Eli5 Why did fossil fuels bring about such a huge increase in standard of living if they are bad for the environment?
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Mostly economics, plus ignorance.
Generating energy is hard, and generating enough of it for an entire city is even harder. For the longest time, there just wasn’t a feasible way to do it on a wide enough scale.
The fossil fuels industry came along and introduced the world to a miracle: cheap, reliable energy for everyone. Suddenly, entire cities and even entire countries could have abundant energy — energy that opened the door for ordinary people to have lights, automobiles, telephones, radios, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioning, and so on. We didn’t understand the ecological cost of this energy — all we knew was that it was improving lives the world over.
Of course, we now know that fossil fuels are terrible for the environment, but that wasn’t known right away. Additionally, fossil fuel companies have been investing *loads* of money into defaming climate science for a long time even after it *was* known. Despite there being scientific consensus on climate change for decades now, we’ve only just *barely* entered an era where many people recognize that it’s a real threat, and it’s this widespread recognition that’s required to do anything about it.
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