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Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities (Mit Press) Paperback – December 8, 2020
by Vaclav Smil (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 283 ratings
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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. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.
Smil takes readers from bacterial invasions through animal metabolisms to megacities and the global economy. He begins with organisms whose mature sizes range from microscopic to enormous, looking at disease-causing microbes, the cultivation of staple crops, and human growth from infancy to adulthood. He examines the growth of energy conversions and man-made objects that enable economic activities—developments that have been essential to civilization. Finally, he looks at growth in complex systems, beginning with the growth of human populations and proceeding to the growth of cities. He considers the challenges of tracing the growth of empires and civilizations, explaining that we can chart the growth of organisms across individual and evolutionary time, but that the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits, Smil tells us, remains uncertain.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Vaclav Smil does for the history of energy what Thomas Piketty did for the history of inequality. And his findings are just as uncomfortable." – Rutger Bregman, historian and author of Utopia for Realists (2017) and Humankind (2020)
About the Author
Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of forty books, including Energy and Civilization, published by the MIT Press. In 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013 Bill Gates wrote on his website that “there is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil."
Product details
Publisher : The MIT Press (December 8, 2020)
Language : English
Paperback : 664 pages
ISBN-10 : 0262539683
ISBN-13 : 978-0262539685
Item Weight : 1.85 pounds
Dimensions : 9.06 x 1.38 x 9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #61,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#8 in Developmental Biology (Books)
#69 in Human Geography (Books)
#112 in Environmental Economics (Books)
Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars 283 ratings
More about the author
› Visit Amazon's Vaclav Smil Page
Follow
Biography
Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions. His wife Eva is a physician and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.
Official Website: www.vaslavsmil.com
Customer reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
283 global ratings
5 star 68%
4 star 18%
3 star 8%
2 star 4%
1 star 2%
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
HS
3.0 out of 5 stars Great information, reads like a college lectureReviewed in the United States on May 12, 2020
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I've only read the preface and about two chapters so far. This book is fairly dense. I've found it rewarding so far, but I knocked off two stars because the writing is extremely complicated and almost pretentious for what it's trying to convey.
At times, entire pages read like a rambling lecture from one of your college elective classes. There are sprinkles of interesting facts and observations with a huge number of citations, but the author almost comes across as a drunk fool. He doesn't write with a purpose. I found myself reading entire pages of rather dense material, where a single sentence goes on and on for at least 4 or more lines. There are many passages where there are no real "takeaways". There are sentences that could be ripped apart or stripped out entirely and the main idea explained in six or seven words without losing detail.
I don't want to accuse the author of anything, and I'll admit he excessively provides citations. But I gotta say – this book could be half its size if the author cut the bullshit. The complex writing is a delusion of grandeur. The reader is not better off by wasting time on these puzzles.
16 people found this helpful
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Eddie Choo
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent explorationReviewed in the United States on February 12, 2020
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Smil looks again at the extent of growth at all scales of life. An excellent summary if what growth entails and what it means. Does the growth of non-organic institutions resemble organic biological growth. Smil thinks so.
6 people found this helpful
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Mark Weaver
1.0 out of 5 stars Great history but no prize at the endReviewed in the United States on February 1, 2021
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Positives: Obviously Smil is brilliant. Growth might be one of the best wide-scope history books published.
Negatives: The textbook style rambles on and on for 500+ pages to a disappointing conclusion. Smil fails to include the importance or impact of human nature. I found his solution for obesity on page 171 to be just plain wrong based on the data we have over the past 10 years, which leads me question how much of what I read is objective and how much is bias. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that we need to care for our air, water, and bodies, but how is the question. He doesn’t mention garbage or food additives as potential issues, like he does water and air. Unless, you love numbers and how they tie to history, this book will be difficult to finish, or at least you’ll question why you should finish it.
One person found this helpful
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Eric N. Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Why economic growth is a critical variable in understanding financial performanceReviewed in the United States on December 26, 2019
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Vaclav Smil retains his ability to separate the kernals of economic knowledge from the dross of pedestrian analysis.
5 people found this helpful
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Andrew Smith
3.0 out of 5 stars A list of growth ratesReviewed in the United States on January 17, 2021
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I gave up pretty early on this book. To be fair to the author, I'm not sure what I expected.
It's academic prose. The author has an encyclopedic grasp of growth rates and lists every single one of them, but doesn't often draw insights from them or offer interesting conclusions. He defines growth very broadly. Anything that changes in a way that can be measured and is increasing in count. Heart surgeries performed since the year 0. Is that growth? Yes. Is that raw number with noo added analysis or parallels drawn interesting? I found it dry.
By defining growth broadly and then listing "things that changed", the discussion becomes kind of boring and finding areas of interest or insight is an exercise left up to the reader.
If you enjoy reading a list of statements about the rate something changed over a period of time, you will enjoy reading the first few sections of this book, which is as far as I got.
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mitchus.kindle
4.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous coverage, but lacks synthesisReviewed in the United States on January 22, 2020
It amazes me how prolifically Smil writes (and reads!) on a quite wide variety of topics. His main expertise is energy, and this book on growth patterns is of course largely related to this topic. It is a great resource for finding links to current and past work on growth phenomena of a very wide variety, however the book itself is unfortunately not very synthetic. Smil describes hundreds of patterns, but does not take a step back and discuss "meta-patterns", and does not offer that much in terms of take-home lessons. If you are looking for something encyclopedic, this is a good book; if you are looking for synthesis, not the best resource.
16 people found this helpful
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s3ops
5.0 out of 5 stars A narrative of dense, important information that leads to a spiritual conclusion.Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020
I have been reading Smil books for about a decade now, and 'Growth' attempts to stimulate thought in the educated reader (I think the book's information is accessible to a certain demographic) by presenting variants of the exponential and logarithmic mathematical functions of various biological and human systems. Smil foresees a battle of the biosphere versus the human material apparatus in the near future. I think intelligent discussion of the contents of this book should be a selection factor for policy makers internationally.
6 people found this helpful
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Jonathan D.
5.0 out of 5 stars Facts first, tentative opinion laterReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2021
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I wrongly assumed this book would describe a general, overarching pattern to growth in all areas. But Vaclav Smil doesn't do simple, he does facts.
The enormous scope of this book is matched by its wealth of detail. So I recommend you sit in a comfy chair with a hot beverage and your favourite scientific calculator (optional), whilst reading this.
And there's no shame in pausing every now and then, to stare into space with your mouth open.
One person found this helpfulReport abuse
Peter - Denmark
1.0 out of 5 stars I gave up after 100 pages...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2020
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I had high hopes for the book, based on the strong track record of book recommendation from Bill Gates.
But I must admit, I found it boring - and I gave up on it after some 100+ pages. And I very rarely give up on books.
