Vaclav Smil, all his insights in one volume!
How has modern society changed and where is it headed?
A masterful guide that coolly penetrates the complex world. Completely understand Vaclav Smil with this one volume!

Climate change, population decline, technological advancements... With the daily barrage of news, we feel confused, torn between the illusion that technological singularity will lead us to a rosy future and the extreme pessimism that environmental destruction will lead to the extinction of humanity any day now.
Is humanity moving in the right direction? What is the true nature of the reality we face today? Vaclav Smil's masterpiece, "What Made the Great Transformation," offers the most sobering and profound insight into these questions.
Rather than simply listing predictions, this book delves into five major shifts that shaped human civilization, drawing on extensive historical data and statistics.

This book is essentially a compilation of the various writings of Vaclav Smil.
Analyzes how the modern world was shaped through five key axes: population, food, energy, economy, and environment.
How did humans, once plagued by high birth rates and high death rates, achieve such explosive population growth? How did people, once plagued by the fear of starvation, come to have the abundant, even excessive, food they now enjoy? How did a life reliant solely on firewood and human labor lead to the powerful energy revolutions of coal, oil, and electricity? How did the economy, intertwined with these forces, achieve such exponential growth? This book vividly illustrates the environmental toll this dazzling growth has taken.

Through this massive shift, Smil rejects both the blind optimism that "technology will solve everything" and the extreme pessimism that "humanity will be destroyed."
Instead of flashy theories, he uses cold, quantitative data to reveal our dazzling achievements and the hidden realities behind them, offering an intellectual map for reflecting on the future of human civilization.
We may be at the most critical juncture in human history.
"What Created the Great Transformation" will provide the most powerful insights for understanding this complex world and wisely preparing for the future.

These societies, which were very slow to change, had several common characteristics: extremely low population growth rates, constant food shortages, and inefficient energy transitions.
This is because they mainly used fuels with low energy density, such as wood, and even then, they obtained energy with low efficiency by burning them in campfires or simple stoves.

--- p.24

Whether a major transformation occurs gradually or rapidly, the key elements of change usually develop in an S-shaped curve.
This growth follows a logistic function or some similar growth type that draws a symmetrical shape on both sides.
The S-curve growth pattern shows that the transition to a new way of life starts very slowly at first.
Therefore, existing methods can continue to play an important role for decades even after new technologies emerge.

--- p.51

The most direct and core force driving this demographic transition is the decline in the birth rate, and to truly understand how dramatic this decline in the birth rate is, we must first understand the average number of children that humans are biologically capable of having.
Only by using that figure as a standard can we clearly understand the extent to which the birth rate has declined over the course of subsequent history and properly evaluate its significance.

--- p.71

The nutritional transition has contributed significantly to helping humanity overcome famine and reduce malnutrition.
Thanks to this, everyone can get food at a lower price than before, and the share of household income spent on food has decreased, but the variety of fresh food, beverages, and processed food has actually become excessively diverse.
The 'multicultural phenomenon of diet', which emerged as diets became more complex and influenced each other, has spread the awareness that Indian or Japanese food is not necessarily food eaten only in those countries.

--- p.
184

The explosive increase in the use of chemical fertilizers is pouring massive amounts of nitrates into the soil, which are washed by rainwater and flow to distant rivers, ultimately ending up in the ocean.
Excessive nutrients flowing into the ocean cause rapid proliferation of certain plankton, which ultimately depletes the oxygen in the water and creates a huge 'dead zone', or dead sea, where marine life cannot survive.

--- p.204

This reality is unlikely to change easily in the near future.
Because there is no cutting-edge technology yet that can immediately replace long-distance commercial flights or large-scale intercontinental sea transport.
As a result, I believe that turbofan and diesel aircraft jet engines will be with us for decades to come.
Another key reason for the slow pace of change is the enormous energy demand of the transportation sector, which consumes 2.5 billion tons of refined petroleum products each year and cannot be replaced by other energy sources in the short term, even if numerous alternatives become commercially available.

--- p.258

When people think of modern manufacturing, they picture mechanized factories mass-assembling cars or cell phones, not the neighborhood bakery or tailor shop.
When French critics worry about the loss of manufacturing jobs, it's not the closing of neighborhood bakeries that they have in mind.
And it is difficult to clearly define what constitutes a “new product” within the manufacturing category.
According to the American classification, ready-mixed concrete and metal plating are considered part of the manufacturing sector, while beneficiation, which removes impurities from ore to improve its grade, is part of the mining sector, and publishing and printing, which creates and prints books, is part of the information sector.

--- p.313

Given the history of continuous progress in agricultural and manufacturing productivity, it was inevitable that most people in modern society would eventually engage in work other than growing food or making goods.
Moreover, the service sector, defined so broadly, includes activities that have remained essentially unchanged over several generations.
Services that have been around for a long time, from babysitting to home repairs to professional sports, are like this.
But at the same time, there are activities in this sector that have undergone changes as profound, or even more profound, than those experienced by manufacturing.
Entirely new jobs have emerged that didn't even exist a generation ago.
--- p.318

Sulfur and nitrogen oxides, spewed from the tall chimneys of power plants and refineries, changed the face of air pollution. These pollutants were carried hundreds of kilometers by the wind, where they transformed into acidic compounds called sulfates and nitrates.
Interestingly, this acidification process has actually become more severe since the 1950s, when electrostatic precipitators were widely installed to remove more than 99% of the fine ash flying from factory smoke.
Originally, this ash contained alkaline components that could neutralize some of the acidic pollutants, but when the ash disappeared, only pure acidic substances remained.

--- p.397

The fundamental reason I wrote this book was to shed light on the beginning and process of human progress.
To achieve this goal, we have used a large amount of statistical data, which may seem excessive to some readers.
I believe that this method is absolutely necessary to properly document the complexities of the 'great transition' we are experiencing.
In other words, I wanted to show the many worrying consequences behind humanity's remarkable progress.
Through this, we aim to convey both the achievements of human development and the complexities hidden within them.
That's why I reject a one-sided perspective when evaluating future change, neither a pessimism that emphasizes only future failures and losses nor a blind optimism that emphasizes only success and progress.

--- p.433