How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future

by Vaclav Smil

Lubricants are needed to minimize friction in everything from the massive turbofan engines in wide-body jetliners to miniature bearings.38 Globally, the automotive sector, now with more than 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, is the largest consumer, followed by use in industry—with the largest markets being textiles, energy, chemicals, and food processing—and in ocean-going vessels. Annual use of these compounds now surpasses 120 megatons (for comparison, global output of all edible oils, from olive to soybean, is now about 200 megatons a year), and because the available alternatives—synthetic lubricants made from simpler, but still often oil-based, compounds rather than those derived directly from crude oil—are more expensive, this demand will grow further as these industries expand around the world. Another product derived from crude oil is asphalt. Global output of this black and sticky material is now on the order of 100 megatons, with 85 percent of it going to paving (hot and warm asphalt mixes) and most of the rest to roofing.39 And hydrocarbons have yet another indispensable non-fuel use: as feedstocks for many different chemical syntheses (dominated by ethane, propane, and butane from natural gas liquids) producing a variety of synthetic fibers, resins, adhesives, dyes, paints and coatings, detergents, and pesticides, all vital in myriad ways to our modern world.40 Given these advantages and benefits, it was predictable—indeed unavoidable—that our dependence on cru...