If I find the energy to finish it, I will update my review.
I will give Smil another chance with some of the other books he has written on energy, based on recommendations by Bill Gates.
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Kate
1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t buy unless you want to be bored to deathReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2021
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One of the worst books I’ve ever tried to read. Vaclav is no doubt incredibly knowledgeable on the topic of growth, but the book is appalling. It’s neither detailed enough to act as a reference guide nor general enough to give the reader a clear overview of growth. The language in which it is written makes it almost impenetrable and the pictures that have been included do absolutely nothing to aid understanding. Whoever edited it (or didn’t edit it as the case may be) needs to find another job. Only good for a doorstop or as a replacement for a sleeping pill.
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Pat
5.0 out of 5 stars CompellingReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2020
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One of the best books I have ever read... explains many, many important things - and Slim’s knowledge, data and research is truly impressive.
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Lady B Bellie
5.0 out of 5 stars GoodReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 8, 2019
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Od
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Vaclav Smil does for the history of energy what Thomas Piketty did for the history of inequality. And his findings are just as uncomfortable." – Rutger Bregman, historian and author of Utopia for Realists (2017) and Humankind (2020)
About the Author
Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of forty books, including Energy and Civilization, published by the MIT Press. In 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013 Bill Gates wrote on his website that “there is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil."
Product details
Publisher : The MIT Press (December 8, 2020)
Language : English
Paperback : 664 pages
ISBN-10 : 0262539683
ISBN-13 : 978-0262539685
Item Weight : 1.85 pounds
Dimensions : 9.06 x 1.38 x 9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #61,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#8 in Developmental Biology (Books)
#69 in Human Geography (Books)
#112 in Environmental Economics (Books)
Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars 283 ratings
More about the author
› Visit Amazon's Vaclav Smil Page
Follow
Biography
Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions. His wife Eva is a physician and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.
Official Website: www.vaslavsmil.com
Customer reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
283 global ratings
5 star 68%
4 star 18%
3 star 8%
2 star 4%
1 star 2%
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
HS
3.0 out of 5 stars Great information, reads like a college lectureReviewed in the United States on May 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
I've only read the preface and about two chapters so far. This book is fairly dense. I've found it rewarding so far, but I knocked off two stars because the writing is extremely complicated and almost pretentious for what it's trying to convey.
At times, entire pages read like a rambling lecture from one of your college elective classes. There are sprinkles of interesting facts and observations with a huge number of citations, but the author almost comes across as a drunk fool. He doesn't write with a purpose. I found myself reading entire pages of rather dense material, where a single sentence goes on and on for at least 4 or more lines. There are many passages where there are no real "takeaways". There are sentences that could be ripped apart or stripped out entirely and the main idea explained in six or seven words without losing detail.
I don't want to accuse the author of anything, and I'll admit he excessively provides citations. But I gotta say – this book could be half its size if the author cut the bullshit. The complex writing is a delusion of grandeur. The reader is not better off by wasting time on these puzzles.
16 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
Eddie Choo
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent explorationReviewed in the United States on February 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
Smil looks again at the extent of growth at all scales of life. An excellent summary if what growth entails and what it means. Does the growth of non-organic institutions resemble organic biological growth. Smil thinks so.
6 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
Mark Weaver
1.0 out of 5 stars Great history but no prize at the endReviewed in the United States on February 1, 2021
Verified Purchase
Positives: Obviously Smil is brilliant. Growth might be one of the best wide-scope history books published.
Negatives: The textbook style rambles on and on for 500+ pages to a disappointing conclusion. Smil fails to include the importance or impact of human nature. I found his solution for obesity on page 171 to be just plain wrong based on the data we have over the past 10 years, which leads me question how much of what I read is objective and how much is bias. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that we need to care for our air, water, and bodies, but how is the question. He doesn’t mention garbage or food additives as potential issues, like he does water and air. Unless, you love numbers and how they tie to history, this book will be difficult to finish, or at least you’ll question why you should finish it.
One person found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
Eric N. Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Why economic growth is a critical variable in understanding financial performanceReviewed in the United States on December 26, 2019
Verified Purchase
Vaclav Smil retains his ability to separate the kernals of economic knowledge from the dross of pedestrian analysis.
5 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
Andrew Smith
3.0 out of 5 stars A list of growth ratesReviewed in the United States on January 17, 2021
Verified Purchase
I gave up pretty early on this book. To be fair to the author, I'm not sure what I expected.
It's academic prose. The author has an encyclopedic grasp of growth rates and lists every single one of them, but doesn't often draw insights from them or offer interesting conclusions. He defines growth very broadly. Anything that changes in a way that can be measured and is increasing in count. Heart surgeries performed since the year 0. Is that growth? Yes. Is that raw number with noo added analysis or parallels drawn interesting? I found it dry.
By defining growth broadly and then listing "things that changed", the discussion becomes kind of boring and finding areas of interest or insight is an exercise left up to the reader.
If you enjoy reading a list of statements about the rate something changed over a period of time, you will enjoy reading the first few sections of this book, which is as far as I got.
HelpfulReport abuse
mitchus.kindle
4.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous coverage, but lacks synthesisReviewed in the United States on January 22, 2020
It amazes me how prolifically Smil writes (and reads!) on a quite wide variety of topics. His main expertise is energy, and this book on growth patterns is of course largely related to this topic. It is a great resource for finding links to current and past work on growth phenomena of a very wide variety, however the book itself is unfortunately not very synthetic. Smil describes hundreds of patterns, but does not take a step back and discuss "meta-patterns", and does not offer that much in terms of take-home lessons. If you are looking for something encyclopedic, this is a good book; if you are looking for synthesis, not the best resource.
16 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
s3ops
5.0 out of 5 stars A narrative of dense, important information that leads to a spiritual conclusion.Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020
I have been reading Smil books for about a decade now, and 'Growth' attempts to stimulate thought in the educated reader (I think the book's information is accessible to a certain demographic) by presenting variants of the exponential and logarithmic mathematical functions of various biological and human systems. Smil foresees a battle of the biosphere versus the human material apparatus in the near future. I think intelligent discussion of the contents of this book should be a selection factor for policy makers internationally.
6 people found this helpful
HelpfulReport abuse
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Top reviews from other countries
Jonathan D.
5.0 out of 5 stars Facts first, tentative opinion laterReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2021
Verified Purchase
I wrongly assumed this book would describe a general, overarching pattern to growth in all areas. But Vaclav Smil doesn't do simple, he does facts.
The enormous scope of this book is matched by its wealth of detail. So I recommend you sit in a comfy chair with a hot beverage and your favourite scientific calculator (optional), whilst reading this.
And there's no shame in pausing every now and then, to stare into space with your mouth open.
