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

By 1965, Detroit’s big three still had 90 percent of the US car market; now they do not have even 45 percent. Until 1980, Shenzhen was a small fishing village, when it became China’s first special economic zone, and now it is a megacity with more than 12 million people: what role will it play in 2050? A mass-scale, rapid retreat from the current st

Scheduled commercial flights, already a very low-risk activity at the end of the last century, got appreciably safer during the first two decades of the 21st century.

When sufficiently impressed by the fossil fuel burden of this simple food, you can transfer the plate’s contents to a bowl, add two or three additional tomatoes, some soy sauce, salt, pepper, and sesame seeds, and enjoy a tasty tomato salad. How many vegans enjoying the salad are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree?

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. Mobiles, as complex as they are, are just small devices at the apex of an enormous pyramid of an

No rehydration for a day is a trying experience, for two days it becomes perilous, for three days it is usually fatal. Beyond this existential necessity, translating to a per capita average of about 750 kilograms (or liters, or 0.75 cubic meters) of water a year, there are several other—and much more voluminous—water needs: for personal hygiene, co

the abundance of fossil fuels and their increasingly more efficient conversions have been the dominant energizers of modern economic growth, bringing us the benefits of greater longevity and richer lives—but also concerns about the long-term effects of CO2 emissions on the global climate (commonly referred to as global warming).

Steel scrap has become one of the world’s most valuable export commodities, as countries with a long history of steel production and with plenty of accumulated scrap sell the material to expanding producers. The EU is the largest exporter, followed by Japan, Russia, and Canada; and China, India, and Turkey are the top buyers.

In short, for decades it will be impossible to adequately feed the planet without using fossil fuels as sources of energy and raw materials.

Even though the supply of new renewables (wind, solar, new biofuels) rose impressively, about 50-fold, during the first 20 years of the 21st century, the world’s dependence on fossil carbon declined only marginally, from 87 percent to 85 percent of the total supply, and most of that small relative decline was attributable to expanded hydroelectrici