Screw the oil industry/clean energy wank

With any pod post 1900, screw the oil industry as hard as possible. Or at least have cleaner forms of energy come into mainstream use. Or both. Preferably both. Bonus points if you screw the car industry and have the majority of people use public transportation/bikes/walking too.
 
I would think the nicest way would be for controlled nuclear fusion to be more easily achievable. Bountiful, cheap and low polluting electricity would affect all forms of land based transportation. As well as industry and heating. Alas, it may require an ASB type tweak to the laws of physics to permit this breakthrough.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
IMHO the known catastrophes as well as almost-catastrophes around nuclear power somewhat ... diksregard it as a 'clean energy'.

Whatever additional change to achieve the goal of the OP :
Henry Ford should have stayed with his idea of 'regrwoing" aka green fuels as ethanol prior to 1910
(though the outright construction of the Model T motor for ehtanol-fuel might be a 'modern myth').
And he should have further promoted this fuel-idea.​

This way the chance to base at least land-based individual transport on 'green fuel' would be remarkably increased.
 
IMHO the known catastrophes as well as almost-catastrophes around nuclear power somewhat ... diksregard it as a 'clean energy'.
Still far, far cleaner than coal/oil/gas. The main problem with nuclear isn't that it's dangerous, as such - it's that it's expensive to operate because the fuel is scarce and the regulatory environment is generally hostile. And the regulatory environment is hostile (in the States, at least) because we live in a representative democracy and laypeople are really bad at risk assessment. It's a similar situation to aircraft vs. automobiles as far as risk is concerned: nuclear power has problems only very occasionally (you can count the number of serious nuclear power-related incidents on the fingers of one hand), but the problems it has are much more dramatic than the fear of slow climate change.

To the OP: If you're willing to believe all the Internet hype regarding thorium reactors, that might be a way to do it. Unfortunately, finding a single PoD that enables widespread use of a thorium fuel cycle is hard. Thorium is useless for weapons purposes, which means there wasn't much historical interest in it (as opposed to uranium and plutonium, which are very good and okay for weapons systems, respectively). Most of the modern interest stems from people looking for a safer, cleaner power source, which wasn't a concern back in the day.
 
The problem is that oil has so many uses that its growth is inevitable and because it burns so efficiently its an ideal fuel, once its discovered and folks find how useful it is, you won't be able to limit its growth.

Instead what we'd need is post WW2 a widespread growth of the nuclear industry, with minimal incidents of failure. With serious governmental funding to produce plants in say the US and UK and other European countries to lessen the dependence on oil and gas.

Solar and wind are just not efficient enough, hydro might work but there's the envromental impact to consider there.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
The problem is that oil has so many uses that its growth is inevitable ...
IMO the best reason - all its uses in pharmacy, chemicals, plastic (consumers goods), etc. - why it should be propagated as NOT being brutally, cave-men-like, stupiditly simply burnt.

Btw.:
Oil makes only a couple percent of the energy source used for electricity.
The vast majority is burnt in vehicle and used for polymere-products (plastics).

THE major source of energy for electricity always was and is : coal.

Therefore nuclear energy is IMO not a solution for the OPs question.

And if you might think about e-motion (electrical cars) ... well than also think of the polution and landscape-destroying methods of getting the used/hyped Lithium (for accumulators) and rare-earth metals for superlight e-motors.
 
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Instead what we'd need is post WW2 a widespread growth of the nuclear industry, with minimal incidents of failure. With serious governmental funding to produce plants in say the US and UK and other European countries to lessen the dependence on oil and gas.

Solar and wind are just not efficient enough, hydro might work but there's the envromental impact to consider there.
Once all the major European countries start using, would that solidify it and start the ball rolling to the rest of the world? What about China?
 
Oil makes only a couple percent of the energy source used for electricity.
The vast majority is burnt in vehicle and used for polymere-products (plastics).

Meaning that to screw the oil industry the motor industry must be drastically retarded. This can be done to an extent with appropriate (for an oil screw) city planning that minimises car use and maximum use of electric transportation which basically means trains and trams.

For that scenario to then become an environmental wank is difficult because despite popular opinion the environment doesn't only mean carbon emissions. I don't see how screwing the oil industry provides enough habitat for the Javan Tiger for example.
 