One person found this helpfulReport abuse
Peter - Denmark
1.0 out of 5 stars I gave up after 100 pages...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 25, 2020
Verified Purchase
I had high hopes for the book, based on the strong track record of book recommendation from Bill Gates.
But I must admit, I found it boring - and I gave up on it after some 100+ pages. And I very rarely give up on books.
If I find the energy to finish it, I will update my review.
I will give Smil another chance with some of the other books he has written on energy, based on recommendations by Bill Gates.
One person found this helpfulReport abuse
Kate
1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t buy unless you want to be bored to deathReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2021
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One of the worst books I’ve ever tried to read. Vaclav is no doubt incredibly knowledgeable on the topic of growth, but the book is appalling. It’s neither detailed enough to act as a reference guide nor general enough to give the reader a clear overview of growth. The language in which it is written makes it almost impenetrable and the pictures that have been included do absolutely nothing to aid understanding. Whoever edited it (or didn’t edit it as the case may be) needs to find another job. Only good for a doorstop or as a replacement for a sleeping pill.
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Pat
5.0 out of 5 stars CompellingReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2020
Verified Purchase
One of the best books I have ever read... explains many, many important things - and Slim’s knowledge, data and research is truly impressive.
Report abuse
Lady B Bellie
5.0 out of 5 stars GoodReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 8, 2019
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Bill Gates
Dec 12, 2019Bill Gates rated it really liked it
After astronaut Rusty Schweickart looked down on Earth from space for the first time, he described a sense of awe that has become common to almost every space traveler since: “You realize that on that little blue and white thing there is everything that means anything to you, all history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, all of it on that little spot out there you can cover with your thumb.” NASA calls this realization “the overview effect.” No matter what country you’re from, you return from space with a feeling that our home is tiny, fragile, and something we need to protect.
Anyone who reads the new book Growth, the newest of 39 brilliant books by one of my favorite thinkers, will come away with similar urgency. The author, the Czech-Canadian professor Vaclav Smil, approaches things from a scientist’s point of view, not an astronaut’s, but he reaches the same conclusion: Earth is fragile and “before it is too late, we should embark in earnest on the most fundamental existential [task] of making any future growth compatible with the long-term preservation of the only biosphere we have.”
Before I get into how Smil came to this conclusion, I should warn you. Although Growth is a brilliant synthesis of everything we can learn from patterns of growth in the natural and human-made world, it’s not for everyone. Long sections read like a textbook or engineering manual. (“A plot of the annual totals of passenger-kilometers flown by all US airlines between 1930 and 1980 produces a trajectory that is almost perfectly captured by the quartic regression (fourth order polynomial with r2=0.9998), and continuation of this growth pattern would have multiplied the 1980 level almost 10 times by 2015.”) And it has 99 pages of references!
As Smil writes, “My aim is to illuminate varieties of growth in evolutionary and historical perspectives and hence to appreciate both the accomplishments and the limits of growth in modern civilization... Simply put, this book deals in realities as it sets the growth of everything into long-term evolutionary and historical perspectives and does so in rigorous quantitative terms.”
When Smil says “the growth of everything,” he means everything. Chapter 1 introduces a lot of technical detail behind the three most common growth curves seen in our natural and built environments: linear, exponential, and hyperbolic. Even if you don’t like math, don’t let this chapter scare you off, because it makes a really important point: It destroys the idea that you can take an early growth curve for a particular development—the uptake of the smartphone, for example—and use it as the basis for predicting the future. Yes, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made a surprisingly accurate prediction about the exponential growth in the number of transistors on a chip. But even that “law” is likely reaching the end of its useful life. Transistors are now so small, we’re running into problems making them even smaller.
The next few chapters are easier to follow. Chapter 2 is all about the growth of living systems—from microorganisms to sequoia forests, and from humans to dinosaurs. (By the way, did you know that the T. rex weighed only a bit more than a male African elephant, and a tapeworm can live 25 years?) My favorite part of this chapter was Smil’s discussion of food production, which is instructive for our foundation’s work in agriculture and does a good job of explaining what kinds of productivity gains are possible.
In chapter 3, he lands on a topic he knows better than just about anyone else: the development and diffusion of new sources of energy—from traditional water wheels to nuclear reactors. He has covered a lot of this terrain in previous books such as his masterful Energy and Civilization: A History. But here he’s setting the stage for subsequent chapters on technological developments that were made possible by the conversion of resources like water, wind, carbon, and solar radiation into energy.
When I read chapters 4 (artifacts, such as cathedrals, cars, and computers) and 5 (societies and economies), I had to marvel over how Smil’s mind works. The way he synthesizes information from dozens of different domains is amazing. I also marveled over all the miracles that modern civilization is built on, including power grids, water systems, air transportation, and computing. The book gave me new appreciation for how many smart people had to try things out, make mistakes, and eventually succeed.
Smil’s goal for these chapters is to show that no matter what domain you’re talking about, eventually you hit growth limits. Steel, the backbone of modern economies, is a great example. After many years of metallurgical and mechanical innovation, we’re simply not able to make it a lot cheaper or with a lot less energy. Ultimately, his analysis shows that what we’re trying to do in terms of changing our physical economy and the energy flows upon which it is built would be unprecedented in our history.
In chapter 6 and in a brief coda, Smil sounds less like an academic than an activist. He concludes that “treating the biosphere as a mere assembly… of goods and services to be exploited (and used as a dumping ground) with impunity—must change in radical ways.”
I don’t agree with all of his analysis. In particular, I’m more optimistic than he is about the degree to which today’s renewable energy technologies can be deployed, and the pace at which scientists and engineers will develop new clean sources. In my view, Smil underestimates our accelerating ability to model the physical world using digital technologies equipped with artificial intelligence. For example, future generations of clean energy will be designed and tested in computers, not on paper, before we try them in the world—a process that will speed up innovation in a dramatic way.
But I’ve always felt that Smil’s great strength isn’t predicting the future, it’s documenting the past. There’s great value in that—you can’t see what’s coming next if you don’t understand what’s come before. Nobody sees the big picture with as wide an aperture as Vaclav Smil.
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Charlene
May 08, 2020Charlene rated it it was amazing
Shelves: general-science
It seems that people's rating of Smil's book only 3 or 4 stars, instead of 5, stems from 2 reasons.
The first and more frequent criticism seems to be that the book is too encyclopedic. That criticism is certainly true. If you do not want an encyclopedic book about growth, then this book is not for you. While it synthesizes an incredibly wide breadth of facts about growth, the book lacks a grand synthesis of what it all means in terms of complexity or the the underlying laws that govern the growth of things in the universe or even on our planet. But, those types of questions are for another book. Holding your hand as you interpret all of the facts Smil provides you with is not his deal. No one is better than Smil at bringing together massive numbers of figures about energy or growth and placing them in a compact 600+ page book. It seems too much to ask that he also be good at synthesizing the underlying laws or that he write in a way that can be digested by a person with no prerequisite knowledge. Smil's book deserve 5 stars because no other author has managed to provide such a detailed encyclopedic description of energy and growth.
