How did the fossil-fuel era begin? With Europeans heating their houses in winter.
The Industrial Revolution would likely never have started if medieval Britain hadn’t turned to coal swept from the beaches of Northumbria to replace firewood from its dwindling forests. One of the world’s first air pollution laws was a 1306 proclamation prohibiting the burning of “sea-coal” in London. We’ve been heating our homes for so long that we take the practice, and its carbon footprint, for granted.