The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley

Today you do not have to use acres to grow your transport fuel (oil has replaced hay for horses), your heating fuel (natural gas for timber), your power (coal for water), or your lighting (nuclear and coal for beeswax and tallow). You still have to grow much of your clothing, although ‘fleeces’ now come from oil. More’s the pity: if cotton could be replaced by a synthetic substance of the same quality, the Aral Sea could be restored and parts of India and China given back to tigers. The one thing nobody has yet figured out how to make in factories using coal or oil is food – thank goodness – though even here natural gas provided the energy to fix about half the nitrogen atoms in your average meal.