How the World Really Works

This book is like a primer on the basic material science of modern civilization. It covers how energy works, and material infrastructure, and food production, and global commerce. The title implies that it's about how the whole world works, but it's really just about the material foundations of civilization, not so much about society and politics. There are lots of numbers and ratios (energy to make a unit of food, for example), to the point that your head will be swimming. The writing is understandable enough, but given all the quantities and percentages being bandied about, it's a shame that this book has no charts or graphs.

The main takeaway I got from this work is that we are utterly dependent on fossil fuels, given that they are used for so much more than just transportation, and it is unrealistic to expect any major reduction in their use any time soon. Climate change is therefore inevitable, though it is not the existential threat to the human race that some "catastrophists" (to use the author's term) claim it is. The author includes a plethora of references, including URLs to web sites and online articles, so there's plenty of followup research one could do starting with this book. Overall, it's very informative for a basic understanding of the material and technological foundations of our world.

This review originally appeared on goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4516182149