Was I frustrated that Smil didn't hold my hand and walk me through? Hell yes! I hope lots and lots of readers are frustrated when reading Smil because they cannot help but ask, "But what are the laws that govern all of this growth? Can the patterns of growth or energy ingestion, consumption, and expulsion be understood on a universal level? When people are bothered enough by having all the facts but not having the more general picture, they will be compelled to do the research that will generate answers. It's not Smil's job to answer those questions. He will point you to some people who are trying to tackle those questions. To my absolute delight, he focused quite a bit on Geoffrey West's research and his book Scale. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.
The second general complaint reviewers seemed to express echoed one of Bill Gates criticisms, that Smil was perhaps too pessimistic about the rate at which humans will create innovative ways to develop and use clean sources of energy. I think Smil's predictions about the future of energy and growth are probably less important than the facts he provided about the past and present facts about energy and growth. However, I think it is probably very important to add Smil's voice to the current debates about innovation. Smil is not afraid to get into the ring and spar with the likes of Ray Kurzweil who has an extremely optimistic view of how long it will take until we reach the singularity or how long it will take until humans can live forever. I love reading Kurzweil but always feel that he needs to be a bit more realistic. Smil strongly challenged many of Kurzweil's claims throughout the book.
Kurzweil was not the only researcher challenged by Smil. He was entirely unhappy with Jared Diamond's explanation of collapse of Easter Island, which suggested the inhabitants wiped out their own forests and drove their animals and plants to extinction. Smil called those who buy into Diamond's explanation "uncritical readers," and instead argued that rats had been largely responsible for the vast deforestation of the island.
In fact, Smill didn't take anyone at their word. He poured over many studies and dissected their methods. He replicated findings on his own. Such painstaking, careful, and rigorous methods definitely deserves 5 stars, no matter how encyclopedic the book is. In fact, it is supposed to be encyclopedic. That is the whole point of the book. It's an unprecedented resource that can be used by many different types of researchers and laypeople. If you then want to know what patterns underlie the growth discussed in the book, read books by people like Geoffrey West, Sarah Imari Walker, or even Stuart Kauffman. Go do your own research to try to find the answers.
My favorite part of this book was when Smil discussed the growth of technologies, starting with water mills. It made me think that his extensive discussion of the conversion of energy from human power, to animal power, to machine power in his book Energy And Civilizations was the catalyst to write this book on growth. That section also made me want to go back and reread Energy and Civilization. If I had to compare both books, I would say Energy and Civilization is much better than Growth, but both are five star books for the sheer amount of knowledge they compile and bring to the world. (less)
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Alja
Nov 08, 2019Alja rated it really liked it · review of another edition
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Super nerdy, slightly repetitive exploration of a variety of growth trajectories. Not a casual read, but it does an excellent job at challenging prevailing assumptions, narratives, and metrics, and occasionally offers unexpected insights. The key message, reinforced throughout the chapters, is that we cannot expect unlimited growth on a planet with limited resources even though it's hard to predict the exact trajectory of complex systems. (less)
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Anshu Anand
Apr 06, 2020Anshu Anand rated it it was amazing
CAUTION : Growth percentages ahead.
Vaclav Smil is a nerd’s nerd. “Growth” is a deconstruction of the whole nine yards of everything around us ! I picked it up as a challenge because every single review on the Internet described it as immensely unreadable. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone because it does read like a manual. But having finished it, below are chapter wise summaries.
Before I proceed, a few thoughts on the intent of a book like “Growth”. A computer today is powerful enough to store the information contained in all the medieval libraries combined. It reminds me of the Kierkegaardian anxiety of choices, but the amount of information floating around us today might have grown a trillion times however our knowledge base has grown nowhere close to the same rate. Books like “Growth” are needed to acquire a politically agnostic view of the world. Such a view is doomed to be complex.
Chapter 1 kicks off with a bunch of graphs, trajectories, laws that we need to familiarize ourselves with as this will help us understand the growth patterns in the next chapters. For example, Individual growth trajectories are usually S-shaped but their envelope charts an exponential increase.
Chapter 2 is dedicated to all living beings : trees, forests, animals, pathogens and humans. Did you know there are bacteria species that can survive a pH 0.7 environment(highly acidic) or those than can be found in extreme pressure surroundings like Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the Pacific(10km deep !) A major consideration in this chapter was a variable that has not been included in the analyses of climate change, VPD(Vapor Pressure Deficit) which is expected to increase from 2.2 kPa in 2014 to 2.65 in 2050. As the VPD increases, plants need to draw more water from roots. Although all living beings in this chapter exhibit cellular growth, infinite cellular growth is not possible because number of cells to be supplied with energy grows faster than the capacity of branching networks.
Chapter 3 talks about Energy which I believe is Vaclav Smil’s forte. It chronicles the growth of power to mass ratios and engine efficiencies of cars. It also discusses how conversion efficiencies were achieved in photovoltaic cells and how LEDs will save 40% electricity by 2030.
Chapter 4 is about skyscrapers, man made objects and semiconductors. It traces how changes in oil prices affected structural growth, why speed is not a priority for airlines as they fly at the most fuel-efficient speed(for planes to fly faster they’d have to fly a lot faster(1.5x) as transonic speeds are dangerous to fly at). Another interesting topic in this chapter is about the fastest runners. Usain Bolt could achieve a 9.45 second world record(currently 9.58) if the wind speed was 2 m/s and the sprint was done at an altitude of 1000m.
Most of my notes were in Chapter 5 which is about us as a society.
- Total Fertility Rates and the ideal replacement ratio of 2.1(2 parents, 2 kids ; the .1 is considering premature deaths)
- If the entire global population were to consume at the American level, we’d need 4-5 more earths
- Maximum entropy comes from Cities.
- Explanations of heavy tail distributions in power law sets( Zipf’s Law logarithmic graphs with coefficients of -1)
- Food Wastage : Total food Harvest increase from 1900-2000 : 6x
While world population increase : 3.7x
- Silcon production is energy intensive(also seen later in cars vs cellphones comparison)
- Business Cycles in the U.S. : Average peak to trough - 17 months
Trough to new peak - 39 months
- Can China(or India) become truly rich before it becomes old ?
- Productivity Growth is declining (Product Differentiation happening rather than Product innovation)
- For the same GDP(both total and per capita) some affluent nations use much higher energy than the others. Grounds for Competitive Taxation ?
