England turns to coal as wood runs out
Through the early 17th century, English domestic and industrial use of coal — long known but considered a foul-smelling, peasant fuel — climbed sharply as firewood prices rose. London household coal consumption rose roughly tenfold between 1580 and 1680. Newcastle's coal exports to London expanded so much that the route became known as the 'Great Northern Coal Trade,' and the phrase 'carrying coals to Newcastle' entered English as a synonym for redundant labor. The shift was not a policy or a breakthrough — it was a forced substitution caused by a wood shortage. The fuel that would later power the Industrial Revolution started as the cheap second choice.
The first English air-pollution complaints date to roughly the same period. John Evelyn's 1661 pamphlet 'Fumifugium' described London air as so foul from coal smoke that travelers could smell the city before they could see it. Energy transitions are also pollution transitions; the new fuel always brings problems the old one didn't.
01 · Wood, Water & Land
For most of recorded history, energy meant biomass — wood for heat and smelting, water and wind for milling, animals and humans for muscle. Wealth meant land, because land grew the fuel and fed the workers. The first energy crisis in the Western world was a wood crisis: by the early 1600s, England had cut down so much of its forest for shipbuilding, charcoal, and heating that the kingdom was running short of trees. The cure forced upon them — burning the black rocks dug out of mines for warmth — would, within two centuries, rewrite the global ranking of nations.
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