From the book “Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America“:
Two centuries later, James Madison’s America can exist only in our imaginations, framed by the words he and his contemporaries wrote, the land on which they lived, the objects they used, and the buildings they walked through. It was a world lit by the sun or the glow of candle, oil lamp, or fireplace. Travel was grueling, sometimes nightmarish. Foul weather delayed ships for weeks or months. Roads were cloying bogs on wet days, they rutted corduroy on dry ones. Wooden-wheeled vehicles punished the body even when not overset by drunken hostlers. In summer, river crossings were slow and ferry schedules unpredictable; winter gallops across frozen streams carried the constant risk of crashing through into frigid waters.
Home, even for the wealthy, was drafty and dark, heated by smoky fires. Personal hygiene was a challenge, hot water a luxury. Human waste was deposited in containers and sometimes thrown into the street, sometimes carried to disposal sites. Washing clothes was hard physical labor. Food preparation consumed hours. Unreliable drinking water drove most to prefer distilled or fermented beverages. Medical care featured the bleeding of ill patients. Death was a constant companion. Of James Madison’s ten siblings, five died by the age of seven and three others in middle age.
Q: What is the single most important factor that explains the difference between the deplorable (by today’s standards) living conditions of James Madison’s America in the 18th century and the spectacularly phenomenal living conditions of today – conditions that would have seen unimaginable and miraculous to Americans in the 1700s?
A: Abundant, low cost energy. In other words, it’s energy from fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) that have transformed life in America and improved every measure of human well-being in significant and profound ways. As Alex Epstein reminds us in his book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, “Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”
HT: Stuart Anderson
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