Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

by Vaclav Smil

In 1800, only the UK and a few localities in Europe and North China burned coal to generate heat—98 percent of the world’s primary energy came from biomass fuels, mostly from wood and charcoal; in deforested regions energy also came from straw and from dried animal dung. By 1900, as coal mining expanded and oil and gas production began in North America and Russia, biomass supplied half of the world’s primary energy; by 1950 it was still nearly 30 percent, and at the beginning of the 21st century it had declined to 12 percent, though in many sub-Saharan countries it remains above 80 percent. Clearly, it has taken a while to accomplish the transition from new carbon (in plant tissues) to old (fossil) carbon in coal, crude oil, and natural gas. We are now in the earliest stages of a much more challenging transition: the decarbonization of the global energy supply which is needed in order to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. Contrary to a common impression, this transition has not been proceeding at a pace resembling the adoption of cellphones. In absolute terms, the world has been running into—not away from—carbon (see running into carbon, this page), and in relative terms our gains remain in single digits. The first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in 1992. In that year, fossil fuels (using the conversion of fuels and electricity to a common denominator favored by BP in its annual statistical report) provided 86.6 percent of the wo...