“And we may not succeed in this unprecedented effort to reconcile planetary constraints with human aspirations.”
Vaclav Smil doesn’t pull any punches.
He says the economic growth modern society relies on cannot cannot continue, as earth's ability to produce the food, water, air, and raw materials we need may collapse unless we dial back our demands.
He’s pretty blunt about it: “How many people are taking seriously an even more unthinkable goal , one that aims not only at setting limits but having deliberately declining levels and performances [degrowth] as its widely accepted and broadly pursued way of regress”.
Throughout his dozens of books (37 if my count is right) he has been exhaustive in analyzing, cataloging, and explaining the workings of our world. The book subjects themselves are comprehensive ranging from the centrality of iron, agriculture’s dominance, the complexity of energy tansitions, dynamics of the earth’s biosphere, and on. And on.
His latest, Growth: From Microoganisms to Megacities, is a “systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations. Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving.”
Who reads this stuff? People who want (and/or need) to know how the world actually works, in detail and without bias. People like government policymakers, think tank gurus, Bill Gates (“There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.”) as well as ordinary folk who want to cut through the fog of modern information noise.
Here is but one detail-laden paragraph from Smil, explaining growth in the human food supply. (Feel free to skip to the next paragraph once you get the drift.)
“Foraging practiced by early gatherers and hunters could support as few as 0.0001 people per hectare of land and typical rates in more hospitable environments were around 0.002 people / ha . Shifting agriculture elevated that density by up to two orders of magnitude to 0.2 – 0.5 people / hectare ; the first societies practicing permanent agriculture ( Mesopotamia , Egypt , China ) raised it to 1 person / hectare . The best 19th - century traditional farming in such intensively cultivated places as southern China could support as many as five people / hectare while modern farming can feed more than 10 people / hectare and it does so by providing a much better average - quality diet than did the previous arrangements ( Smil 2017a ).”
So when you get done reading 664 pages of Growth you are not inclined to argue with his conclusions. (Nobody else does either.) Vaclav Smil earns his credibility.
That’s why people take it very seriously when he writes: “I believe that a fundamental departure from the long - established pattern of maximizing growth and promoting material consumption cannot be delayed by another century.”
He just said humanity has to give up the idea of growth!
He goes on, “…before 2100 modern civilization will have to make major steps toward ensuring the long - term habitability of its biosphere.”
He just said we may not be able to continue living on earth if we don’t fix things by 2100.
Given history he’s not all that optimistic: “No government has advocated moderate, subdued economic growth as its priority, even in the world’s most affluent countries no major political party has been serious about re - considering the pace of economic growth.”
Many economists don’t fare well in his view: “Most economists are either unaware or dismissive of the advances that took place in our understanding of the synergistic functioning of civilization and the biosphere — and yet they maintain a monopoly on supplying their physically impossible narratives of continuing growth that guide decisions made by national governments and companies.”
But all of this doom and gloom comes from the book’s coda. Before that, chapter by chapter, Smil outlines our comprehensive knowledge about growth. That in itself is one of his great contributions; the reassuring fact that we have deep understanding of these issues, know a lot about how they work, even if we haven’t succeeded yet in mastering all our demons.
What’s in it for photographers? While climate change gets all the attention it is a result of environmental degradation, not the underlying cause. Growth is the underlying cause and photographers who can illustrate stories about growth and its consequences will have an wide audience in the coming decades.
