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

by Vaclav Smil

But none of this means that major shifts in our dependence on fossil fuel subsidies in food production are impossible. Most obviously, we could reduce our crop and animal production—and the attendant energy subsidies—if we wasted less food.

According to the FAO, the world loses almost half of all root crops, fruits, and vegetables, about a third of all fish, 30 percent of cereals, and a fifth of all oilseeds, meat, and dairy products—or at least one-third of the overall food supply.

Eliminating waste that takes place all along the long and complex production-processing-distribution-wholesaling-retailing-consumption chain (from fields and barns to plates) is extremely challenging. American food balances show that the nationwide share of wasted food has remained stable during the past 40 years, despite perennial calls for improvements.

In well-off societies, a better way to reduce agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuel subsidies is to make appeals for adopting healthy and satisfactory alternatives to today’s excessively rich and meaty diets—the easiest choices being moderate meat consumption, and favoring meat that can be grown with lower environmental impact. The quest for mass-scale veganism is doomed to fail.

Given that we are expecting at least 2 billion more people by 2050, and that more than twice as many people in the low-income countries of Asia and Africa should see further gains—both in quantity and quality—in their food supply, there is no near-term prospect for substantially reducing the global dependence on synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers.

All these critical interventions have demanded substantial—and rising—inputs of fossil fuels; and even if we try to change the global food system as fast as is realistically conceivable, we will be eating transformed fossil fuels, be it as loaves of bread or as fishes, for decades to come.

as useful and as transformative as post-1950 electronic advances have been, they do not constitute the indispensable material foundations of modern civilization.

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.

Another key commonality between these four materials is particularly noteworthy as we contemplate the future without fossil carbon: the mass-scale production of all of them depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels,

As a result, global production of these four indispensable materials claims about 17 percent of the world’s primary energy supply, and 25 percent of all CO2 emissions originating in the combustion of fossil fuels—and currently there are no commercially available and readily deployable mass-scale alternatives to displace these established processes.

Of the four substances (and despite my dislike of rankings!), it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material.

it would be impossible to feed at least 40 percent and up to 50 percent of today’s nearly 8 billion people. Simply restated: in 2020, nearly 4 billion people would not have been alive without synthetic ammonia.

This dependence easily justifies calling the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia perhaps the most momentous technical advance in history. Other inventions, as William Crookes correctly judged, minister to our comforts, convenience, luxury, wealth, or productivity, and others yet save our lives from premature death and chronic disease—but without the synthesis of ammonia, we could not ensure the very survival of large shares of today’s and tomorrow’s population.

Given prevailing diets and farming practices, synthetic nitrogen feeds half of humanity—or, everything else being equal, half of the world’s population could not be sustained without synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers.

But plastics have found their most indispensable roles in health care in general and in the hospital treatment of infectious diseases in particular. Modern life now begins (in maternity wards) and ends (in intensive care units) surrounded by plastic items.

Recent years have seen rising concerns about plastic pollution on land and even more so in the ocean, coastal waters, and on beaches.

but this irresponsible dumping of plastics is not an argument against the proper use of these diverse and often truly indispensable synthetic materials.

Steel determines the look of modern civilization and enables its most fundamental functions. This is the most widely used metal and it forms countless visible and invisible critical components of today’s world.

Perhaps the most stunning outcome of this rise is that in just two years—2018 and 2019—China produced nearly as much cement (about 4.4 billion tons) as did the United States during the entire 20th century (4.56 billion tons).

Yet another astounding statistic is that the world now consumes in one year more cement than it did during the entire first half of the 20th century.

The durability of concrete structures varies widely: while it is impossible to offer an average longevity figure, many will deteriorate badly after just two or three decades while others will do well for 60–100 years. This means that during the 21st century we will face unprecedented burdens of concrete deterioration, renewal, and removal (with, obviously, a particularly acute problem in China), as structures will have to be torn down—in order to be replaced or destroyed—or abandoned.

In affluent countries with low population growth, the main need is to fix decaying infrastructures. The latest report card for the US awards nothing but poor to very poor grades to all sectors where concrete dominates, with dams, roads, and aviation getting Ds and the overall average grade just D+.

economies should have no problems meeting the demand for steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics, especially with intensified recycling. But it is unlikely that by 2050 all of these industries will eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels and cease to be significant contributors to global CO2 emissions. This is especially unlikely in today’s low-income modernizing countries, whose enormous infrastructural and consumer needs will require large-scale increases of all basic materials.

Requirements for fossil carbon have been—and for decades will continue to be—the price we pay for the multitude of benefits arising from our reliance on steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics.

No structures are more obvious symbols of “green” electricity generation than large wind turbines—but these enormous accumulations of steel, cement, and plastics are also embodiments of fossil fuels.

