(November 18, 2011 at 4:16 pm)orogenicman Wrote: Matt Ridley believes that fossil fuels ended slavery (I guess he isn't aware of all the slavery that still exists in the world - oops). Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave.
If the book I'm currently reading is to be believed (and I've been marking all over it to look things up) he has something of the right idea at least in the US, but it would be foolish to so intimately equate the two when there's really more like 3 or 4 degrees of separation. Agriculture was forever changed with the introduction of fuel burning machines, and slave labor was no longer needed. But that is neither here nor there, and no, it didn't end slavery elsewhere.
Slavery ended here when it did because it was politically expedient to finally give in to the abolitionist movement.
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