WI: Petroleum Byproducts

[Leo Caesius]

Among two of them are plastics and synthetic rubber. I suppose that synthetic fabrics and latex paints would also fit into this category. What sorts of things would be lacking in a society without oil (beyond the obvious)? What would an industrialized society without the benefits of oil look like?

 

[Faeelin]

Hmm. More paper and wood products, I suppose; Brazil and Indonesia would be better off, of course, unless some one can figure out a way to make synthetics without oil.

 

[Soyuz]

Fertelizer is another byproduct IIRC. I see technology taking a slower pace in the 1900s and 10s, then to get finally stuck at a 20s-30s level for a long time. So that's how industrialized society will look like. Technology and everything that comes with it will continue making progeress, of course, may be going as far as the 60s-70s level, but it will be a race before we suffocate ourselves.

Of course we can always discover nuclear power, but in OTL it took years for the richest and most technologically advanced nation running on oil under wartime pressure to develop it.

 

[DuQuense]

You can make Plastic out of any hydrocarbon, Petrol & LNG are just the Cheapest.

The Wood industry is currently spending million on Research to unlock the natural [?Lithigen?] Binders that hold Cellouse together, When they suceed whe will have Molded wood projects just like molded plastic [not press-board, but solid wood]

 

[rewster]

People these days are trying to find alternatives to petroleum based products. People in the know buy beeswax-based chap stick, natural toothpaste, etc.
I remember when I was maybe 15 going to an "Empire Farm days" in Syracuse, NY with my dad (who was a dairy farmer at the time) and seeing biodegradeable corn plastic bags being handed out. Here's a link to something like that: http://www.jobwerx.com/news/Archives/corn_050803.htmlSo a lot of the stuff we think of as requiring oil would most likely have an alternative product in its place.

Obviously without oil, rubber wouldn't have a synthetic version. We may be using ethanol or something akin to biodiesel for fuel.

Technology progresses slower? Perhaps. More likely though in my opinion we develop the alternatives quicker in the absence of cheap oil, and are probably therefore better off in the long run. I'd say by 2005 we'd maybe still be a decade behind or so in some fields, but way ahead on the important issues of today like dependence on foreign oil and curbing pollution.