How the World Really Works

1: Understanding Energy

The first chapter of this book shows how our high-energy societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels in general and on electricity, the most flexible form of energy, in particular. Appreciation of these realities serves as a much-needed corrective to the now-common claims (based on a poor understanding of complex realities) that we can decarbonize the global energy supply in a hurry, and that it will take only two or three decades before we rely solely on renewable energy conversions. While we are converting increasing shares of electricity generation to new renewables (solar and wind, as opposed to the long-established hydroelectricity) and putting more electric cars on the roads, decarbonizing trucking, flying, and shipping will be a much greater challenge, as will the production of key materials without relying on fossil fuels.

In fundamental physical terms, any process—be it rain, a volcanic eruption, plant growth, animal predation, or the growth of human sapience—can be defined as a sequence of energy conversions.

the average inhabitant of earth has ~700 times more energy at their disposal than someone at the beginning of the 19th century.
energy is the only universal currency, and nothing can take place without its transformations
can’t understand the world without understanding energy

what is energy?

most common definition is “the capacity to do work”, but as Feynmann says, “energy has a large number of different forms, and there is a formula for each one. These are: gravitational energy, kinetic energy, heat energy, elastic energy, electrical energy, chemical energy, radiant energy, nuclear energy, mass energy.”
can’t reduce energy into a single entity
poor understanding of energy has led to naive claims to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but liquid hydrocarbons refined from crude oil (gas, kerosene, diesel) remain the highest energy density, nearly triple that of wood and coal

In large, populous nations, the complete reliance on these renewables would require what we are still missing: either mass-scale, long-term (days to weeks) electricity storage that would back up intermittent electricity generation, or extensive grids of high-voltage lines to transmit electricity across time zones and from sunny and windy regions to major urban and industrial concentrations.

electricity has become the leading energy source in the last 50 years – the majority of major metropolises are powered by it
if we even diminished electricity supply, the effects would be devastating
reducing our dependence on fossil fuels will require an increased role of nuclear reactors

What we need is to pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world. We still do not know most of the particulars of this coming transition, but one thing remains certain: it will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise—but rather its gradual decline.

2: Understanding Food Production

The second chapter of this book is about the most basic survival necessity: producing our food. Its focus is on explaining how much of what we rely on to survive, from wheat to tomatoes to shrimp, has one thing in common: it requires substantial, direct and indirect, fossil fuel inputs. Awareness of this fundamental dependence on fossil fuels leads to a realistic understanding of our continued need for fossil carbon: it is relatively easy to generate electricity by wind turbines or solar cells rather than by burning coal or natural gas—but it would be much more difficult to run all field machinery without liquid fossil fuels and to produce all fertilizers and other agrochemicals without natural gas and oil. In short, for decades it will be impossible to adequately feed the planet without using fossil fuels as sources of energy and raw materials.

As a result, no recent transformation—such as increased personal mobility or a greater range of private possessions—has been so existentially fundamental as our ability to produce, year after year, a surfeit of food. (46)

we reduced the malnutrition rate from 2 in 3 people in 1950 to 1 in 11 in 2019, and this doesn’t even factor in population growth

In two centuries, the human labor to produce a kilogram of American wheat was reduced from 10 minutes to less than two seconds. This is how our modern world really works […] Most of the admired and undoubtedly remarkable technical advances that have transformed industries, transportation, communication, and everyday living would have been impossible if more than 80 percent of all people had to remain in the countryside in order to produce their daily bread (the share of the US population who were farmers in 1800 was 83 percent) or their daily bowl of rice (in Japan, close to 90 percent of people lived in villages in 1800) (51)

we cannot reliable feed the world currently without relying on fossil fuels – bread takes ~210-250 mL/kg of fossil fuels, chicken 300-350, and tomatoes 650 mL/kg, and some seafood, like lobster or shrimp or other carnivorous fishes, are 2-3 L/kg!

at least half of recent global crop harvests have been produced thanks to the application of synthetic nitrogenous compounds, and without them it would be impossible to produce the prevailing diets for even half of today’s nearly 8 billion people. (68)

so what can we do?
- we can try and reduce food waste, which is easier than reforming complex processes
- we can reduce our consumption of meat (complete elimination of meat consumption is doomed to fail)
- we can hold out hope for renewable and inexpensive electricity generation and adequate large scale storage
- hold out hope for the perfect solution – develop grain/oil crops with properties of leguminous plants, whose roots can turn inert nitrogen in the atmosphere into nitrates

3: Understanding our Material World

4 Pillars of Modern Civilization

Ammonia

essential in fertilizer, and human or animal sourced fertilizer doesn’t come close to introducing the amount of nitrates required

without its use as the dominant nitrogen fertilizer (directly or as feedstock for the synthesis of other nitrogenous compounds), 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.
Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia might be most important advance in the 20th century

Plastics

at end of 20th century, there were 50 different plastics on the market
essential part of health care in preventing the spread of infectious diseases

Steel

no other metal matches steel’s compressive and tensile strength
steel dictates the look and function of many parts of modern civilization
almost always the majority of transportation infrastructure and vehicles
also recycable
creation of steel accounts for 7-9 percent of carbon emitted from fossil fuels per year

