How The World Really Works

Vaclav Smil (2022).?How the world really works: The science behind how we got here and where we’re going.?Viking

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1?more people now enjoy a higher standard of living, and do so for more years and in better health … Yet these beneficiaries are still a minority

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2?“physics” or “biology” are fairly meaningless labels

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3?comprehension deficit

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3?America … men and women … directly engaged in producing food … less than 1 percent of the country’s population

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4?this disconnect is the case across the world

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4?disproportionately high rewards are for work completely removed from the material realities of life on earth

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4?fake news has become common

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5-6?Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances

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6?This book is an attempt to reduce the comprehension deficit

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7?for decades it will be impossible to adequately feed the planet without using fossil fuels as sources of energy and raw materials

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7?the four pillars of modern civilization: ammonia, steel, concrete, and plastics

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8?around the world … a general trend toward populism and nationalism

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8?diet industry nonsense

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8?(uninterrupted, accurate measurement of CO2 began in 1958)

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9?this far-reaching book could not have been written without my decades of interdisciplinary studies

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9-10?energy studies … requires you to combine an understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and engineering with an attention to history and to social, economic, and political factors

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10?this book … strongly advocates for moving away from extreme views

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

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17?by 2020 more than half of the world’s electricity … generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly coal and natural gas

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20?An abundance of useful energy underlies and explains all the gains – from better eating to mass-scale travel … Energy conversions are the very basis of life and evolution … Erwin Schr?dinger … 1933 … “What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy” … Alfred Lotka concluded that those organisms that best capture the available energy hold the evolutionary advantage

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21?Howard Odum … “all progress is due to special power subsidies, and progress evaporates whenever and wherever they are removed.” … energy is the only truly universal currency … Understanding how the world really works cannot be done without at least a modicum of energy literacy

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22?energy … is … not … power

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22?our civilization is so deeply reliant on fossil fuels that the next transition will take much longer than most people think

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22-23?the most common definition of energy: “the capacity for doing work” .. a generalized physical “act of producing a change in configuration in a system in opposition to a force which resists that change.” … Richard Feynman … “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.” … It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is … Energy is among the most elusive and most misunderstood concepts, and a poor grasp of basic realities has led to many illusions and delusions

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24?all sleek, high-speed trains are electric

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24?The first law of thermodynamics states that no energy is ever lost during conversions … However, all energy conversions eventually result in dissipated low-temperature heat: no energy has been lost, but its utility, its ability to perform useful work, is gone (the second law of thermodynamics)

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25?large nuclear reactors are the most reliable producers of electricity

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25?Another common mistake is to confuse energy with power … Energy is a scalar … Power measures energy per unit of time and hence it is a rate

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25-26?Power equals energy divided by time … Energy equals power multiplied by time

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26?an adult man’s metabolic rate … is about 80 watts, or 80 joules per second

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26?liquid hydrocarbons refined from crude oil (gasoline, aviation kerosene, diesel fuel, residual heavy oil) have the highest energy densities of all commonly available fuels

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27?the advantages of liquid fuels go far beyond energy density … easier to produce … store … and distribute

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27?Lubricants … Globally, the automotive sector, now with more than 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, is the largest consumer … followed by … textiles, energy, chemicals, and food processing – and in ocean-going vessels

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27-28?asphalt … ethane, propane, and butane … synthetic fibers, resins, adhesives, dyes, paints and coatings, detergents, and pesticides

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28?the US and Canada were the only two countries with high rates of car ownership prior to the Second World War

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31?1995 … oil has not regained its pre-1975 relative dominance.?Its share of the global commercial primary energy supply fell from 45 percent in 1970 to … 33 percent in 2019 … its further relative decline will continue as natural gas consumption and wind and solar electricity generation keep increasing

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32-33?electricity is intangible … currents above 100 milliamperes may be deadly … only a minority fully understand what goes on inside the generating plants, transformers, transmission lines, and final-use devices

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33?generating electricity for mass-scale commercial use is a costly and complicated undertaking.?Its distribution … is equally complicated … it is still impossible to store electricity affordably in quantities sufficient to meet the demand of a medium-sized city (500,000 people) for only a week or two … quest for ever-higher electrification will continue because this form of energy combines many unequal advantages

