A few years back we had to endure "Water World." This tedious flick presupposed Global Warming had melted all the ice and inundated the world. Poor old Kevin Costner tried but there was no making that turkey fly.
In the spirit of equal time I think we need an "Al Gore World" postulating a world without carbonaceous fossil fuels. What would life be like without fossil fuels?
Fortunately, I don't have to work too hard to paint the picture. We, as a society have been there and done that. Wanna see Al Gore World? Go to colonial Williamsburg.
http://www.history.org/visit/index.cfm
Colonial Williamsburg freezes time in the late colonial period, circa 1765, right after the end of the French and Indian (Seven Years) War and the beginning of the American Revolution. It was the world that Washington and Jefferson knew and that world really survived as such up to about 1805 or so when the steamboat was invented.
I don't even need to make up a movie. "The Last of the Mohicans" will do nicely (and it was a much better movie than 'Water World" - good literature helps a lot) as it was set in the same period. "The Patriot" was also set in roughly the same time frame.
There was no fossil fuel in colonial America. Coal was not commercially mined until the 1830s. Thermal energy - used almost exclusively for space heat and cooking - came from firewood (aka biomass). All other energy in society came from human or animal power and wind in the form of sailing ships. What artificial light there was came from candles. A world lit only by fire.
This was about as far as society could progress without fossil fuel energy.
What was life like back then?
The world supported a total human population about one-eighth of what it is today.
Life expectancy (in the American colonies) was around 30 years
Disease was rampant
Malnutrition and famine were never far away
Infant mortality was astronomical by today's standards.
Over 90% of the people were directly involved in food production
Slavery was economically viable
Yellow fever flourished as far north as Philadelphia
Malaria was common well into Canada
A woman would marry at 13 and expect to have at least a dozen kids hoping to get a couple to adulthood - if she survive her teens
From the lowest social strata to the highest, women were chattel
Iron was very expensive
Gunpowder was very expensive
Steel was almost nonexistent
Clothing was very expensive - most people had maybe two changes of clothes
Sailing ships were the spacecraft of the day
All roads were dirt - passable maybe three months a year
Almost all travel was by water, either rivers or sea
Few people traveled more than fifteen miles from where they were born
Literacy was under 25% of the population
Glaciers were enormous - this was the peak of the Little Ice Age.
It snowed routinely in Tidewater and Piedmont North Carolina every winter
Air and water quality in the towns were excreble even by modern Chinese standards
Sanitation was unheard of
This time did have some good points
Government sat lightly upon the populace
A frontiersman might never see an agent of the government in his entire life
There were few lawyers
This is the society you buy into when you reject fossil fuels. This is Al Gore's vision of America.
