How the World Really Works

Since the year 2007, more than half of humanity has lived in cities (more than 80 percent in all affluent countries), and unlike in the industrializing cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries, jobs in modern urban areas are largely in services. Most modern urbanites are thus disconnected not only from the ways we produce our food but also from

Globally, the automotive sector, now with more than 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, is the largest consumer, followed by use in industry—with the largest markets being textiles, energy, chemicals, and food processing—and in ocean-going vessels.

Power equals energy divided by time: in scientific units, it is watts = joules/seconds. Energy equals power multiplied by time: joules = watts × seconds. If you light a small votive candle in a Roman church, it might burn for 15 hours, converting the chemical energy of wax to heat (thermal energy) and light (electromagnetic energy) with an average

By 1950, fossil fuels supply nearly three-quarters of primary energy (still dominated by coal), and inanimate prime movers—now with gasoline- and diesel-fueled internal combustion engines in the lead—provide more than 80 percent of all mechanical energy. And by the year 2000 only poor people in low-income countries depend on biomass fuels, with woo

The other major reason for the poor, and declining, understanding of those fundamental processes that deliver energy (as food or as fuels) and durable materials (whether metals, non-metallic minerals, or concrete) is that they have come to be seen as old-fashioned—if not outdated—and distinctly unexciting compared to the world of information, data,

Not surprisingly, demand was coming from all sectors. In real terms, crude oil was so cheap that there were no incentives to use it efficiently: American houses in regions with a cold climate, increasingly heated by oil furnaces, were built with single-glazed windows and without adequate wall insulation; the average efficiency of American cars actu

Most recently, a poor understanding of energy has the proponents of a new green world naively calling for a near-instant shift from abominable, polluting, and finite fossil fuels to superior, green and ever-renewable solar electricity. But liquid hydrocarbons refined from crude oil (gasoline, aviation kerosene, diesel fuel, residual heavy oil) have

In the early 1970s, American ecologist Howard Odum explained how “all progress is due to special power subsidies, and progress evaporates whenever and wherever they are removed.”22 And, more recently, physicist Robert Ayres has repeatedly stressed in his writings the central notion of energy in all economies: “the economic system is essentially a s

While we are converting increasing shares of electricity generation to new renewables (solar and wind, as opposed to the long-established hydroelectricity) and putting more electric cars on the roads, decarbonizing trucking, flying, and shipping will be a much greater challenge, as will the production of key materials without relying on fossil fuel