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34?luminous efficacy … quotient of the total luminous flux (… lumens) and the source’s power (in watts)

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35?despite its profound and rising importance, electricity stills supplies only a relatively small share of final global energy consumption, just 18 percent

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36?Commercial electricity generation began in 1882

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36?nuclear fission … about 10 percent of global energy generation.?Hydro generation accounted for nearly 16 percent in 2020; wind and solar added almost 7 percent; and the rest (about two-thirds) came from large central stations fueled mostly by coal and natural gas

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37?Only COVID-19 stopped New York’s subway operating 24/7

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37?just a few days of a severely reduced electricity supply in any densely populated region … would be a catastrophic event with unprecedented consequences

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39?the problems of intermittency of solar and wind generation could be resolved by renewed reliance on nuclear electricity generation.?A nuclear renaissance would be particularly helpful if we cannot develop better ways of large-scale electricity storage soon

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40?modern nuclear reactors … Only China, India, and South Korea are committed to further expansion of their capabilities … America’s new small, modular, and inherently safe reactors … have yet to be commercialized … even the European Union now recognizes that it could not come close to its extraordinarily ambitious decarbonization target without nuclear reactors

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41?the course of decarbonizing modern long-distance transportation remains unclear … kerosene … batteries … jetliners … the effective density gap is “only” about 20-fold … we have no readily deployable commercial scale alternatives for energizing the production of the four material pillars of modern civilization solely by electricity … steel, ammonia, cement, and plastics … decarbonization outside of electricity generation has progressed slowly

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42?German industries hum on natural gas and oil

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43?What we need is to pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world

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44?our hominin ancestors evolved key physical advantages – erect posture, bipedalism, and relatively large brains – that set them apart from their simian ancestors … The transition from foraging (hunting and collecting) to sedentary living … didn’t necessarily mean better average nutrition

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45?The only foraging societies with high population densities were coastal groups … reliable supply of high-protein, high-fat food

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46?The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the?worldwide share of undernourished people decreased from about 65 percent in 1950 to … 8.9 percent by 2019

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46-47?Modern food production … is … dependent on two different kinds of energy … the sun.?But we also need … fossil fuels, and … electricity

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47?photosynthesis – the biosphere’s most important energy conversion

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48?phytoplankton, the dominant plant mass produced by aquatic photosynthesis

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50?In 2021, Kansas is the country’s leading wheat-growing state

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51?In two centuries, the human labor to produce a kilogram of American wheat was reduced from 10 minutes to less than two seconds … similarly … for Chinese or Indian rice … The road to the modern world began with inexpensive steel plows and inorganic fertilizers

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52?the energy required to make and to power farm machinery is dwarfed by the energy requirements of producing agrochemicals … fungicides and insecticides … herbicides … applied in relatively small quantities … In contrast, fertilizers that supply the three essential plant macronutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium … are needed in large quantities … Potassium is the least costly to produce … potash (KCl) … mines.?Phosphatic fertilizers … Ammonia is the starting compound for making all synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers

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53?Bacteria attached to the roots of leguminous plants are responsible for most natural nitrogen fixation – that is, for the cleavage of non-reactive N2 and for the incorporation of nitrogen into ammonia (NH3)

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53?leguminous food crops, including soybeans, beans, peas, lentils, and peanuts, are able to provide (fix) their own nitrogen supply, as can such leguminous cover crops as alfalfa, clovers, and vetches.?But no staple grains, no oil crops (except for soybeans and peanuts), and no tubers can do that.?The only way for them to benefit from the nitrogen-fixing abilities of legumes is to rotate them with alfalfa, clovers, or vetches … with … wheat, rice, or potatoes… the only other option … collect and apply human and animal wastes.?But this is … laborious and inefficient

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54?the Green Revolution could not have taken place without this combination of better crops and higher nitrogen applications

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56?Basic sourdough bread is the simplest kind of leavened bread

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56?bakeries: energy savings from industrial-scale efficiency are negated by increased transportation costs

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57?(1 kilogram of bread compared to about 210 grams of diesel fuel)

