We did have electronics in 1900: Kirchoff's circuit laws date from 1845, the first semiconductor device (crystal detector) is from 1874 and the first vacuum tube is from 1904. What we didn't have is transistors and the miniaturization technology that gave us integrated circuits and microprocessors.
The conversation was clearly about more modern electronics since I was talking about rare earth minerals which were not used in the devices you are talking about.
You are able to drill and burn oil along with transmit the electricity without technology that requires rare earth minerals which are the electronics I was referring to.
You were able to drill and burn oil without modern technology. These days, pretty much all those easily accessible wells are drained and the only oil left is in harder to access wells that you'd never even find without modern technology. That's why we're fracking and messing around with oil sands and building offshore oil rigs etc.
We also had windmills long before we had electricity. And the west has plenty of rare earth deposits, despite the name they're not actually that rare. They're just expensive to refine and the refinement process causes a lot of pollution. China does it cheaper, polluting itself in the process and that's why we don't do it. If they were to stop giving us access to these minerals we could restart our own production. It's not just used for electronics by the way, it's also used for magnets which are a key component in electric motors/generators, so without rare earth minerals you're not generating electricity regardless of having oil.