In chapter 6, Smil essentially concludes that Degrowth is our only salvation.
In the coda, we come full circle where Smil mocks economists worrying about vigorous GDP forecasts, “such people are either mad or an economist”. Perpetual quarter to quarter growth is outright unsustainable as per Smil. (less)
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Juan Farfán
Oct 23, 2019Juan Farfán rated it it was amazing
If you want to understand the growth dynamics of microorganisms, animals, plants, humans, technology, artifacts, economies, societies and cities Vaclav Smil book is the best. Very comprehensive and clear, based on evidence Smil shows in a brilliant way how growth behaves at so many levels. It is amazing his understanding of so many topics. The book also gives a clear picture of our long term survival in a finite resource planet and the challenges involved. He explains clearly the myth of infinite economic growth, our economies are less resource intensive but population and consumption keep growing. A must read I really recommend this book (less)
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Terry
Dec 08, 2019Terry rated it it was ok
Dry. Very very dry. All to make the basic point that Infinite growth isn’t feasible with finite resources. It could have been 30 pages, unless of course you need a reference book for seemingly hundreds of different growth curves.
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Weronika
Dec 30, 2019Weronika rated it it was ok
This book was a major disappointment. I actually regretted not being a book quitter, because I basically dedicated my entire Christmas break reading time to it and it was not worth it. One of the other reviewers mentioned the fact that the first chapter, dedicated to the various types of growth functions, is highly challenging and overly technical. While I do agree that the book in general would benefit from good editing for clarity and readability, that was the only chapter in the book that contained new relevant information worth learning. The rest is just a hodge-podge of data on growth from a variety of fields, from bacteria to (subjectively) selected developments to economies to societies. The book seems to have an over-ambitions span, making it simply pointless. If you wish to read about the growth (and demise) of certain civilizations, you have a plethora of well-written books by specialists on the topic to choose from. Ditto for the remaining areas.
On top of this, this is a very boomer book. The author simply seems to reject the notion that the world has changed. He does not understand that what matters now is progress, not growth. More progress can mean less -- less cars, less energy consumption, less stuff. His view of the economy is also totally outdated, as is his take on measuring economic development (energy rather than money). Dear author, I bought a digital edition of your book online, from across the globe. Paid with my phone app. And you owe this income to Youtube algorithm that suggested to me Bill Gates and his book recommendations while I was watching an interview with Warren Buffet. If there is any growth ahead, this is what it will be like. (less)
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Alp
Mar 23, 2020Alp rated it really liked it
Very interesting, but extremely dry.
There is no doubt that prof. Smil is a genius. But unfortunately most of us aren't.
Grasping the core concepts of the books can be hard enough on themselves, and the lists of mind dazzling facts and references per page doesnt make it much easier.
Altogether a very good book, but maybe not suited for people who would like to have a lighthearted read
The broad conclusion can be found in the last chapter (and even in the last sections of the last chapter). If you cant go through the whole book (because of its density), i'd still recommend reading the last chapter 'What Comes After Growth'. (less)
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Laurent Franckx
Feb 27, 2021Laurent Franckx rated it did not like it
Didn't finish it.
Some people qualify this book as "encyclopedic", but it really reads like the first draft of the literature study of a first year PhD student. It is just an enumeration of findings from papers, without any attempt to provide a narrative. Maybe interesting if you need a reference list for your own work, but that's where the merits of the book stop. (less)
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Mohamed Katergi
Jan 29, 2020Mohamed Katergi rated it liked it
The 3 stars are for the diversity and quantity of information in this book and the way they were compressed and converted into a useful content. However:
1. I would say that there remained certain important additional topics that could have been covered such as weapons, cryptocurrencies, electric vehicles, religions, and - most importantly - sciences and innovations.
2. In my opinion, measurement of Empires growth should have been based on a time×area or time×population being based on time or population only. This composite measurement would allow to represent the sustainability/volatility of the Empire and not only its instantaneous achivement. I would love to see how the curves would look like.
3. Reading several growth charts for inter-related elements together would also be a significant add-on to the book; for instance, measuring growth of an economy in a certain country alongside energy consumption...
4. The author skipped the impact of the Islamic golden age on the growth of almost anything he described.
There is no doubt that this book is rich in information, but sometimes they're not necessary. Had I known more about it before reading it, I wouldn't have read it in full. (less)
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Bob
Aug 08, 2020Bob rated it really liked it
Very wide-ranging discussion of many kinds of growth from microorganisms to civilizations, with fascinating facts and debunking of techno-optimism, but not simplistic catastrophism either. Chapter 1 on common patterns of growth is perhaps the most difficult. If you feel you do not want to put the effort into understanding the more esoteric growth curves feel free to skip ahead. The important arguments are at the end of the preface and in the Coda, with chapter 6 the next most important. Not convinced? – you may have to go back to read chapters 1-5 to find the details that support the argument.
Errata:
p. 111, para 2, 2nd last line: conversion to conifers decreased the albedo, not increased
p.156, para 4 Chimpanzees and Bonobos are humans’ closest living relatives, not predecessors. Our closest predecessors are other hominins, now all extinct.
p.161, last para, line 3 s/b (should be) ‘height 2 standard deviations or less’, not ‘less than 2
199, para 2, 2nd last line s/b ‘…15kW’ not ‘1 –kW’
255, line 1 – CP construction proceeded from Bonfield near North Bay, not from Toronto
308, para 3 ‘…birth rate declines’ lagging, not ‘preceding’
para 4 ‘…in most traditional settings the rate was close to its biological maximum (about 7)’ is surely wrong since in those settings few women lived to the end of their fertile years
343, para 3 Haryana abuts Delhi on 3 sides, but does not surround it.
420, last para, line 4 ’advanced’ s/b advance
423, para 2, line 1 ‘no growth of’ s/b ‘no per capita growth in’
471, para 1, 2nd sentence s/b ‘…as the ratio of economically active people to those over 65…’ not ‘the number of economically active per people older than 65…’
475, para 2 line 6: Tohoku is the northern, not northeastern part of Honshu
480, para 1: the EU has extended to all parts of Europe that used to belong to the Roman Empire, except Switzerland and Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and the Vatican
483, para 2, line 8: China was defeated in 1895 by Japan less than 3 (not four) decades after Japan began its modernization (usually taken to be in 1868) (less)
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Ricky
Dec 17, 2019Ricky rated it did not like it
The influential book "The Limits to Growth" by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers published back in 1972 and the 30-years update in 2004 tackled similar issues.
I understand that in non-fiction books, there were a lot of books with the same topic as each author brought in their personal ideas. However, with the gap of almost 50 years, the concept brought by Vaclav's book was no better or with high certainty, worse than the book by the predecessor. This book overgeneralized everything.