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57?“Paleolithic diet,” … meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit

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58?chicken … The minima of 300-350 mL/kg is a remarkably efficient performance … the dominant meat in all Western countries (globally, pork still leads, thanks to China’s enormous demand)

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59?a tomato is the fruit of the Lycopersicon esculentum, a small plant native to Central and South America

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60-61?greenhouse tomatoes are among the world’s most heavily fertilized crops … Scandinavian supermarket, tomatoes from Almería … 650 mL/kg

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62?pelagic (living near the surface) species as anchovies and sardines or mackerel … 100 mL/kg … If you want to eat wild fish with the lowest-possible fossil carbon footprint, stick to sardines.?The mean for all seafood is stunningly high --?700 mL/kg … for some wild shrimp and lobsters … more than 10 L/kg

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63?Broilers are herbivores … the marine species that people prefer to eat (salmon, sea bass, tuna) are carnivorous … the energy costs of growing … sea bass in cages … equivalent to as much as 2-2.5 liters of diesel fuel per kilogram

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65?There are many reasons why we should not continue many of today’s food-producing practices

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66?purely organic farming would require most of us to abandon cities, resettle villages, dismantle central animal feeding operations, and bring all animals back to farms to use them for labor and as sources of manure … And even if they were willing to empty the cities and embrace organic earthiness, they could still produce only enough food to sustain less than half of today’s global population … The greater the reduction of these fossil fuel-based services, the greater the need for the labor force to leave the cities to produce food in the old ways

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67?urea, now the world’s dominant solid nitrogenous fertilizer, contains … an order of magnitude more nitrogen-dense than recyclable wastes

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68?the total mass of recyclable materials is simply too small to provide the nitrogen required by today’s harvests

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68?Global inventory of reactive nitrogen shows that six major flows bring the element to the world’s croplands: atmospheric deposition, irrigation water, plowing-under of crop residues, spreading of animal manures, nitrogen left in soil by leguminous crops, and application of synthetic fertilizers … at least half … synthetic nitrogenous compounds … we could reduce our dependence on synthetic ammonia by eating less meat and wasting less food

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70?Double-cropping is now practiced on more than a third of China’s cultivated land

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71?According to the FAO, the world loses almost half of all root crops, fruits, and vegetables, about a third of all fish, 30 percent of cereals, and a fifth of all oilseeds, meat, and dairy products – or at least one-third of the overall food supply

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72?The quest for mass-scale veganism is doomed to fail.?Eating meat has been as significant a component of our evolutionary heritage as our large brains (which evolved partly because of meat eating), bipedalism, and symbolic language.?All our hominin ancestors were omnivorous

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73?the best nutritional advice is that we do not have to eat more than an adult’s body mass equivalent in meat per year to obtain an adequate amount of high-quality protein … high-level carnivory has no proven nutritional benefits … Meat consumption in Japan, the country with the world’s highest longevity, has recently been below 30 kilograms per year … France … less than 39 kg/year … there are billions of people in Asia and Africa whose meat consumption remains minimal and whose health would benefit from more meaty diets

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74?there is no near-term prospect for substantially reducing the global dependence on synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers

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75 ?our food is partly made not just of oil, but also of coal … of natural gas … and of electricity generated by the combustion of fossil fuels … even if we try to change the global food system as fast as is realistically conceivable, we will be eating transformed fossil fuels, be it loaves of bread or as fishes, for decades to come

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77?as transformative as post-1950 electronic advances have been, they do not constitute the indispensable material foundations of modern civilization … the?four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia

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78-79?In 2019, the world consumed about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel,?370 million tons of plastic, and 150 million tons of ammonia, and they are not readily replaceable by other materials – certainly not in the near future or on a global scale … [A] key commonality between these four materials is particularly noteworthy as we contemplate the future without fossil carbon: the mass-scale production of all of them depends heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels, and some of these fuels also supply feedstocks for the synthesis of ammonia and for the production of plastics … global production of these four indispensable materials claims about 17 percent of the world’s primary energy supply, and 25 percent of all CO2 emissions … and currently there are no commercially available and readily deployable mass-scale alternatives to displace these established processes

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79?in 2020, nearly 4 billion people would not have been alive without synthetic ammonia

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80?Teflon … In 1938, Roy Plunkett … and Jack Rebok formulated tetrafluoroethylene

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82?The world’s first ammonia synthesis plant … September 1913 … “Haber-Bosch process”

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82?Mao was responsible for the deadliest famine in history (1958-1961)

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83?the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia perhaps the most momentous technical advance in history … synthetic nitrogen feeds half of humanity … We could also reduce our dependence on nitrogenous fertilizers by cutting our food waste … and by using fertilizers more efficiently.