Modern economies will always be tied to massive material flows, whether those of ammonia-based fertilizers to feed the still-growing global population; plastics, steel, and cement needed for new tools, machines, structures, and infrastructures; or new inputs required to produce solar cells, wind turbines, electric cars, and storage batteries.

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.

Obviously, understanding how the modern world really works cannot be done without appreciating the evolution, the extent, and the consequences of this multifaceted process which entails (according to what I think is perhaps the best concise definition) “the growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.”

Globalization has been linked, approvingly, with the advantages, benefits, creative destruction, modernity, and progress it has brought to entire nations.

But these gains and praises coexist with various degrees of disapproval or even outright rejection of the process, with the discontent and anger that have resulted from the loss of well-paying jobs to offshoring

its most fundamental physical way, globalization is, and will remain, simply the movement of mass—of raw materials, foodstuffs, finished products, and people—and the transmission of information (warnings, guidance, news, data, ideas) and investment within and among the continents, enabled by techniques that make such transfers possible on large scales and in affordable and reliable ways.

The first quantitative leap in the process of globalization came only with the combination of more reliable navigation, steam power (resulting in larger ship capacities and faster speeds), and the telegraph—the first means of (nearly) instant long-distance communication.

But the advances in intercontinental shipping, combined with rapid post-1840 construction of railroads—across Europe and North America, as well as in India, other regions of Asia, and Latin America—created the first wave of a truly large-scale globalization.

Two concurrent processes that promoted further globalization were the invention of airplanes powered by reciprocating gasoline engines, and radio communication.

Marine diesels and reciprocating aircraft engines remained the technical enablers of globalization during the two interwar decades, and their mass-scale deployment made the decisive contribution to the outcome of the Second World War.

was enabled by a combination of four fundamental technical advances. These were the rapid adoption of much more powerful and efficient designs of diesel engines; the introduction (and even faster diffusion) of a new prime mover, the gas turbine used for the propulsion of jetliners; superior designs for intercontinental shipping (massive bulk carriers for liquids and solids, and the containerization of other cargoes); and quantum leaps in computing and information processing.

And despite the recent perceptions of the transformative nature of technical capabilities deployed since the beginning of the 21st century (above all, advances in artificial intelligence and synthetic biology), our world is still beholden to these critical pre-1973 achievements.

Moreover, as there are no immediately available alternatives that could be deployed for the same tasks on similarly massive scales, we will depend on these techniques—be they giant marine diesel engines, container ships and wide-body jetliners, or microprocessors—for decades to come.

By the late 1960s, technical capabilities were ready for unprecedented global integration: energy supply was plentiful, there was no shortage of money to invest, and all that was needed was to extend the globalization process to the nations that did not participate in the first postwar round.

For the first time in history, it became possible for every major economy to become open (still to varying, but in nearly all cases unprecedented, degrees) to foreign investment, intensifying international trade, and populations previously forbidden to travel freely abroad joined mass-scale tourism and took advantage of new opportunities to emigrate and to temporarily work and study abroad. Trade expansion took place within a globally agreed framework provided by the WTO.[70]

International trade’s share in the world economic product rose from about 30 percent in 1973 to nearly 61 percent in 2008,

the technical foundations for this dizzying round of globalization were laid before 1973, but its extent and intensity since then has demanded enormous investment in prime movers (combustion engines and electric motors in transportation) and in essential infrastructures (ports, airports, containerized shipping). As a result, we have not only more of them, but their average capacities (power, volume, throughput) have become larger, while their typical efficiencies and reliabilities have become better.

overall increase in integration and interdependence: German carmakers assemble vehicles in Alabama, Texas-made chemicals (taking advantage of the boom in the extraction of natural gas) provide feedstocks for EU industries, Chilean fruits are exported to four continents, and Somali camels are shipped to Saudi Arabia.

All of these advances have one fundamental technical foundation: our ability to emplace more components on an integrated circuit

This means that between 1971 and 2019 microprocessor power increased by seven orders of magnitude—17.1 billion times, to be exact.

The history of globalization reveals an undeniable long-term trend toward greater international economic integration that is manifested by intensified flows of energies, materials, people, ideas, and information, and that is enabled by improving technical capabilities.

Much seems to be firmly set in place. A great deal of accreted globalization, especially many changes that unfolded during the past two generations, is here to stay. Too many countries now rely on food imports, and self-sufficiency in all raw materials is impossible even for the largest countries because no country possesses sufficient reserves of all minerals needed by its economy.

Moreover, instant reversals are not practical, and rapid disruptions could come only with high costs attached.

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 brought changes ranging from risible to tragic.

But the switch has also contributed to tragedies, such as the rising midlife mortality among America’s white non-university-educated men.