If you think that snarling, angry, autistic Euro-trash kid is angry now, can you imagine the hissy fit she would have if we started that back up?
Lost in history, is WHY we mechanized. Of the very-real pollution ABATED by the use of oil.
This, the loss, is a new thing. David Halberstam, a credited non-fiction author, analyzed the histories of the two largest auto companies of the time (1983) in America and Japan. It was titled The Reckoning - and the focus was, Ford and Nissan, both being in crisis at the time.
Of course a sweeping history goes down many rabbit holes, but...laying out the opening...the auto wasn't immediately successful because Henry Ford bribed anyone. Not because GM was non-competitive. Not even because of fake science in classrooms.
It was successful because there were SO MANY problems with using horse-drawn wagons in cities!
Halberstam reported a figure from the New York Department of Health, about 1900: Over 100 draught animals would DIE on the streets of the city - and their carcasses left. The city had to haul that away. Manure and animal urine was often over the ankles on public streets - that was part of the reason for the snap-button ladies' leather boots of the time.
Typhoid epidemics were a recurring problem. Drinking water contamination also. The stench, the disease, the slow movement of people and goods on the streets...the Model T, and various proto-motor-trucks, SOLVED all that. Compare to the stench of dung and rot, the funny smells out a car's tailpipe were perfume.
THOSE problems do NOT go away. De-industrialize...and you better de-urbanize, also. Prison cities are gonna require motor transport, at the very least, of foodstuffs.
