If other fuels such as fossil fuels, etc. had not been discovered, would whales of today be raised in whale hatcheries for their whale oil, or would they be all but extinct do to the lust for their oil?

A whale hatchery wouldn’t be too practical.

They’d all be extinct now.

There would be tons of whales. Capitalism is known for thinking about the long-term.

Humans were already developing quite efficient large scale solar energy systems 100 years ago.
The industrial use of coal and oil at the same time pretty much killed it in its infancy.
If coal and oil had not been discovered, solar and other regenerative energy sources would be the standard today.

^^^ That’s what I was thinking so I shan’t repeat.

In the first place, without the productivity gains that fossil fuels have enabled, the planet’s human population would never have been able to get as high as it has as quickly as it has. For one example, the mega-cities that now dot the globe must all be supplied with food that isn’t grown (for the most part) within the city limits. It’s doubtful that human and animal-powered transport could capably and reliably service so many inhabitants as regularly as trucks and trains now do. So those cities wouldn’t be there (there wouldn’t be any need for them in the first place without large-scale fossil-fuel-powered industry), and the people wouldn’t exist if they couldn’t feed themselves. (And even with the huge numbers of people that would be required to plant and harvest crops, there isn’t enough farmland in the world to support so much humanity “working the fields”.)

But I think that whales would have been hunted to extinction, because as good as capitalism is at many things, it has not resolved “the problem of the commons”.

I agree with @zenvelo.

@CWOTUS and @ragingloli One thing that fossil fuels allowed was the reforestation of the US North east. By the mid 1800’s New England had very few trees left; they’d all been cut down for heating and cooking.

And whale oil was used mostly for industrial lubrication, not for fuel; it was too expensive for heating fuel or even regular lighting.

@CWOTUS (And even with the huge numbers of people that would be required to plant and harvest crops, there isn’t enough farmland in the world to support so much humanity “working the fields”.)
Here in the US I see vast swatches of land that sit vacant, or used for conservation and/or recreation. A lot of it has been sacrificed for landfills or subdivisions, so I think they could find the land for crops, but even so, I think it would have paved the way to better acceptance of genetically engineered food, as the thought to maximize the yield of crops from a given piece of land would be desired.

The solar thing was already well covered. Who knows? We may be overlooking resources or technology because of dependence on what has been discovered. If not what fuels we have used, we might well have discovered something wiser to use. Necessity is the mother of invention, and complacency its strangler.

We would have used them all up and then worried about what to do.

@zenvelo Whale oil was used extensively more for lighting but as the whales got to be fewer and fewer, the price went up so an alternative was needed. Enter petroleum!
Whale oil was also used to make ATF (automatic transmission fluid) and that is why the oil in the old cars of the 50’s and 60’s + got darker the longer the oil was used. Today, synthetic oil is used and it doesn’t change color over time.