Nick Szabo  🔑

According to Clark it goes the other way round! Population + income growth -> coal demand, not vice versa

But what if the coal wasn’t there?

We'd have used all the spare wood in Russia, the Baltics, and British North America. It would have been a little more expensive, so have slowed down population growth by a v small fraction. But made no massively noticeable difference (see pp. 20-22)

These are very useful correctives, thanks. I do wonder though about Baltic etc timber ‘just as easily’ replacing coal. NE coal in particular was just so convenient (accessible in not very deep seams and close to navigable rivers).

it depends what the question is. We could have economised on heating much more, or used yet further sources of power. It's true that the precise trajectory of the IR & population increase is indebted to coal. But a similar rate of growth would likely have been achieved without

And might it have given Britain a competitive advantage - however marginal - that we had tons of the stuff under our feet, rather than in the wastes of Siberia?

Yes it helped. But probably worth about 1-2% of the industrial revolution