Vaclav Smil: How the World Really Works (2022)

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Image by tasukaran from Pixabay.

I’m afraid this is not a fun read. It’s extremely interesting, well-researched and thorough. It’s also very well-written in a stern uncompromising way although there may be some tiny glimmers of humour, Atacama Desert style. Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, Vaclav Smil is a proper old-fashioned scientist (and all the better for it, in my view.)

However, looking realistically at the immense fossil-fuelled civilisation we’ve built over the last couple of hundred years, he doesn’t see a way of getting off the teat of the oil companies with any speed. It’s simply too big and complex.

After his cogent analysis of the problem, I’m a bit flattened. I may recover, but not yet.

The first problem is the way we use fossil fuels for cars, trucks, ships, planes. We take any gains from sustainables and fold them into the fossil fuel universe: sure, solar and wind power is increasing but that’s just adding a bit to the enormous amounts of fossil fuel already being used. We are dumping around 100 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every day.

Yes, we could do without cars if we ramped up public transport.

$600 billion of subsidies go to the fossil fuel companies — maybe we could do something about that if only…