Post #3933777

@Hex@kolektiva.social Also "but what about horses?" Most people did not have horses. Then as now. Horses cost a lot of money and resources to maintain: they must be fed, they must be reshoed, they must have their medical needs looked after, they get sick, etc. Even peasants did not have horses. The methane produced by horses no doubt was not helping climate change even if the effects were not yet exceptionally visible. If we never quit using horses, the effects of climate change would probably be just as bad if not worse, because methane is 80x more potent than CO2. They shit everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. Like it was a serious sanitation issue. Cities spent fortunes on cleaning it. The shit and piss was a trip and fall hazard and it was extremely common to trip and fall on it. Even other horses would slip and fall on each other's waste. Not to mention animal welfare concerns, which I think speak for themselves without explanation. And it wasn't like people didn't get hit by carriages. Pierre Curie died in an accident after being ran over by a carriage. Not uncommon in its day, especially because there were no signals (you just kinda did whatever if there wasn't a traffic cop, which wasn't particularly great for pedestrians). Also re walking: yep, that was the default way to get around. The people who took the Oregon Trail did not ride in the wagon, they preferred to walk (those wagons SUCKED, they had no modern suspension). Yes it might take days to get somewhere you had to go, maybe weeks or months. It was often dangerous (highway bandits were not historical myth and existed until basically the late 1800s, though sporadically you'd see highway carjackings and stuff even into the 1930s). Safe travel is one of those things we take for granted and never think about but travel was not safe most of human history, and it was a Huge Deal actually if you had to travel somewhere outside your town. There is also another issue: horses don't have enough power for many loads unless extensively teamed and even then. Horses have... one horsepower.