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

by Vaclav Smil

The best reconstructions show that coal as a heat source in England surpasses the use of biomass fuels around 1620 (perhaps even earlier); by 1650 the burning of fossil carbon supplies two-thirds of all heat; and the share reaches 75 percent by 1700.

And then, at the very beginning of the 18th century, some English mines begin to rely on steam engines, the first inanimate prime movers powered by the combustion of fossil fuel.

By 1800 a passing probe will record that, across the planet, plant fuels still supply more than 98 percent of all heat and light used by the dominant bipeds, and that human and animal muscles still provide more than 90 percent of all mechanical energy needed in farming, construction, and manufacturing.

The world of 1850 is much more akin to the world of 1700 or even of 1600 than that of the year 2000.

But by 2020 more than half of the world’s electricity will still be generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly coal and natural gas.

This increasing dependence on fossil fuels is the most important factor in explaining the advances of modern civilization—and also our underlying concerns about the vulnerability of their supply and the environmental impacts of their combustion.

Simply put, energy is the only truly universal currency, and nothing (from galactic rotations to ephemeral insect lives) can take place without its transformations.

Understanding how the world really works cannot be done without at least a modicum of energy literacy.

For most of its inhabitants, the modern world is full of black boxes, devices whose internal workings remain—to different degrees—a mystery to their users.

This stagnation, or at least very slow gains, in feeding capacity during the long course of preindustrial history meant that until a few generations ago only a small share of well-fed elites did not have to worry about having enough to eat.

Now most people in affluent and middle-income countries worry about what (and how much) is best to eat in order to maintain or improve their health and extend their longevity, not whether they will have enough to survive.

Mobiles, as complex as they are, are just small devices at the apex of an enormous pyramid of an industry that generates, transforms, and transmits electricity, and that requires mass-scale infrastructure to build, rebuild, and maintain.

Steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics will endure as the four material pillars of civilization; a major share of the world’s transportation will be still energized by refined liquid fuels (automotive gasoline and diesel, aviation kerosene, and diesel and fuel oil for shipping); grain fields will be cultivated by tractors pulling plows, harrows, seeders, and fertilizer applicators and harvested by combines spilling the grains into trucks.

COVID-19 has provided a perfect—and costly—global reminder of our limited capacity to chart our futures, and that, too, will not (cannot) change in any dramatic way during the coming generation.

Neither the evolution nor the history of our species is an ever-rising arrow. There are no predictable trajectories, no definite targets.

The future is a replay of the past—a combination of admirable advances and (un)avoidable setbacks.

But there is something new as we look ahead, that unmistakably increasing (albeit not unanimous) conviction that, of all the risks we face, global climate change is the one that needs to be tackled most urgently and effectively.

Dealing with this challenge will, for the first time in history, require a truly global, as well as a very substantial and prolonged, commitment.

This raises the extraordinarily difficult problem of intergenerational justice—that is, our never-failing propensity to discount the future.[59]

A commonly used climate-economy model indicates the break-even year (when the optimal policy would begin to produce net economic benefit) for mitigation efforts launched in the early 2020s would be only around 2080.

Failures revealed during crises offer costly and convincing illustrations of our recurrent inability to get the basics right, to take care of the fundamentals.

Being agnostic about the distant future means being honest: we have to admit the limits of our understanding, approach all planetary challenges with humility, and recognize that advances, setbacks, and failures will all continue to be a part of our evolution and that there can be no assurance of (however defined) ultimate success, no arrival at any singularity—but, as long as we use our accumulated understanding with determination and perseverance, there will also not be an early end of days.