Alernat/ive Histories and Energy

I think about alternate histories. For example, an alternative history where Archduke Franz Ferdinand  avoids assassination, thus avoiding World War I and unlocking greater powers of science. I've done this one before on this blog, but let me go deeper this time. 

In my alternate reality, people all over the world, astonished by the spectacle of Franz Ferdinand and Gavrilo Princip talking to and learning from one another, drop all sorts of opposition: ethnicity against ethnicity, prince against peasant, boss against worker. In place of fear and hatred come fascination, knowledge, hope.

In our "reality," electric vehicles first appeared in the 1830's, and were quite viable by the turn of the century, but by 1914 they were being overtaken by the gasoline-powered stinkers we're familiar with. But in this alternate reality, where Franz Ferdinand lives and saves the life of his would be assassin Gavrilo Princip, scientists not only successfully discourage any dangerous accumulations of radioactive materials, but also are successful in arguing the merits of electric vehicles. Coal, oil and gas stay in the ground alongside uranium. Inner cities only very briefly go from the stink of horse poop to the stink of gasoline, before relatively odorless electrical motors and batteries take over.

In "reality," photovoltaic cells were invented in the 19th century. In my alternative timeline, with the petrochemical lobby strangled in its crib by those very same helpful scientists, solar generation of electricity is mankind's primary source of power by 1920, followed by wind, tidal and geothermal. Burning stuff on a large scale now seems somewhat remote, like living in caves.

Is there a point to such enjoyable mental games? I think so. I think they show us how much power we have to stop destroying ourselves.  We could've done it in 1914, we can do it now. The biggest obstacles to the adoption of solar and wind and other clean sources aren't technological, they're various forms of human stupidity. They're the lobbies of oil, coal and gas, buying laws which stand in the way of the spread of better ways of doing things. It's the attitude that says we have to put up with people like Elon Musk in order to transition to clean energy. It's the acceptance of limitations in general. The primary obstacle to progress in between people's ears.