Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil (review)

Smil, distinguished professor of environmental science emeritus at the University of Manitoba, is the author of 37 previous single-authored books, all focused on some aspect of pre-pandemic global environmental, economic, and social crises. Unfortunately, after treating us to extended critiques of b...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Technology and culture 2021-07, Vol.62 (3), p.916-917
Main Author: Cowan, Ruth Schwartz
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civilization
Data
Environmental science
Megacities
Microorganisms
Pandemics
Technological change
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Smil, distinguished professor of environmental science emeritus at the University of Manitoba, is the author of 37 previous single-authored books, all focused on some aspect of pre-pandemic global environmental, economic, and social crises. Unfortunately, after treating us to extended critiques of both pro-growth and limits-to-growth economists, as well as arguments against the concepts of sustainable growth and de-materialization, Smil concludes that everyone who has ever modeled the future of high energy civilization based on growth data from the past has been wrong. [...]Growth is just what you might expect that kid in third grade to have produced once the digital calculator had been miniaturized: a huge book filled with hundreds of miscellaneous quantitative data analyses, signifying nothing.
ISSN:0040-165X
1097-3729
1097-3729
DOI:10.1353/tech.2021.0115