Yeah but humanity used a LOT of coal and oil already. I think making electricity ubiquitous would be a better idea. I want to abort big oil as an industry before it can be conceived.

Midgley is a person sitting on top of a technological trajectory, not the trajectory itself.

Even if Midgley never existed, someone else was probably going to pursue antiknock additives, leaded gasoline, refrigeration chemistry, etc. You might prevent Midgley’s particular disasters, but you haven’t fundamentally altered the industrial system that makes them attractive. You gotta do that or someone else is just gonna figure it out.

Eliminating Midgley is too narrow compared with changing the economics of energy.

Coal was already an enormous industrial fuel before Midgley was born. Oil was already becoming important.