????About 80 percent of global ammonia production is used to fertilize crops; the rest is used to make nitric acid, explosives, rocket propellants, dyes, fibers, and window and floor cleaners

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84?nitrogenous fertilizers … Africa, the continent with the fastest-growing population, remains deprived of the nutrient and is a substantial food importer.?Any hope for its greater food self-sufficiency rests on the increased use of nitrogen

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86-87?By the end of the 20th century, 50 different kinds of plastics were on the global market … the most commonly used compounds (PE, PP, PVC, and PET) … about 370 million tons by 2019 … small industrial parts (a gear-lever knob in the 1916 Rolls-Royce was the first application)

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92?Iron is … abundant in the Earth’s crust: only three elements (oxygen, silicon, and aluminum) are more common; iron, with nearly 6 percent, ranks fourth … steel is readily recycled … the most challenging recycling operation is the dismantling of large ocean-going vessels, done mostly on beaches in Pakistan … India … and Bangladesh

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94?The total energy requirement of global steel production in 2019 was about … 6 percent of the world’s primary energy supply … also a major contributor to the anthropogenic generation of greenhouse gases … cement … production is responsible for … about 8 percent of emitted carbon

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95?cement – typically 10-15 percent of concrete’s final mass

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95?Roman cement … proved to be an excellent and durable material for large structures

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95-96?modern cement … 1824 … Joseph Aspdin … Portland cement … a color similar to limestone from the Isle of Portland in the English Channel??

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98?the world’s number-one cement consumer, China … in 2019 its output of about 2.2 billion tons was just over half of the global total … in just two years – 2018 and 2019 – China produced nearly as much cement … as did the United States during the entire 20th century … modern concrete will not last as long as the Pantheon’s coffered dome

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99 ?during the 21st century we will face unprecedented burdens of concrete deterioration, renewal, and removal

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101?“green” … large wind turbines … steel, cement, and plastics are also embodiments of fossil fuels … difficult to recycle

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101?A typical lithium car battery weighing about 450 kilograms … necessitates extracting and processing about 225 tons of raw materials

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102?Modern economies will always be tied to massive material flows

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103?Giant tankers move … liquefied natural gas from Texas to storage tanks in France and South Korea

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104?The global merchandise trade is now close to $20 trillion a year

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104?“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.”

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104?globalization … is just another human construct, and there is now a growing consensus that, in some ways, it has already gone too far and needs to be readjusted

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105?Globalization … China has been by far its greatest beneficiary … loss of well-paying jobs to offshoring … the race to the bottom as labor arbitrage drives remunerations ever lower … growing inequality and new kinds of immiseration

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107?the first circumnavigation of the Earth (1519)

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108?the four distinct eras of globalization … [1] sail ships … [2] steam engines … telegraph … [3] diesel engines, flight, and radio … [4] large diesels … turbines … containers … and microchips

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108?Caravans on the Silk Road (from Tanais on the Black Sea via Sarai to Beijing) took a year, implying an average speed of about 25 kilometers per day

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108?shipping … during the 18th century … average speed of 4.7 kilometers per hour

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110?Angus Maddison estimated that in 1698-1700 commodity exports from the East Indies accounted for just 1.8 percent of the Dutch net domestic product, and that the Indonesian export surplus was a mere 1.1 percent of the Dutch GDP – and nearly a century later (1778-1780) both of these shares were still only 1.7 percent

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110?1765 … John Harrison’s fourth highly accurate sea clock, a chronometer

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111?The first steam-powered westward transatlantic crossings took place in 1838 … on intercontinental routes sails had the advantage until 1880

