How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

we have imperiled its capability to keep its flows and stores within the boundaries compatible with its long-term functioning.

Moreover, we have been aware of the actual degree of warming associated with the doubling of atmospheric CO2 for more than a century, and we were warned about the unprecedented (and unrepeatable) nature of this planetary experiment more than half a century ago (uninterrupted, accurate measurements of CO2 began in 1958). But we have chosen to ignore

three existential necessities: oxygen, water, and food.

evidence is inescapable: our food supply—be it staple grains, clucking birds, favorite vegetables, or seafood praised for its nutritious quality—has become increasingly dependent on fossil fuels. This fundamental reality is commonly ignored by those who do not try to understand how our world really works and who are now predicting rapid decarboniza

Global production rose from only about 20,000 tons in 1925 to 2 million tons by 1950, 150 million tons by the year 2000, and about 370 million tons by 2019.[42] The best way to appreciate the ubiquity of plastic materials in our daily lives is to note how many times a day our hands touch, our eyes see, our bodies rest on, and our feet tread on a pl

Most of the admired and undoubtedly remarkable technical advances that have transformed industries, transportation, communication, and everyday living would have been impossible if more than 80 percent of all people had to remain in the countryside in order to produce their daily bread (the share of the US population who were farmers in 1800 was 83

Food and energy supply, the two existential necessities covered in the preceding chapters, would be impossible without mass-scale mobilization of many man-made materials—metals, alloys, non-metallic and synthetic compounds—and the same is true about all our buildings and infrastructures and about all modes of transportation and communication.

There is no shortage of fossil fuel resources in the Earth’s crust, no danger of imminently running out of coal and hydrocarbons: at the 2020 level of production, coal reserves would last for about 120 years, oil and gas reserves for about 50 years, and continued exploration would transfer more of them from the resource to the reserve (technically

Silicon (Si) made into thin wafers (the basic substrate of microchips) is the signature material of the electronic age, but billions of people could live prosperously without it; it is not an existential constraint on modern civilization. Producing large, high-purity (99.999999999 percent pure) silicon crystals that are cut into wafers is a complex

primary steelmaking still dominates, producing more than twice as much hot metal every year as is recycled—almost