Maybe I am biased. But I would highly recommend anyone to read "The Limits to Growth" (the updated 2004 version if not both) instead of this book. (less)
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Nilesh
Apr 13, 2020Nilesh rated it really liked it
Shelves: economic-and-finance, good-non-fiction
Growth is a Smil book.
The book has a plethora of information. And, it is provided in the relentlessly Smil way without nary an effort to make their digestion remotely attractive or palatable.
The book provides a ton of learning. And you also learn why good learning is so painfully, laboriously boring.
The book is all about the details. These are details that tell you that any generalized notions you have are wrong because they cannot accommodate the essential details.
The book talks about all types of growth that you never knew existed. And, it debunks the one that extends to infinity, the one most commonly assumed by us all in our projections.
If you have decided to read about the book, you are of that kind, and it is undoubtedly a book for you to read. And as you read it, you will realize how loooooong this long book is.
The book will worry you a lot, for everything that you are bound to forget, fail to understand, or even unable to imbibe in your way of thinking.
This is an almanack. Or, maybe an encyclopedia. Or, perhaps something that verbalizes all data tables existence in the universe.
The question is not whether the book is good enough to read. Are you good enough to really read this tomb? (less)
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Matthew LaPine
Feb 25, 2020Matthew LaPine rated it really liked it
Vaclav Smil's "Growth" is a dense treatise on growth of everything, starting with the smallest and simplest things, and working methodically to infrastructure, populations, cities, nation-states and more. The costs and impacts of growth of each class of thing are explored in detail and presented in numbers-don't-lie bluntness. It finishes with a look at our current trajectory as a people, a society, a planet and a biosphere. Where are we going anyway? How can it be sustainable?
Smil's mathematical analysis and curve-fitting is work that engineers, scientists and mathematicians will love and may certainly inspire scurrying off to validate forms and found solutions. But to do so would (1) prevent the reader from finishing this voluminous work and (2) distract from the overall message. I wonder if Smil's audience would grow by an order of magnitude if there were "An Idiot's Guide to Growth".
(less)
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Jonathan Mckay
Mar 08, 2021Jonathan Mckay rated it really liked it
Shelves: big-history, economics
23rd book of 2021: Nothing Lasts Forever
Humans are terrible at anything other than linear thinking. Our collective inability to understand the difference between linear and exponential growth during COVID shows even with life hanging in the balance, we choose wrong. In academia, exponential growth becomes dogma, where constraints are ignored and experts create trend-lines so divorced from reality that they can be “dismissed as meaningless mechanical calculations”. As Smil quotes: Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical on a physically limited planet is either mad, or an economist.
Growth is a book about the path of complex, self-replicating phenomena through time. Smil spends the first chapter describing growth: simple mathematical functions such as linear, exponential, or logarithmic growth, and more importantly the ∫-shaped (s-shaped) functions such as the Gompertz curve or symmetric logarithmic curve that model both starting conditions where progress is difficult and final conditions where progress is constrained. What each of these functions shares is a long rampup, a period of intense growth, followed by a long decay in growth rate towards some maximum asymptote.
If this math feels dry, then stock up on water because the next chapters are a trek through a Sahara desert of trivia and turbines. (Similar content is much better captured in Smil’s own Energy and Civilization). Luckily, by the time Smil returns to sociological phenomena such as cities, empires, and economies, there is a reward to justify the trek.
By painstakingly charting s-curves through natural and biological phenomena, Smil can make the argument about the inevitability of decaying growth. In economics, Smil goes right for the jugular:
Their search for the cause of economic growth can be divided into proximate causes and ultimate reasons, but neither approach has all the answers, Their traditional explanations have been indefensibly narrow as they have focused on just a few proximate causes. The neoclassical version of growth theory is a perfect example of this reductionism.
Like bacteria, or any living organism in a finite system, humanity, and thus human economy goes a slow start, into a phase of growth, and to an inevitable plateau as unavoidable constraints overwhelm otherwise available resources. When it comes to the energy consumption of modern high-energy civilization, there is a limit to the capacity of our system.
All of these long lasting trends will have to end, deliberately on involuntarily. There is no possibility that we will be saved by a singularity or an early terraforming of mars. Such fictions make great news headlines but are worthless for dealing with civilizational challenges.
In the last century, wild animal biomass has halved, and the 6th extinction is already well under way. Smil doesn’t predict the limit precisely, but in the next century, humanity will start to face the carrying capacity of the planet, and to Smil degrowth is likely the only long term solution. Overall 'Growth' is the least enjoyable 4-star book I've read, yet paints a simple, compelling narrative of modernity and the future of humanity as just another complex, self-replicating, and eventually capped phenomena.
----------------
If you don't want to read the book, just read this paragraph instead:
"Our ability to provide a reliable, adequate food supply thanks to yields an order of magnitude higher than in early agricultures has been made possible by large energy subsidies and it has been accompanied by excessive waste. A near-tripling of average life expectancies has been achieved primarily by drastic reductions of infant mortality and by effective control of bacterial infections. Our fastest mass-travel speeds are now 50-150 times higher than walking. Per capita economic product in affluent countries is roughly 100 times larger than in antiquity, and useful energy deployed per capita is up to 200-250 times higher. Gains in destructive power have seen multiples of many (5-11) orders of magnitude. And, for an average human, there has been essentially an infinitely large multiple in access to stored information, while the store of information civilization-wide will soon be a trillion times larger than it was two millenia ago." (less)
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Ondrej Urban
Mar 28, 2021Ondrej Urban rated it really liked it
It's a rare privilege not to agree with what Bill Gates said recently but here we are - as informative and far-reaching as Growth is, it is not Smil's "latest masterpiece", whatever its publishing date might be.
Valcav Smil's books - and so far I've admittedly had only a limited exposure - tend to be written in a relatively dry academic language aimed at delivering precise information in an efficient manner. It might be a bit of a struggle at times but ultimately you are offered insights into how the world works and can afford yourself to feel snobby about most definitely reading "better" stuff than the vast majority of, well, everyone else. While Growth fulfills the "dry, academic language" part of the deal, the other bits are either not fully there or - and this is a completely realistic possibility - I was not focused enough to find them.
Growth starts as an overview paper of a bit of a meta-field of metrics changing values. Similar to most review papers it is full of citations (and the author citing himself), but tends to neglect drawing high-level conclusions from them. While the intro chapter gives the reader a bit of an overview into various kinds of growth and which equations describe it, what follows are facts after facts... and that's pretty much it, make of it what you want, dear reader.
Around the midpoint of the book the aim slightly changes, almost as if the author wished to limit the dryness by carefully including fun facts in the text - the biggest ships built, highest buildings, largest engines. Later this comes back into the facts and finally there is some discussion about where the civilisation might be headed, being very careful to list all the options but not pick a strict favourite.