Cement

allows for the building of modern buildings
when mixed with steel, allows for durable skyscrapers
China produced more concrete in 2018 and 2019 than the entire world in the 20th century

4: Understanding Globalization

The fourth chapter is the story of globalization, or how the world has become so interconnected by transportation and communication. This historical perspective shows how old (or indeed ancient) the origins of this process are, and how recent is its highest—and finally truly global—extent. And a closer look makes it clear that there is nothing inevitable about the future course of this ambivalently perceived (much praised, much questioned, and much criticized) phenomenon. Recently, there have been some clear retreats around the world, and a general trend toward populism and nationalism, but it is not clear how far these will continue, or to what extent these changes will be modified due to a combination of economic, security, and political considerations.

definition of globalization:

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 isn’t an historical inevitability preordained by economic and social evolution

4 distinct eras of globalization

wind-driven globalization (15th-18th century)
- spurred by sailing, but limited by the fact that it takes a while to sail anywhere
steam engines and telegraph (19th century)
- steam engines capable of much faster movement
- telegraph allows much faster communication
the first diesel engines, flight, radio (end of 19th - early 20th)
- diesel was a step-shift more efficient and reliable than steam
large diesel, turbines, containers, and microchips (mid 20th - present)
- more powerful and efficient diesels, the gas turbine for propulsion of jetliners, superior design for intercontinental shipping, and quantum leaps in computing and information processing

new stage of globalization with entry of China, India, and Russia to world markets

5: Understanding Risks

The fifth chapter provides a realistic framework for judging the risks we face: modern societies have succeeded in eliminating or reducing many previously mortal or crippling risks—polio and giving birth, for example—but many perils will always be with us, and we repeatedly fail to make proper risk assessments, both underestimating and exaggerating the dangers we face. After finishing this chapter, readers will have a good appreciation of the relative risks of many common involuntary exposures and voluntary activities (from falling at home to flying between continents; from living in a hurricane-prone city to parachuting)—and, cutting through the diet industry nonsense, we will see a range of options of what we could eat to help us live longer.

6: Understanding the Environment

The sixth chapter will look first at how unfolding environmental changes might affect our three existential necessities: oxygen, water, and food. The rest of the chapter will focus on global warming, the change that has dominated recent environmental concerns and has led to the emergence of new—near apocalyptic—catastrophism on one hand, and complete denials of the process on the other. Instead of recounting and adjudging these contested claims (too many books have already done so), I will stress that, contrary to widespread perceptions, this is not a recently discovered phenomenon: we have understood the fundamentals of this process for more than 150 years.

nine categories of biospheric boundaries

climate change - now interchangeably, albeit inaccurately, called simply global warming
ocean acidification - endangering marine organisms that build structures of calcium carbonate
depletion of stratospheric ozone - shielding the Earth from excessive ultraviolet radiation and threatened by releases of chlorofluorocarbons
atmospheric aerosols - pollutants reducing visibility and causing lung impairment
interference in nitrogen and phosphorus cycles - above all, the release of these nutrients into fresh and coastal waters
freshwater use - excessive withdrawals of underground, stream, and lake waters
land use changes - due to deforestation, farming, and urban and industrial expansion
biodiversity loss
various forms of chemical pollution

7: Understanding the Future

In the closing chapter I will look to the future, specifically at the recent opposing propensities to embrace catastrophism (those that say there are just years left before the final curtain descends on modern civilization) and techno-optimism (those that predict that the powers of invention will open unlimited horizons beyond the confines of the Earth, turning all terrestrial challenges into inconsequential histories). Predictably, I have little use for either of these positions, and my perspective will find no favor with either doctrine. I do not foresee any imminent break with history in either direction; I do not see any already predetermined outcomes, but rather a complicated trajectory contingent on our—far from foreclosed—choices.

Thoughts

one of the central messages is that a promise of countermeasures to climate change that are instant and magical is a fool’s gold. The processes of energy consumption, the infrastructure of reliance on fossil fuels, this is centuries in the making, and that “any sufficiently effective steps [to mitigate climate change] will be decidedly non-magical, gradual, and costly” (204)

To believe that our understanding of these dynamic, multifactorial realities has reached the state of perfection is to mistake the science of global warming for the religion of climate change.

Smil presents a unrelentingly realist take on the realities of our current dependence on energy and by virtue the fuel that creates that energy, fossil fuels. He paints a picture that disambiguates between the science of global warming and the religion of climate change, and argues for a measured approach stripped of the-world-is-going-to-end catastrophism or technology-will-solve-all-our-problems techno-optimism. The fact is, there is no silver bullet to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels. The system is now too large, with too many pieces that would need to be replaced or updated even if we create some wonder-fuel. As a system gets larger, it is subject to more and more inertia, and the mechanisms of our global economy, built on shipping and transport, are too entrenched to be changed overnight.
The one argument I can broker is that while Smil acknowledges black swan events for technological innovation, he dismisses the sort of world-changing nature of these events. While the internet and computing didn’t change the fundamental profile of our energy use drastically, there might be some sort of breakthrough in clean fueling, or energy storage, or energy generation that changes the game and allows us to pivot. But point taken that prayers aren’t policy, and so banking on some revelatory new tech is waiting for technology Godot.