IMHO the known catastrophes as well as almost-catastrophes around nuclear power somewhat ... diksregard it as a 'clean energy'.

I think nuclear weapons add to the fear around nuclear power too - people think of nuclear and they think of things like Hiroshima as well as disasters like Chernobyl. A world where nuclear weapons were never used (or even never developed/less developed) probably sees more widespread nuclear power because there'd be less fear around having a nuclear power station close to you and there'd be more chance of things like thorium reactors that are less use for weapons being developed.
 
Proper public transport in cities can kill the car early on, and thus much of the oil industry. Simply retaining the trams and light rail systems which could be found in all cities back then would have a huge impact on the popularity of cars. Expanding the rail/tram systems outwards would simply remove the need for cars in the cities.
 
Kill the car industry early on or if they must be around, have oil crashes or oil price problems more often and or more severe
 
This all went to maximalist “brinksmanship” pretty quickly, but the OP specifies changing things as much “as possible.” That probably means that we’re talking a matter of degrees rather than tripping up what was, by the turn of the 20th century, a necessary industry.

Just spitballing, but international business today is only loosely controlled by governments. If that culture emerges in, say, the robber baron era in a much more organized fashion, you might be able to work up a scenario where a cabal of businessmen tries some OPEC-like cutthroat economic sabotage early on. Maybe they see inevitable tragedy in a modern global conflict, think they know better than world governments, and try to shut things down. Maybe they just get too greedy, or maybe there’s a string of bad luck with lots of early environmental catastrophes.

There are probably lots of ways to make the general public hate a specific group of people- we’ve got a pretty solid track record of this kind of behavior. Though doing it across the majority of the developed world is tougher. OTOH, it happened to communists, so the worst kind of predatory capitalism seems only s few degrees harder.

Engineer a backlash that keeps things highly regulated and controlled as the normal cost of doing business. Basically pump the breaks on the auto revolution. Cars remain just a bit less economical for a longer time. This affects living patterns, which itself positively feeds back into less need for cars, which lowers demand for petroleum, and so on.

Maybe trucks and buses get more focus ITTL with the idea of the family car not developing until the 30s or 40s. Things could pick up for cars and gas then, but from a lower starting point with ultimately a lower peak.
 
Restrict access to more „traditional“ energy sources, oil and natural has. Maybe OPEC is more powerful and manages to shut off the west from oil and instead of invasion of the Arab Peninsula they try investing more thoroughly in solar and wind, at the same time have less large nuclear accidents happen. They are extremely few, of course, but it is mind boggling how useful they can be for arguing against nuclear energy. Maybe better checks led to no three mile island, maybe Chernobyl is prevented. That way nuclear energy doesn’t get such a bad reputation.
 
Whatever additional change to achieve the goal of the OP :
Henry Ford should have stayed with his idea of 'regrwoing" aka green fuels as ethanol prior to 1910
(though the outright construction of the Model T motor for ehtanol-fuel might be a 'modern myth').
And he should have further promoted this fuel-idea.​

This way the chance to base at least land-based individual transport on 'green fuel' would be remarkably increased.

Problem with early ethanol blended fuels is natural rubber, leather and cork used in the early fuel systems degrade quickly in the presence of alcohol. They would hold up fine to petroleum fuels.
Going with straight alcohol wouldn't be a problem, other than worse performance in sub 32 degree climates, and well, it being moonshine. Moving the population to Prohibition and putting it int the Tank is not as easy as it would seem.

The other way, is biodiesel from soybeans, but is far more expensive than hydrocarbon fuel at the time.
 
Proper public transport in cities can kill the car early on, and thus much of the oil industry. Simply retaining the trams and light rail systems which could be found in all cities back then would have a huge impact on the popularity of cars. Expanding the rail/tram systems outwards would simply remove the need for cars in the cities.
That battle was lost by WWI,thats when both rail trackage and horse and mule production peaked, while auto production was going gangbusters, and this is all before there were hardly any roads.

Rural people were moving away from the horse and buggy. Streetcar usage peaked in the '20s, cities moving to buses in urban areas, along with autos.
 
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So, in a world where the oil industry is gone or at least significantly curbed, what does this mean for the Arab world? Can they invest in more extensive railroad connection?
 
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