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VaclavSmilHow the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and FuturePenguin, 2022, 325 p., $28.00.

2022; Wiley; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/padr.12510

1728-4457

John Bongaarts,

Global Energy and Sustainability Research

Achieving the international climate community's current objective of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5°C will require CO2 emissions to be cut in half by 2030 and to be eliminated by 2050. According to Vaclav Smil, these goals for the rapid decarbonization of human activities are impossible to achieve. This controversial conclusion carries weight because Smil is one of the world's leading experts on energy who has written dozens of books and hundreds of articles on a wide range of topics related to natural resources and their use by humans. Smil is an astute observer of the relationships between the human and the natural worlds and is known for his incisive analysis of complex problems, his trenchant criticisms of wrong-headed thinking, and his desire to reform misguided policy ideas. To the uninitiated reader, the subject of this book may not be clear from the title. How the World Really Works could be the title of a book written by an economist or a political scientist. The content becomes clearer when Smil identifies ammonia, plastics, steel, and concrete as the “four pillars of modern civilization.” This choice of topic may seem surprising, but several chapters are devoted to explaining why these fundamental substances are indispensable to the functioning of modern societies and are needed in vast quantities. The production of these pillars depends heavily on the combustion and conversion of fossil fuels. Understanding their roles is essential in making sound policy. The first half of the book is devoted to a detailed discussion of the complex global energy, food, and material production systems that support our current high standards of living. The food system involves good soil, water, fertilizer (mostly from ammonia), herbicides and insecticides, irrigation, heavy farm machinery, cattle ranches, factory farming of animals, huge distribution networks of trucks, trains and ships, and a range of middlemen, including truckdrivers and grocery store workers. The energy system is even more complicated and depends on several sources, including coal, oil, gas, wood, nuclear, wind, solar and hydro, each with its unique extraction and production processes. These energy sources feed into refineries and electric power plants with distribution systems involving transmission lines, pipes, ships, trucks, and so on. Another chapter covers the production and uses of a wide range of materials. Smil aims to educate his readers about how steaks end up on their dinner plate, where the electricity from the outlets in their home comes from and why cement is ubiquitous in our infrastructure. This may seem a rather quixotic objective, and economists will argue that Adam Smith's “invisible hand” takes care of all these minutiae without the consumers’ need to know. Smil disagrees and believes that a lack of fundamental knowledge about the real world is the cause of misguided and wishful thinking on the part of the public, scientists, and politicians. How the World Really Works next tackles the central issue: the threat of global warming and what can be done about it. A concise summary of climate science is followed by a critique of the current consensus plan to decarbonize human activities by 2050. These goals are embedded in the Glasgow Climate Pact agreed to at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow last fall. They are essential to keep the global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Smil claims that these goals are unattainable for two reasons. The main obstacle to rapid decarbonization is the enormous scale of the infrastructure humanity has built to feed, house, transport, and pamper humans and the impossibility of quickly turning this around. Our food, energy and material industries are full of cumbersome and heavy man-made objects such as irrigation systems, refineries, electricity generating plants, and distribution systems that require a long time to build and are expected to last decades. People are accustomed to extremely rapid technological change in tools such as cell phones and computers. Some believe that switching to renewable energy resources is not much more difficult than updating to a new phone. Smil emphatically disagrees. Many nations have already made large investments in renewable electricity production with solar panels and windmills. This is important, but the intermittent nature of these sources requires back-up from fossil fuel or nuclear plants. Moreover, electricity today supplies only 18 percent of global energy consumption. Most of the remaining energy is derived from fossil fuels and used for transportation (cars, airplanes, trucks, etc.), households (heating and cooking) and industry (including the production of steel, ammonia, cement, and plastics). Despite recent efforts to introduce renewables, the global consumption of fossil fuels rose by 45 percent in the first two decades of this century, and the share of fossil fuels in the world's energy supply declined only slightly. Smil's position is clear: “…we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose…prosperity rests on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades…” (5) and “the scale of our dependence on fossil carbon make any rapid substitutions impossible” (42). “We will be eating transformed fossil fuels…for decades to come” (75) and “modern economies will always be tied to massive material flows and …will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials” (102). Cutting emissions in half in eight years indeed looks impossible. The other fundamental obstacle to the rapid elimination of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is the large and growing demand for food, energy, and materials from low- and middle-income countries. Even if the affluent world somehow manages to reach net zero emissions