Preface. Winston recreates what life was like from the 5th to the 15th centuries — from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance.
Energyskeptic.com shows why hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, fusion, and other alternatives to fossil fuels can’t replace them. So it is worth knowing how people lived before fossils if we’re doomed to go back to Wood World after peak oil, where biomass was the main source of heat and infrastructure.
If only peak oil, rather than climate change, had been understood as the main problem facing us, we could have prepared for the future much better. We could have had civil engineers figuring out how to insulate homes better, build roads to last as long as the Roman ones still around today, and other infrastructure for future generations. Organic farming would start in earnest, horses be bred to replace tractors, materials scientists would find ways to preserve knowledge that lasted longer than paper. Stone fences built since barbed wire will rust away. Social structures like guilds, who enforced high standards lest all of them not be trusted put in place. Tens of thousands of small granaries to keep pests from devouring crops post-harvest.
I’m sure as you read this you can think of ways to prepare now for the future, and most of all, a social system that doesn’t make most of us poor peasants.
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