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111?Practical telegraph was developed during the late 1830s and the early 1840s; the first (short-lived) transatlantic link cable was laid in 1858

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112?telephone … first public demonstration in 1876 … The first intercontinental call – from the US to the UK – came only in 1927

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113?steam globalization also helped to create a new kind of literary sensibility, with Joseph Conrad (Józef Korzeniowski) as its master

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115?Radio communication was deployed first on transatlantic ocean liners: thanks to Titanic’s distress message – “CQD Titanic 41.44 N 50.24 W,” sent at 12:15 a.m. on April 15, 1912 – 700 people in lifeboats were saved by Carpathia

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115?Marine diesels and reciprocating aircraft engines remained the technological enablers of globalization during the two interwar decades, and their mass-scale deployment made the decisive contribution to the outcome of the Second World War.?By the conflict’s end, the US had built nearly 296,000 airplanes compared to about 112,000 in Germany and 68,000 in Japan

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116 ?post-1950 globalization – which ended in 1973-1974 with OPEC’s two rounds of oil price increases and which was followed by 15 years of relative stagnation … our world is still beholden to these critical pre-1973 achievements … giant marine diesel engines, container ships and wide-body jetliners, or microprocessors

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118?1957 … Malcolm McLean … carrying cargo in uniformly-sized steel boxes … Gateway City, a freighter … McLean’s Sea-Land company

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119?1938 … England and Germany.?Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain were the first engineers to test turbines that were sufficiently efficient and reliable to power military airplanes … used in combat in late 1944, too late … in 1949 the Comet became the world’s first commercial jetliner … by 1954 a series of fatal accidents … it was Boeing’s 747 that became the most revolutionary plane design in history … conceived as a freighter

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121?The years between 1950 and 1973 were marked by rapid economic growth in virtually every part of the world … Economic growth was nearly universal (China’s Great Famine years of 1958-1961) were the most consequential exception)

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122-123?By the late 1960s … the technical and financial means became decisively augmented and potentiated by fundamental political reversals, as China, Russia, and India became major participants in global trade, finances, travel, and talent flows

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123?In 1972, China had no trade with the US … and its trade surplus with the US reached nearly $420 billion before declining by about 18 percent in 2019 due to rising tensions between the two economic superpowers … the Soviet state was officially dissolved on December 26, 1991.?For the first time in history, it became possible for every major economy to become open … India, with its messy electoral and multiethnic politics, has not been able to replicate China’s post-1990 rise

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124?since 2008 the country’s annual growth of merchandise exports has been, at 5.3 percent, only slightly behind China’s 5.7 percent, and the impact of India’s software engineers in Silicon Valley … has been far above Chinese contributions … unprecedented influx of Chinese, Indian, and South Korean students to the West … International trade’s share in the world economic product rose … to nearly 61 percent in 2008 … by 2018 … back above 59 percent

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125?just think of China’s place as the largest manufacturer of consumer goods, of Russia’s enormous export of energy and minerals, and of the … contingent of Indian software engineers in Silicon Valley

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125?the technical foundations … of globalization … has demanded enormous investment in prime movers … and in essential infrastructures

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126?in 1972 and 1973 … largest container vessels … a capacity of 1,968 standard steel containers … in 2019 … 23,756 standard containers

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127?Europe remains the main tourist destination … with France, Spain, and Italy being the continent’s most visited countries

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127?integrated circuit … microprocessor

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128?global positioning systems (GPS): the first (American) system was fully operational in 1993, and three other systems (Russia’s GLO-NASS, EU’s Galileo, China’s BeiDou) followed

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130?Shenzhen … the world’s most important manufacturing hub of portable devices

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130?British and American industries were the global leaders as recently as the early 1970s

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131?Until 1980, Shenzhen was a small fishing village, when it became China’s first special economic zone

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131?pro-globalization sentiment has been weakening for some time

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131?Canada, the country with per capita forest resources greater than in any other affluent nation, importing toothpicks and toilet paper from China … rising midlife mortality among America’s white non-university-educated men

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131?McKinsey’s analysis … 1995 to 2017 … second-most important finding is that contrary to common perception, only about 18 percent of the global goods trade is now driven by lower labor costs (labor arbitrage)

