year.
Given any number of disasters; e.g. crop failure, plague, war, etc. America is still dangerously close to starvation.
The scary part is how few people store any food. With many if not most of them ignorant about how to grow, harvest and put up food.
In the early part of the Twentieth Century, most families kept a garden and stored what excess food they grew.
In these nanny state days, all too many people believe that they are owed sustenance, medicine, housing and health care.
Many suburban dwellers live under covenants forbidding raising animals for food, and they frown on sufficiently large gardens, as gardens are not high on best landscaping plans.
Speak for yourself. Here in the UK I feel we have returned to my childhood where we had to watch every penny spent on heating. For decades power failures were non existent but now we get admittedly short failures but they are back. I have had to cancel all social media contact as so many young people I know plug climate change I get utterly depressed at the success of brainwashing that has been achieved.
I see young people wearing badges saying ban fur use Faux fur simultaneously with ban plastic and not seeing anything wrong except the fact I ridiculed her and told her to throw away her phone as well as never using gas water of electricity as all are totally dependent on plastic. Worse still she informed me it was her teacher’s two pet hobby horses.
I just hoe this generation gets a brain before it destroys itself.
here is a thought about thanksgiving, especially those living near the Mexican border…
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/11/24/looking-for-merciful-samaritans/
Regarding growing your own food in what used to be a generous backyard. Todays politicians are forcing us to live in smaller and smaller blocks, because of the cost of infracture spending.
In the 1930 tees here in Australia many survived by growing their own food, plus the use of a .22 rifle to shoot the rabbits, a pest here.
Also ironically exports of wool were used to keep the Japanese troops fighting in China warm. Plus the export of scrap iron to Japan brought in some cash, they did return the iron by bombing the port of Darwin.
MJE
We don’t enjoy a specific day given over to thanksgiving here in the UK. That is in itself something of a surprise given our copy cat mindset/attitude these days, or possibly our mixed cultural societies.
We used to have Harvest Festival which was half way towards what the essay covered, but not as wide ranging, or as deep as we have just had the pleasure of reading about.
I have reached the stage in life where I am forever thankful I am able to mark these events.
Without our scientific advances, many of us would not be here and certainly would not have the time or the energy, (that word again) to do anything much beyond survive.
By 1925, half of all U.S. homes had electricity; water from the tap and sanitary installations.
a half century later, all did.