How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

by Vaclav Smil

And back on land, large nuclear reactors are the most reliable producers of electricity: some of them now generate it 90–95 percent of the time, compared to about 45 percent for the best offshore wind turbines and 25 percent for photovoltaic cells in even the sunniest

climates—while Germany’s solar panels produce electricity only about 12 percent of the time.[33]

Electricity is the best form of energy for lighting: it has no competitor on any scale of private or public illumination, and very few innovations have produced such an impact on modern civilization as has the ability to remove the limits of daylight and to illuminate the night.[52]

Without electricity, drinking water in all cities—as well as liquid and gaseous fossil fuels everywhere—would be unavailable. Powerful

despite its profound and rising importance, electricity still supplies only a relatively small share of final global energy consumption, just 18 percent.

In 1900, less than 2

percent of the world’s fossil fuel production was used to generate electricity; by 1950 that share was still less than 10 percent; it now stands at about 25 percent.[63]

And the growth of baseload generation—the minimum amount of electricity that has to be supplied on a daily, monthly, or annual basis—was further increased as progressively larger shares of populations moved to cities. Decades ago, American demand was lowest

Ideally, the decarbonization of the global energy supply should proceed fast enough to limit average global warming to no more than

1.5°C (at worst 2°C). That, according to most climate models, would mean reducing net global CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 and keeping them negative for the remainder of the century.

Germany is the most notable example: since the year 2000, it has boosted its wind and solar capacity 10-fold and raised the share of renewables (wind, solar, and hydro) from 11 percent to 40 percent of total

After all, in gloomy Germany, photovoltaic generation works on average only 11–12 percent of time, and the combustion of fossil fuels still produced nearly half (48 percent) of all electricity in 2020. Moreover,

But this may not last: even the European Union now recognizes that it could not come close to its extraordinarily ambitious decarbonization target without nuclear reactors. Its

We still do not know most of the particulars of this coming transition, but one thing remains certain: it will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise—but rather its gradual decline.

Producing wheat now takes less than two hours of human labor per hectare (compared to 150 hours in 1801), and with yields of around 3.5 tons per hectare this translates to less than two seconds per kilogram of grain.[12]

two centuries, the human labor to produce a kilogram of American wheat was reduced from 10 minutes to less than two seconds. This is how our modern

Since the 1970s, the synthesis of nitrogenous fertilizers has undoubtedly been the primus inter pares among agricultural energy subsidies—but the full scale of this dependence is only revealed by looking at detailed accounts of the energy required to produce various common foodstuffs.

Botanically, a tomato is the fruit of the Lycopersicon esculentum, a small plant native to Central and South America that was introduced to the rest of the world during the age of first European transatlantic sailings but

So, the evidence is inescapable: our food supply—be it staple grains, clucking birds, favorite vegetables, or seafood praised for its nutritious quality—has become increasingly dependent on fossil fuels. This

Four materials rank highest on this combined scale, and they form what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia.[4]

Electric cars provide perhaps the best example of new, and enormous, material dependencies. A typical lithium car battery weighing about 450 kilograms contains about 11 kilograms of lithium, nearly 14 kilograms of cobalt, 27 kilograms of nickel, more than 40 kilograms of copper,

And until all energies used to extract and process these materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials.

For generations the US led overall tourist expenditures, but it was surpassed by China in 2012 and five years later Chinese tourists were spending

twice as much as Americans.

The UK and Japan import more food than they produce, China does not have all the iron ore it needs for its blast furnaces, the US buys many rare earth metals (from lanthanum to yttrium), and India is chronically

short of crude oil.[91]

The accelerated deindustrialization of North America, Europe, and Japan, and the shift of manufacturing to Asia in general and to

China in particular, has been the leading reason for this reappraisal.[93] This manufacturing switch has

Widespread fear of nuclear electricity generation is yet another excellent example of risk misperception.

Do I have a helpful parting insight? Perhaps, as long as we recognize these fundamental realities: asking for a risk-free existence is to ask for something quite impossible—while the quest for minimizing risks remains the leading motivation of human progress.