Of course one learns things, but reading this I never got the feeling of making new connections by seeing facts from disparate fields compared next to each other, like it would be the case before. Moreover, I noticed several formal things that disturbed me. First of all, noticeable amount of typos. While used to them in books in my mother tongue which has a vastly smaller market available and thus much less effort can be given to every single book, in English books I rarely ever notice any - until reading Growth. Were the editors careless? The second - and potentially more annoying - issue was the nearly complete absence of data in the numerous growth plots included in the book. It turns out that most real types of growth are described by an S-shaped curve and thus a lot of these are included, often with a commentary about how well the data can be fit by this (number of computers, annual miles flown, ...) but without including the actual data in the plot so that the reader can really see for themselves instead of being left to decipher the axis labels, since, ultimately, all the S-curves look very similar (which is kind of the point).
Finally, at multiple places I had the feeling of reading a text by an even a bigger snob than me. While I would be the first one to admit feeling good about myself for reading things like this (well, honestly, feeling that I am better than the others) I find it a bit odd having the author include stuff like "while the television audiences might have been satisfied by the explanation provided", as if the only way to learn about things was to read academic journals.
All in all, this was a bit of an odd one. On the one hand, the reader learns a lot about how the world and the society evolve and where it may all go. On the other hand, they are left with a feeling of a rushed job that could have been much better. (less)
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James Klagge
May 18, 2020James Klagge rated it it was amazing
Shelves: science, history, contemporary-issues
An almost overwhelming book, but a necessary read. The first 4 chapters are somewhat slow going, where he discusses growth in many and various realms of life. It is a lot of information with rather little interpretation, but still readable. The heavy material comes in Ch's 5 & 6, where he discusses growth of societies and especially economic growth, and then what comes after growth. These last 2 chapters are sobering indeed. Smil is amazing for the breadth of knowledge he brings to the book. If I didn't know better I would imagine that Smil was the name of a committee, not an individual. Smil is impressive for his sober assessment. He is no kind of alarmist--in fact he spends many pages debunking alarmists. On the other hand, he also debunks the hyper-optimists, who suppose that the singularity, or some other techno-solution, will save us. Smil is a realist, and realism turns out to be quite alarming itself. And he does not shy away from this.
He notes that no country is planning or really even thinking about how, or what it would mean, to live with slower or no growth or negative growth--yet these are absolutely inevitable. He spends a long section discussing Japan, which is the future of all first-world countries, with an aging and shrinking population. He is quite aware that our attitudes are formed by our past experiences, which have all been in the context of (vigorous) growth, but which ill-suit us to address our futures.
Smil resolutely refuses to make generalizations that cannot be backed up with evidence, largely because what we face is inevitably complex. So there are not neat slogans to take away from the book. Consequently, he will never be a popular writer. On pp. 510-11 he offers his fullest assessment of our predicament. I will just quote a bit:
"...modern civilization has been engaged in a range of activities...that are driven by the notion of continued growth... A disproportionate share of people in charge of national policies...do not doubt this narrative and..rarely think about the biosphere's indispensability for the survival of human societies.... This creates...a challenge...for which we have yet to find an effective solution (assuming that one exists)." While the World Watch Institute and the UN have predicted that the world needs to find a sustainable basis by 2030 if it is to avoid slipping into a downward spiral, Smil is less specific (p. 513, his closing sentence): "I believe that a fundamental departure from the long-established pattern of maximizing growth...cannot be delayed by another century and that before 2100 modern civilization will have to take major steps toward ensuring the long-term inhabitability of its biosphere."
Of course all of this was written before the current pandemic (which he predicted p. 90: "...judging by the historical recurrence of influenza pandemics, we might be overdue for another major episode"). I have heard it said that humanity is the corona virus of the biosphere, and the corona virus is the biosphere's immune response to humanity. Perhaps this will provide the correction, or the wake-up call for the correction, that is needed. It certainly feels like people would never voluntarily make the changes that would be needed, so the question was how and when they would be forced on us. Perhaps this is the most welcome solution among a set of awful possibilities. (less)
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Will
Feb 09, 2020Will rated it liked it
"This might be perhaps the simplest single-paragraphy summation of civilizational advances, a concise summary of growth that matters most. Our ability to provide a reliable, adequate food supply thanks to yields an order of magnitude higher than in early agricultures has been made possible by large energy subsidies and it has been accompanied by excessive waste. A near-tripling of average life expectancies has been achieved primarily by drastic reductions of infant mortality and by effective control of bacterial infections. Our fastest mass-travel speeds are now 50-150 times higher than walking. Per capita economic product in affluent countries is roughly 100 times larger than in antiquity, and useful energy deployed per capita is up to 200-250 times higher. Gains in destructive power have seen multiples of many (5-11) orders of magnitude. And, for an average human, there has been essentially an infinitely large multiple in access to stored information, while the store of information civilization-wide will soon be a trillion times larger than it was two millenia ago.
And this is the most worrisome obverse of these advances: they have been accompanied by a multitude of assaults on the biosphere. Foremost among them has been the scale of the human claim on plants, including a significant reduction of the peak posts-glacial area of natural forests (on the order of 20%), mostly due to deforestation in temperate and tropical regions; a concurrent expansion of cropland to cover about 11% of continental surfaces; and an annual harvest of close to 20% of the biosphere's primary productivity (Smil 2013a). Other major global concerns are the intensification of natural soil erosion rates, the reduction of untouched wilderness areas to shrinking isolated fragments, and a rapid loss of biodiversity in general and within the most species-rich biomes in particular. And then there is the leading global concern: since 1850 we have emitted close to 300 Gt of fossil carbon to the atmosphere (Boden and Andres 2017). This has increased tropospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 ppm to 405 ppm by the end of 2017 and set the biosphere on a course of anthropogenic global warming (NOAA 2017).
These realities clearly demonstrate that our preferences have not been to channel our growing capabilities either into protecting the biosphere or into assuring decent prospects for all newborns and reducing life's inequalities to tolerable differences. Judging by the extraordinary results that are significantly out of line with the long-term enhancements of our productive and protective abilities, we have preferred to concentrate disproportionately on multiplying the destructive capacities of our weapons and, even more so, on enlarging our abilities for the mass-scale acquisition and storage of information and for instant telecommunication, and have done so to an extent that has become not merely questionable but clearly counterproductive in many ways." (less)
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Nils
Jul 12, 2020Nils rated it really liked it
In many ways the ultimate expression of Smil’s polymathic and synthetic mind, but as such also a perfect distillation of the limits of his mega-pattern thinking: he considers the patterns of growth across everything from bacteria to buildings to human civilizations. He notes that there are regular patterns that confirm (broadly) either to rise-and-fall bell curves or sigmoid curve patterns of exponential initial growth with an inflection point before leveling off toward some asymptote. Almost everything in the material world follows this pattern, and Smil’s ability to aggregate data from an insane range of literature is vastly impressive.
