From how food is grown to how we generate power, Vaclav Smil's new book outlines the basic technologies that keep society going and commands us to know them better
, does this mean that Western civilisation, so hopelessly dependent on fossil fuels, is doomed?
Perhaps, but Smil would prefer that we concentrate on practical solutions, rather than wasting our energies on complex socio-economic forecasts. In his view, such forecasts will get less accurate over time because “more complex models combining the interactions of economic, social, technical, and environmental factors require more assumptions and open the way for greater errors”.neither laments the possibly imminent end of the world, nor bloviates about the potentially transformative.
Instead, in an era where specialisation is seen as the pinnacle of knowledge, Smil is an unapologetic generalist. “Drilling the deepest possible hole and being an unsurpassed master of a tiny sliver of the sky visible from its bottom has never appealed to me,” he writes. “I have always preferred to scan as far and as wide as my limited capabilities have allowed me to do.”
He chooses to explain the workings of the world as it is today, from energy to food, materials, the biosphere, globalisation and the. He covers sizeable ground that other commentators ignore. It is a grumpy, pugnacious account that, I would argue, is intellectually indispensable in the run up to this year’s COP27 climate conference in Egypt. In short, How the World Really Works fully delivers on the promise of its title. It is hard to formulate any higher praise.
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