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

by Vaclav Smil

but primary aluminum requires five to six times more energy to produce than primary steel,

Even though the supply of new renewables (wind, solar, new biofuels) rose impressively, about 50-fold, during the first 20 years of the 21st century, the world’s dependence on fossil carbon declined only marginally, from 87 percent to 85 percent of

As a result, even a tripling or quadrupling of the recent pace of decarbonization would still leave fossil carbon dominant by 2050.

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.

The profits of mass-scale single-source manufacturing will not be changed for less vulnerable but more expensive decentralized production. And people will resume their constant global mingling as they return to intercontinental flights and cruises to nowhere, although it is hard to imagine a better virus incubator than a ship with 3,000 crew, and 5,000 passengers who are often mostly elderly with many pre-existing

share of people over 65 years of age. The UN projects that share rising by about 70 percent by 2050,

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

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. And there are two fundamental reasons why this combination of speed and efficacy will be much harder to realize than is generally assumed.

This raises the extraordinarily difficult problem of intergenerational justice—that is, our never-failing propensity to discount the future.[59] We value now more than later, and we price it accordingly. An

a world suffused in instant and essentially free information that comes at the price of massively disseminated misinformation, lies and reprehensible claims.

few uncertain outcomes will be as important in determining our future as the trajectory of the global population during