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

by Vaclav Smil

Modern history can be seen as an unusually rapid sequence of transitions to new energy sources, and the modern world is the cumulative result of their conversions.

Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge

common perception, only about 18 percent of the global goods trade is now driven by lower labor costs (labor arbitrage), that in many chains this share has been declining

throughout the 2010s, and that global value chains are becoming more knowledge-intensive and rely increasingly on highly skilled labor.

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

While it has been possible to replace a billion landlines by mobile phones within a generation, it will not be possible to replace terawatts of power installed in steam and gas turbines by photovoltaic cells or wind turbines within a similar time span.

These realities help to explain why the fundamentals of our lives will not change drastically in the coming 20–30 years, despite

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. High-rise apartments will not be printed on site by gargantuan machines, and should we soon have another pandemic then the role of the much-touted artificial intelligence will most likely be as underwhelming as it was during the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.[39]