[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

The article seems dishonest because it downplays reducing use. For example the author refers to plastic used in maternity wards. Reasonable people will agree that medical plastic for birthing mothers and newborns will be one of the very last things to go and the current emphasis should be on things like everyday single use plastics. Similarly he worries about fertilizer use in Africa but for some reason frames it in terms of food self-sufficiency, instead of discussing how more efficient diets (less meat and waste) in more developed countries could result in either more food shipped directly to Africa or at least lower food prices on the global market.

You wrote:

> And in a world where we're unable to continue exploiting fossil fuels, whether due to the environmental impacts of their waste, or the lack of future supplies, the present mode of operation will end.

> What that means in terms of the set of factors affecting human impacts on the planet --- per-capita wealth and total population --- one or both factors must move.

Imagine vegetarianism becomes much more popular. How does that fit into your analysis? Are you concerned about putting people out of work due to increased efficiency in the food system? I'm not sure that's worth worrying about except as a political difficulty. If all murders stopped then we'd put some police and prison guards out of work too but most people would say that's worth it.

[dredmorbius]

As I've noted a few times:

- Smil's studied material usage in depth for years.

- This article is a very brief introduction to the topic. His book goes into more detail than this exerpt, and the chapter from which this article is based does break down plastics use in somewhat more detail.

- He especially emphasized healthcare applications, though I don't find a detailed quantification or exploration of why this is. (I'm still reading through his book, though guided in part by questions such as yours.)

- Use-reduction has been advocated for something on the order of five decades, since the early environmental movement. To date it's not been particularly effective, best I can tell.

That said:

- No, Smil doesn't discuss use reduction in depth. To the extent he's focusing on describing the problem rather than addressing solutions, that's consistent with the general theme of the book.

- Recycling does net 45 mentions in the book. Much of that is addressed at animal and human waste as alternatives to artificial fertiliser.

In general, materials are adopted based on a set of factors, incuding cost, characteristics, flexibility, and convenience. Plastics have substituted for other materials including organics (plant and animal) of limited quantities, ceramics, paper (with its own sets of issues), and more. Much as fossil fuels substituted for mostly biomass-based fuel sources as those were exhausted, plastics have substituted for earlier alternatives (ceramics, wood, glass, metal, paper) as those proved insufficient, inadequate, expesive, or otherwise problematic.

There is a huge extent to which these practices are dependent on other factors. The self-serve supermarket, a creation of the 1920s--1940s, introduced whole new levels and layers (metaphorically and literally) to consumer packaging. The recent shift toward online ordering / home delivery has shifted these somewhat, though not necessarily in the direction of less packaging.

My view: if you want people to use fewer plastics, raise the costs. Most probably through taxes or other fees. Beware second-order effects, however.

Claiming Smil is dishonest seems to me itself ... dishonest.

[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

Accurately describing the problem also means saying we use several hundred times more plastic for trivial purposes like wasteful consumer packaging than we do for hospital supplies. A materials science discussion on why plastics are irreplaceable in healthcare might be relevant to a very specific audience, but it's a red herring in an environmental discussion and certainly in a short pop-sci article in a major publication.

I don't doubt Smil is an expert. It's possible the article's framing wasn't entirely his fault. However if his books follow the approach of the article -- "Fossil fuels are necessary for plastics and plastics keep newborns alive" and then leaves readers to connect the dots for themselves -- then I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish. I'm sure he intends more than just dry scientific explanation. Maybe dishonest isn't the right word, I agree.

[dredmorbius]

I've checked in a few places, and I don't know that Smil does break down plastics usage to the extent you'd like. And that's a fair gripe.

But, again, his principle audience, as I take it are those who like the modern world, and would like it to continue as it is, with minimal change.

And to them he's pointing out the underlying costs and necessary conditions (including, as you'd likely characterise it, vast overconsumption of plastics), and their implications. A visceral knowledge of which is lacking in far too many people.