At the same time, however, the challenge with Smil’s approach is that, especially as the systems become more complex and the units of quantitative asessment become harder to isolate, the exceptions to the rules become more and more interesting and the patterns less so, and the cases cannot be treated in isolation. This becomes most obvious in his discussion of GDP growth patterns in different countries. Smil begins with a quite brilliant discussion of the severe limitations of GDP as a measure of actual material improvement, noting that it excludes informal and illicit markets, family and social reproduction, and the costs of (especially environmental) “externalities” and also counts the production of ultimately destructive goods, like armaments or cigarettes. But then... he proceeds to discuss the patterns of GDP growth in different countries. He also barely notes the way that growth rates in a partly integrated economy, the growth pattern in one country will affect (positively our negatively) growth rates in other countries that trade or otherwise interact with it. Thus Chinese and English growth rates after 1843, for example, can hardly be considered as independent patterns — and yet he still insists on trying to find consistent patterns across nations, again failing to note that modern nation-states’ economies are not a viable independent units of account.
This is related to the second major difficulty with the book: as Smil’s unfolds one pattern after another across different categories of growth, he plays fast and loose between presenting actual data as opposed to stylized facts or “well fit” versions of the data. He thus suggests strengths of patterns which may not always be entirely warranted, but which is hard for the reader to assess. (less)
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Jonathan
Feb 29, 2020Jonathan rated it liked it
Shelves: history, nonfiction
This book is well researched and the author is very knowledgeable, but is excessively long. There is so much data that is essentially trivia that the signal to noise ratio of the book is actually very poor. The core idea can be summarized as growth often does not continue indefinitely but follows a S-curve. For example, household adoption of the telephone started slowly, became parabolic, and then reached an asymptotic ceiling around 100%. The same applies to adoption of the radio, TV, computer, Internet, and most recently, the smartphone.
The author describes many different historical examples across varied fields, from wheat yields per hectare to pig meat production & consumption to tree heights to house sizes to highway construction to Moore’s law to human life expectancy, etc. (Chickens are the most efficient at producing meat per unit of resource input, and therefore are better than pigs.)
However, curves cannot reliably be extrapolated into the future. There are some cases where curve fitting works and other cases where it does not, and the author describes various examples. The author briefly discusses decline (which often follows after S-curve growth), and many curves actually follow a normal distribution with a mirrored S-curve from the ceiling back down to the floor (as the subject becomes redundant and is replaced by something else, e.g. with the radio). The author also explicitly rejects Kurzweil’s “Singularity” hypothesis, as growth probably cannot continue indefinitely but rather follow a S-curve on the Earth, however the author seems to ignore growth beyond the Earth (e.g. space mining).
In short, I do not recommend reading this book. Despite the author’s disclaimer that the book would be “a fairly comprehensive analytical survey of growth trajectories in nature and in society” while “limited to our planet” and excluding many areas for the sake of feasibility, there is no deeper insight or framework of growth except for the S-curve. It is peppered with facts, yet there is nothing actionable or worth learning for the average reader. (less)
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Mauricio Torres
Apr 02, 2021Mauricio Torres rated it it was amazing
I hope that the book's careful reading conveys the key conclusion: before it is too late, we should embark in earnest on the most fundamental existential task facing modern civilization, that of making any future growth compatible with the long-term preservation of the only biosphere we have.
There have been significant reduction of the area of natural forests, mostly due to deforestation; a concurrent expansion of cropland to cover about 11% of continental surfaces; and an annual harvest of close to 20% of the biosphere's primary productivity. Other major global concerns are intensification of natural soil erosion rates, the reduction of untouched wilderness areas to shrinking isolated fragments, and a rapid loss of biodiversity in general and within the most species-rich biomes in particular.
These realities clearly demonstrate that our preferences have not been to channel our growing capabilities either into protecting the biosphere or into assuring decent prospects for all newborns and reducing life's inequalities to tolerable differences.
---
Natural growth taking place on the Earth is always limited. The universe may be expanding - and may be doing so at an accelerated rate - but the planet has finite amounts of elements.
"So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (James 4:17)
We may not know every detail of doing the right thing, but the direction of the required actions is clear: to ensure the habitability of the biosphere while maintaining human dignity.
The long-term survival of our civilization cannot be assured without setting such limits on the planetary scale. I believe that a fundamental departure from the long-established pattern of maximizing growth and promoting material consumption cannot be delayed by another century and that before 2100 modern civilization will have to take major steps toward ensuring the long-term habitability of its biosphere... (less)
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Norman Lennox
May 24, 2020Norman Lennox rated it liked it
Sometimes, when I have finished reading a book, I would like to have been the editor. This book is one of these times. I would have asked the author if he was of the opinion that the subject of the book is an important topic. The answer is self-evident. Then, I would have asked the author if it was his intent to frame a book for the M.A./PhD community, or frame a book that would have a general appeal. The thrust of much of the book is more to the former. I would have hoped for the latter. If the topic of the book is important, I would like to have given the author a limit of 200 pages, a thesaurus for general population reading, and an absolute limit of 20 parenthetical remarks. The book is riddled with parentheses. They are poor substitutes for a sentence and often deflect from the direction of a statement.
In my opinion, the topic of the book is absolutely critical. It is a tough slog and many people will be discouraged and opt out long before the end. My recommendation is to start at the last two chapters. They are key parts of the book: growth and degrowth. Then make a decision on whether to flesh out the details. I hope people will give the book a try because of the relevance of the subject. In my opinion the author and the editor could have made the challenge easier and the reward greater. (less)
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Kyle
Mar 26, 2021Kyle rated it really liked it
Growth is one of the longest and most dense books I have ever read. Smil covers an enormous quantity of data and ideas in Growth. It took me 100-200 pages to get used to the writing style. Once I learned the patterns, I was able to progress with more enjoyment.
In Growth, Smil documents the growth (and decline) of many natural and biological phenomena. Smil makes the case that unlimited growth is a fallacy. There is always a stagnation or decline in any circumstance. The message is reassuring to me as I contrast the inevitability of decline with media reports of ongoing upward trends.
Smil is an enormous believer in the limits of knowledge and prediction. He regularly points out instances where past predictions turned out untrue. When there is uncertainty, he presents opposing viewpoints and gives no final interpretation for what is correct. "Simple conclusions must be avoided."
Overall, I am glad I read the book. I love to understand the scales of documented trends. I plan to read another book by Smil after a healthy break. (less)
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