You've made great points about agriculture (and I can't believe I overlooked plastics not being a thing), but I disagree with you on the abundance of boats. I believe that without fossil fuels, people would be forced to used wood for charcoal production instead of as lumber, which means the costs of building ships would've gone up.
I tend to disagree. Charcoal was a massive industry before the industrial revolution, and people still managed to make a lot of boats. Thing is, the amount of labor it took to dig up a bunch of coal made it economical to burn it by the ton to run industrial processes - the amount of wood it would take to make the same amount of charcoal would take so much more labor to produce that I don't think it would ever be economical to burn charcoal for steam engines.
You've made great points about agriculture (and I can't believe I overlooked plastics not being a thing), but I disagree with you on the abundance of boats. I believe that without fossil fuels, people would be forced to used wood for charcoal production instead of as lumber, which means the costs of building ships would've gone up.
I tend to disagree. Charcoal was a massive industry before the industrial revolution, and people still managed to make a lot of boats. Thing is, the amount of labor it took to dig up a bunch of coal made it economical to burn it by the ton to run industrial processes - the amount of wood it would take to make the same amount of charcoal would take so much more labor to produce that I don't think it would ever be economical to burn charcoal for steam engines.