soon, there are still a billion people who are undernourished or malnourished, and billions more whose energy and material use is only a tiny fraction of levels consumed in the rich world. These people need much more ammonia to feed increasing populations a better diet and huge quantities of steel, cement, and plastics to build their infrastructure to support higher living standards. All of this requires massive amounts of fossil fuels, which in part is why India, China, and other low- and middle-income countries are rapidly building new coal plants. China's fossil fuel consumption nearly tripled between 2000 and 2019; there are billions of people living in poorer parts of the world who want to do the same. All of this is unwelcome news for the international climate community that has for decades tried to negotiate international agreements to reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. The response from this community was not long in coming. In fact, it arrived before the book's publication date in the form of a blog by Bill McKibben, a highly influential environmental activist (https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/who-gets-to-define-reality?sxr). Interestingly, he largely agrees with Smil's main point: “of course he's right: it is on the bleeding edge of the technically possible to cut emissions in half by 2030, but it's almost certainly not politically possible to get all the way there.” However, McKibben disagrees with Smil about the desirability of trying anyway: “pressing to make that change happen—pushing for the most rapid possible change—could get us further sooner.” He also accuses Smil of assisting “self-interested oil companies and intellectually lazy politicians.” The book's main conclusions are well supported, but several important issues could have been given more attention to provide the reader with a fuller understanding of the ongoing climate policy debate. Missing from this scientific account is a true sense of urgency. To McKibben and his colleagues, global climate change is a catastrophic existential crisis that demands a radical change in the way we live. They would even be willing to accept a decline in standards of living among the well-off. Smil says he is neither an optimist nor a pessimist and discusses how past predictions of global crises have gone wrong thanks to technical innovations. He is essentially uncertain about what lies ahead and refuses to make forecasts. To him, the most likely prospect is that we will muddle through with “a mixture of progress and setbacks, of insurmountable difficulties and near-miraculous advances” (229). However, he neglects to note that when faced with a highly uncertain critical situation, it is better to give more weight to very bad outcomes. In the future, we will regret not having taken more insurance in the 2020s if the pessimists turn out to be right. If no drastic changes are made in greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, it will be too late to avoid catastrophic outcomes later in the century. Once carbon concentrations have reached multiple preindustrial levels, large future temperature increases and their dire consequences for humans and the environment become essentially unavoidable due to inertia in our global temperature regulation system. A second issue is a lack of an alternative solution. If turning around our energy supply system in the next decades is not feasible, then what should be done? This question is not addressed in detail, but Smil half-heartedly offers a controversial solution: the “greedy” affluent should consume less. Rapidly rising incomes (made possible by the four pillars) have led to extraordinary levels of consumption of material goods. Many households in OECD countries can afford multiple cars or SUVs, large homes, vacations to exotic places, and food and drink that is flown in from around the world. Smil wants everyone to live a simpler life with a smaller environmental footprint. This recommendation has been made by environmentalists for many years with little success because most people do not want to make sacrifices. It is also not clear how much of a difference cutting luxuries will make. In theory, consumers could be coaxed into changing to more environmentally friendly behaviors and consumption patterns (e.g., by introducing a substantial carbon tax), but for now, this is not a viable political option in many countries. The third is the absence of a discussion or even mention of geoengineering solutions such as blocking sunlight. Geoengineering is still in its early stages of development, but in theory, it could be a relatively inexpensive option. If humanity is facing a catastrophic future, why not consider all options no matter how controversial? PDR readers may be disappointed that Smil has not much to say about population throughout the book. However, on the last page of the last chapter, he states, “Despite the recent preoccupation with the impact of global warming and for the need for rapid decarbonation, few uncertain outcomes will be as important in determining our future as the trajectory of the global population during the remainder of the 21st century.” This is a sound statement, but he does not elaborate his thinking on the causes and consequences of population growth. It would be interesting to learn his views on how to slow the still rapid expansion of human numbers in the poorest regions of the world. This book has become a NYT bestseller for a good reason. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the impact future climate change will have on our human and natural worlds. The text is packed with interesting and sometimes startling facts, statistics, and conclusions and is written to be accessible to a wide audience (although it helps to know what mega-joules, gigawatt-hours, and yotta-bytes are). Environmental and climate scientists will encounter a fair amount of familiar material but still find much of interest. In any case, they may want to read the book to understand the fine points of Smil's arguments and to take part more effectively in the lively ongoing debate about his conclusions.