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133?reshoring of manufacturing could be the wave of the future

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134?One sweeping, simplifying way to describe the advances of modern civilization is to see them as serial quests to reduce the risks that come from us being complex and fragile organisms trying to survive against many odds in a world abounding with dangers …Car accidents (with fatalities now in excess of 1.2 million a year)

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135?despite the impression created by media reporting, the worldwide frequency of violent conflicts and the total number of their casualties have been declining for decades … people … are routinely exposed to media reports of man-made and natural dangers … the world is full of constant or episodic risks, but it is also replete with wrong perceptions and irrational risk appraisals

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136-137?What should we eat to promote a long life? … Indeed, it is quite simple.?We can look at which populations live the longest and what their diets are

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137?Japan has had the highest average longevity since the early 1980s … Women live longer in all societies, and by 2020 their life expectancy in Japan was about 87.7 years, ahead of 86.2 in second-place Spain. ?Average longevity is an outcome of complex and interacting genetic, lifestyle, and nutritional factors

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138?the country built the world’s largest fishing (and whaling) fleet

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138?The latest published surveys show Japan and the US to be surprisingly close … the greatest disparity is in sugar intake: among US adults it is about 70 percent higher

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139?Spain … Europe’s leading carnivorous nation … twice the Japanese mean! … the Spanish supply of animal fats is four times the Japanese rate … twice the volume of plant oils … per capita consumption of sugar … about 40 percent above the Japanese level … wine-drinking has been relentlessly declining … beer has become by far the country’s most-consumed alcoholic drink

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140-141?intercontinental flying … is riskier than downhill skiing

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141?1969 analysis of risks, Chauncey Starr … stressed the major difference in risk tolerance between voluntary and involuntary activities

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141?this disparity between tolerating voluntary risks and trying to avoid wrongly perceived risks of involuntary exposures becomes truly bizarre, as people refuse to have their children inoculated

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142?Widespread fear of nuclear electricity generation is yet another excellent example of risk misperception

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144-145?In the US, millions of accidental falls take place every year … and often occurring not when walking up or down stairs but when simply losing balance or tripping over a carpet edge

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145?Baltimore … the city’s homicide rate that is an order of magnitude higher than in Los Angeles

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145?in England and Wales … dementia and Alzheimer’s disease have recently displaced ischemic heart disease as the leading cause of death for both sexes over 80 years of age

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151?Driving is an order of magnitude more dangerous than flying

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151?The lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident is only 0.34 percent for Asian American females (1 out of 291)

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152?voluntary risk … activities … None is riskier than base jumping from cliffs, towers, bridges, and buildings … skydiving … is only about 1/1,000 of the risk associated with base jumping

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154?the probability of being killed by a tornado is sufficiently small, and hence the risk of continued living in such regions remains acceptable

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155?In recent years, lightning has killed fewer than 30 people a year in the US … US hurricanes now present a fatality risk no greater than lightning

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155?both the annual worldwide frequency of natural disasters and their economic cost have been increasing

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156?A report by the US National Research Council estimated that, given the quantity of space debris hitting the earth, there should be 91 deaths a year … In reality, there have been no recorded deaths since 1900

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157?Risks with truly global impacts fall into two very different categories: relatively frequent viral pandemics … and exceedingly rare but uncommonly deadly natural catastrophes

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159?Perhaps the best example of a natural risk that would not directly kill anybody, but that would cause enormous planet-wide disruptions resulting in a large number of indirect casualties, is the possibility of a catastrophic geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection

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161?In early 2020 the world had about a billion people older than 62 years, and they had all lived through three viral pandemics in a single lifetime: 1957-1959 (H2N2), 1968-1970 (H3N2), and 2009 (H1N1)

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165?We habitually underestimate voluntary, familiar risks while we repeatedly exaggerate involuntary, unfamiliar exposures

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167?during the second decade of the 21st century about 125,000 Americans were killed by guns (the total for homicides, excluding suicides) … In contrast, 170 Americans died in all terrorist attacks in the US during the second decade of the 21st century

