NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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The oxidizing atmosphere is not due to chance. It was created by early life that exhaled oxygen, and killed off its neighbors that couldn't handle it. Hence, I don't think the goldilocks oxygen levels speak much to great filter questions.
Early in civilization, we used wood and charcoal as energy sources. Blacksmithing and cast iron were originally done with wood charcoal. Cast iron is a very important tool in our history of machine tools and hence the industrial revolution. It's possible that we could have carried on without coal, instead using large-scale forestry management or other biomass as our energy source. In the early 1700s there were already environmental concerns about deforestation. They were more related to continued supply of wood for charcoal and hunting grounds than "ecological" concerns, but there were still laws and regulations enacted to deal with the problem.
How many people do we need to support a high-tech civilization? I suspect fewer than we tried it with. It's quite possible that biofuel sources would have produced a high tech civilization, just slower and with fewer people.
Also, note that biofuels can produce all the lubricants and plastics you need just fine. The Fischer-Tropsch process has been implemented on a large scale before.
I think that given all this, you could get the modern metal lathe and the steam engine without fossil fuels. We already harnessed basic water and wind power without fossil fuels. I suspect with modern machine tools you get to electricity and large-scale water and wind power generation, even without fossil fuels. Again, more slowly, and possibly without so many people, but I think you can get there.
Actually, the neighbors that couldn't handle oxygen got forced underground. They live in the mud under the deep sea, in digestive tracts, etc.
Well, some of their descendants are still alive, yes. But I believe that there was a lot of dying involved in that process. More than I think is implied by the phrase "forced underground".