# How the World Really Works  ## Metadata - Author: [[Vaclav Smil]] - Full Title: How the World Really Works - Category: #books ## Highlights - This increasing dependence on fossil fuels is the most important factor in explaining the advances of modern civilization—and also our underlying concerns about the vulnerability of their supply and the environmental impacts of their combustion. ([Location 327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=327)) - An average inhabitant of the Earth nowadays has at their disposal nearly 700 times more useful energy than their ancestors had at the beginning of the 19th century. ([Location 339](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=339)) - concluded that those organisms that best capture the available energy hold the evolutionary advantage.[21] ([Location 365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=365)) - “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.” ([Location 410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=410)) - Here is a density ladder (all rates in gigajoules per ton): air-dried wood, 16; bituminous coal (depending on quality), 24–30; kerosene and diesel fuels, about 46. In volume terms (all rates in gigajoules per cubic meter), energy densities are only about 10 for wood, 26 for good coal, 38 for kerosene. Natural gas (methane) contains only 35 MJ/m3—or less than 1/1,000 of kerosene’s density.[36] ([Location 476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=476)) - Between 1973 and 1975 the global economic growth rate dropped by about 90 percent, and as soon as the economies affected by higher oil prices began to adjust to these new realities—above all by impressive improvements in industrial energy efficiency—the fall of the Iranian monarchy and the takeover of Iran by a fundamentalist theocracy led to a second wave of oil price rises, from about $13 in 1978 to $34 in 1981, and to another 90 percent decline in the global rate of economic growth between 1979 and 1982.[47] ([Location 550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=550)) - If energy, according to Feynman, is “that abstract thing,” then electricity is one of its most abstract forms. ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=575)) - millstones. ([Location 581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=581)) - Tags: [[pink]] - electricity still supplies only a relatively small share of final global energy consumption, just 18 percent. ([Location 649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=649)) - conurbations.[68] ([Location 678](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=678)) - Tags: [[blue]] - 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.[85] ([Location 795](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=795)) - means that rising food production reduced the malnutrition rate from 2 in 3 people in 1950 to 1 in 11 by 2019.[4] ([Location 842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=842)) - But the energy required to make and to power farm machinery is dwarfed by the energy requirements of producing agrochemicals. ([Location 947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=947)) - As a result, 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, grow these nitrogen fixers for a few months, and then plow them under so the soils are replenished with reactive nitrogen to be picked up by the succeeding wheat, rice, or potatoes.[18] In traditional agricultures, the only other option to enrich soil nitrogen stores was to collect and apply human and animal wastes. ([Location 973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=973)) - The minima of 300–350 mL/kg is a remarkably efficient performance compared to the rates of 210–250 mL/kg for bread, and this is reflected in the comparably affordable prices of chicken: in US cities, the average price of a kilogram of white bread is only about 5 percent lower than the average price per kilogram of whole chicken (and wholewheat bread is 35 percent more expensive!), while in France a kilogram of standard whole chicken costs only about 25 percent more than the average price of bread.[34] This helps to explain the rapid rise of chicken to become the dominant meat in all Western countries (globally, pork still leads, thanks to China’s enormous demand). ([Location 1073](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1073)) - How many vegans enjoying the salad are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree? ([Location 1136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1136)) - But, traditional Christmas Eve dinners in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland aside, carp is quite an unpopular culinary choice in Europe and it is barely eaten in North America, while demand for tuna, some species of which are now among the most endangered top marine carnivores, has been soaring thanks to the rapid worldwide adoption of sushi. ([Location 1168](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1168)) - 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.[53] ([Location 1249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1249)) - 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.[64] ([Location 1312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1312)) - A nearly perfect solution would be to develop grain or oil crops with the capabilities common to leguminous plants—that is, with their roots hosting bacteria able to convert inert atmospheric nitrogen to nitrates. Plant scientists have been dreaming about this for decades, but no releases of commercial nitrogen-fixing varieties of wheat or rice are coming anytime soon.[80] Nor is it very likely that all affluent countries and better-off modernizing economies will adopt large-scale voluntary reductions in the quantity and variety of their typical diets, ([Location 1377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1377)) - Four materials rank highest on this combined scale, and they form what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia.[4] ([Location 1430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1430)) - justifies calling the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia perhaps the most momentous technical advance in history. ([Location 1537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1537)) - The best (and long-sought) solution to boost nitrogen supply would be to endow non-leguminous plants with nitrogen-fixing capabilities, a promise genetic engineering is yet to deliver on, while a less radical option—inoculating seeds with a nitrogen-fixing bacterium—is a recent innovation whose eventual commercial extent is still unclear. ([Location 1573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1573)) - The total energy requirement of global steel production in 2019 was about 34 exajoules, or about 6 percent of the world’s primary energy supply. ([Location 1771](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1771)) - During the first half of the 21st century—with slower global population growth and with stagnant or even declining counts in many affluent countries—economies should have no problems meeting the demand for steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics, especially with intensified recycling. But it is unlikely that by 2050 all of these industries will eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels and cease to be significant contributors to global CO2 emissions. ([Location 1896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1896)) - Perhaps the greatest misconception about globalization is that it is a historical inevitability preordained by economic and social evolution. Not so—globalization is not, as a former US president claimed, “the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water”; it 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.[8] ([Location 1969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=1969)) - 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. ([Location 4155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=4155)) - And are the people now in their 40s and 50s ready to join them in order to bring about rewards they will never see? ([Location 4312](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09CDB69WT&location=4312))