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168-169?The list of these critical biospheric boundaries includes nine categories: climate change … ocean acidification … depletion of stratospheric ozone … atmospheric aerosols … interference in nitrogen and phosphorus cycles … freshwater use … land use changes … biodiversity loss, and various forms of chemical pollution

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169?three irreplaceable existential requirements – breathing, drinking, and eating

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172?lungs consume about 5 percent of the total oxygen we inhale

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173?water supply is … a perfect example of an almost universally mismanaged resource, with the added complication of highly uneven access

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173?Blue water … green water … grey water … Domestic blue water use (all values in cubic meters per year per capita) ranges from just over 29 in Canada and 23 in the USA to about 11 in France, 7 in Germany, and about 5 in China and India, and to less than 1 in many African countries

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174?the two countries with the highest dependence on imported food – Japan, South Korea – are also the highest users of virtual water

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174?No other human activity has transformed the Earth’s ecosystems to a greater extent than the production of food

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175-176?The real concern about plant nutrients is the environmental (and hence economic) consequences of their unwanted presence in the environment, mostly in water.?Phosphorus from fertilizers … water … normally has very low concentrations of this element, its additions lead to eutrophication, the enrichment of waters with previously scarce nutrients that results in the excessive growth of algae … Decomposing algae consume oxygen dissolved in seawater and create oxygen-less (anoxic) waters where fish and crustaceans cannot survive

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177-178?the greenhouse effect … Without it, the temperature of the Earth would be -18 oC … the global mean temperature of 15 oC supports life in its many forms

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178?Water vapor is the principal generator of the natural greenhouse effect – but water vapor is not the cause of atmospheric warming because it does not control atmospheric temperature … The Earth’s natural warming is controlled by trace gases whose concentration is not affected by the ambient temperature … But the relatively small warming they cause increases evaporation and raises atmospheric water concentrations, and this feedback results in additional warming … carbon dioxide (CO2) … methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3)

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179?Rising CO2 emissions … have been driven primarily by the combustion of fossil fuels and by the production of cement.?Methane emissions (from rice fields, landfills, cattle, and natural gas production) and nitrous oxide (originating mostly from the rising application of nitrogenous fertilizers) are the other notable anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases

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180?almost since the beginning of the media’s interest in this complex process, the coverage of global warming has been replete with poorly communicated facts, dubious interpretations, and dire predictions, and over time it has definitely acquired a distinctly more hysterical even outright apocalyptic, flavor

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181?emissions of greenhouse gases … we have been aware of them for more than 150 years … Joseph Fourier … Eunice Foote … John Tyndall … Svante Arrhenius … global warming will be felt least in the tropics and most felt in the polar regions, and that it will reduce temperature differences between night and day

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184?the five warmest years in the past 140 years have happened since 2015

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185?we should not worry about oxygen.?However, we must be concerned about the future of the water supply

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186?most studies concur that demand-driven freshwater scarcity will have a much greater impact than the shortages induced by climate change

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187-188?by lowering the share of beef and raising the share of pork, chicken meat, eggs, and dairy products, by more efficient feeding, and by better use of crop residues and food processing by-products – we could match recent global meat output while greatly limiting livestock’s environmental input, including its share of methane emissions

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189?even without vaccines, every viral pandemic eventually subsides once the pathogen infects relatively large numbers of people or once it mutates into a less virulent form.?In contrast, global climate change is … extraordinarily complex

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189-191?There are enormous opportunities for reducing energy use in buildings, transportation, industry and agriculture … we have deliberately introduced and promoted the diffusion of new energy conversions that have boosted the consumption of fossil energies and hence further intensified CO2 emissions.?The best examples of these omissions and commissions are the indefensibly inadequate building codes in cold-climate countries and the world wide adaptation of SUVs … 250 million SUVs on the road in 2020 … During the 2010s, SUVs became the second-highest cause of rising CO2 emissions, behind electricity generation and ahead of heavy industry, trucking, and aviation

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191?food … 30-40 percent waste rate

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191-192?three decades of large-scale international climate conferences have had no effect on the course of global CO2 emissions

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193?The latest analysis … concluded that we are already committed to global warming of 2.3 oC … The IPCC report on 1.5 oC warming offers a scenario … that global emissions of CO2 would be halved by 2030 and eliminated by 2050?

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193-194?EU researchers … Cutting per capita energy demand by half in three decades … The projection assumes that the much lower demand for energy will arise from a combination of moving away from owning goods, the digitalization of daily life, and a rapid diffusion of technical innovations in converting and storing energies

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198?De omnibus dubitandum (Doubt everything) must be more than a durable Cartesian quote; it must remain the very foundation of the scientific method

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199?forests have made substantial comebacks, not only in all affluent countries but also in China

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200?Regardless of the perceived (or modeled) severity of global environmental challenges, there are no swift, universal, and widely affordable solutions to tropical deforestation or biodiversity loss, to soil erosion or to global warming

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202?By 2019 China was, in terms of purchasing power, the world’s largest economy

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203?Preconceived and rashly generalizing conclusions should always be avoided

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203?what remains in doubt is our collective – in this case global – resolve to deal effectively with at least some critical challenges ???

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205-206?Apocalyptic visions of the future … In contrast, incorrigible techno-optimists … “singularity.” … Apocalypse and singularity offer two absolutes: our future will have to lie somewhere within the all-encompassing range … modern anticipations of the future … have gravitated – despite all the available evidence – toward one of these two extremes … And this polarization has been accompanied by a greater propensity for dated quantitative forecasts … avoid the new-age dated prophecies entirely, or use them primarily as evidence of prevailing expectations and biases

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206-208?Quantitative forecasts fall into three broad categories.?The smallest include forecasts that deal with processes whose workings are well known and whose dynamics are inherently restricted to a relatively confined set of outcomes.?The second, and a much larger category, includes forecasts pointing in the right direction but with substantial uncertainties regarding the specific outcome.?And the third category … is that of quantitative fables … Only the forecasts … in the first category provide solid insights and good guidance … Demographic projections … and fertility forecasts … are among the best examples … Forecasts for the worldwide adaptation of electric passenger cars are an excellent recent example in this [second] category … The third category … merits a closer look

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209?An obvious place to start when recounting some of the now-classic forecasting failures is to look at the intellectual duel between cornucopians and catastrophists

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210-211?Catastrophists have always had a hard time imaging that human ingenuity can meet future food, energy, and material needs … Catastrophists are wrong, time after time.

????And techno-optimists, who promise endless near-miraculous solutions, must reckon with a similarly poor record

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212?Journalists and activists write about climate apocalypse now, issuing final warnings … How helpful is it to be told every day that the world is coming to an end in 2050 or 2030?

????Such predictably repetitive prophecies … do not offer any practical advice

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213?Extremes are fairly easy to envisage; anticipating realities that will arise from combinations of inertial developments and unpredictable discontinuities remains an elusive quest

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214?What makes all forecasts even harder is that now the key transformations have to unfold on enormous scales

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218?the fundamentals of our lives will not change drastically in the coming 20-30 years … 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

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219-220?the US … spends more than half a trillion every year on its military (more than all of its potential adversaries put together) … unprepared for … the economic losses of COVID-19, measured in the trillions!

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222?The steadily accumulating mass of our understanding and the ability to control a growing number of variables that affect our lives … has lowered the overall risk of living, but it has not made many existential perils either more predictable or more manageable

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223-224?The future is a replay of the past – a combination of admirable advances and (un)avoidable setbacks.?But there is something new as we look ahead, 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

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224?To conclude that we will be able to achieve decarbonization anytime soon, effectively and on the required scale, runs against all past evidence … No real progress can be achieved until at least these top five countries, now responsible for 80 percent of all emissions, agree to clear and binding commitments

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224-225?any effective commitments will be expensive, they will have to last for at least two generations … and even drastic reductions … will not show any convincing benefits for decades.?This raises the extraordinarily difficult problem of intergenerational justice … This universal inclination to discount the future matters greatly … because there would [be] no discernible economic benefits for the generation of people that would launch the expensive quest

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226?Failures revealed during crises offer costly and convincing illustrations of our recurrent inability to get the basics right, to take care of the fundamentals

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226?The future will emerge from our accomplishments and failures

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229?The future, as ever, is not predetermined.?Its outcome depends on our actions