Smil addresses this in his book's introduction: the unprecedented, if uneven, wealth of the post-WWII era, the expansion of human understanding and fact that it's escaped the grasp of any one person --- the Renaissance Man --- centuries ago, and both a fracturing and failure of knowledge even amongst elites (political, commercial, cultural, scientific, ...) to the extent that at best even amongst the elites knowlege tends strongly to the superficial. (There's an excellent interview by Edward Murrow of Robert Oppenheimer in which the physicist notes that everyone, even scientists, are amateurs outside their own very narrow fields.)

Your principle complaint with Smil seems to be that he didn't write the book you wish he had. And to that extent I'd say you're right, he did not.

But he did write the book he felt the world needed, and which he set out to write. And I think he's correct in his first assessment and largely successful in the task. Whether either of those are sufficient is of course another matter.

The message you seem to be taking away is that Smil is arguing fossil fuels are necessary and will continue to be necessary. There, I think you're wrong.

One tactic critics of environmentalists and sustainability proponants have long used is to point out all the wonderful things fossil fuels have done for humanity, with the obvious conclusion that therefor we must continue to use them. I could point to specific examples from Milton Friedman, Julian Simon, and numerous speakers and writers from the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Foundation, Cato Institution, Adam Smith Institute, Fraser Institute, and others (most part of the Libertarian, and heavily oil-industry funded, Atlas Network).

But that's not Smil.

At the conclusion of his chapter on energy, and discussing decarbonisation, Smil writes:

What we need is to pursue a steady reduction of our dependence on the energies that made the modern world. We still do not mnow most of the particulars of this coming transition, but one thing remains certain: it will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise --- but rather its gradual decline.

That paragraph cites his own earlier writings on energy transitions.

Again: Smil is addressing both denial (that the transition doesn't need to occur, that climate change isn't real), and wishful thinking about the ease of such transitions. This is a field I've watched for nearly fifty years, and even worked in to some extent (not deeply, though putting me in touch with some key people and organisations). And ... there's been a lot less progress than I'd have hoped to see. It would have been much easier to get started earlier, and it's going to be much more painful.

If I've one disagreement with Smil, it's that the transition might be rapid. But the cost of that would be that it would also be highly traumatic. To the tune of billions of deaths and centuries of hardship. Possibly worse.

[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

Thanks for all the detail. On further thought I read Smil's article uncharitably. I recently finished Kim Stanley Robinson's "Ministry for the Future" which is a near-future novel trying to thread the needle of how we might escape total climate catastrophe. Limited carbon burn continues throughout the novel, and the obvious need for that was probably in my mind to where I thought Smil's article must have had some ulterior motive for making such a basic point. I suppose instead it's sadly the case that even today a lot of people think that any fossil fuel reduction is impossible or, at the other extreme, that the only acceptable path is a total and immediate halt. Smil seems aimed at both of those types of folks.

It looks like Smil's new book is available at my local library so I'll read it and judge for myself. Thanks again.

[dredmorbius]

Smil does find himself in a target-rich environment and attacks with abandon.... Again, neither an optimist nor pessimist.

I'm a bit over 3/4 through MotF, which is quite a read. Francis Fukuyama reviews that and Neal Stevenson's Termination Shock (which I've not yet read. And his principle criticism of Robinson is that the book is far too optimistic:

While there are some dramatic responses in the book, like the kidnapping of the Davos crowd and assassinations of oil executives, the book imagines what is in a way the best possible future outcomes. The eco-terrorist campaign and attacks on airliners do not trigger massive repression (people, it appears, don’t mind giving up air travel); five million people march spontaneously on Beijing and compel the CCP to speed up the energy transition; the crisis becomes the occasion to implement universal basic income around the world with no adverse consequences for the economy apart from a six-month recession; and the various attempts at geo-engineering all work as planned and produce no unanticipated effects.

https://www.americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/two-futures/

I'd make a similar response to Fukuyama as to you: KSR wrote a specific book with a specific point in mind: if you want a survivable outcome, then events would need to play out largely as he suggests. KSR isn't arguing that this is the probable or plausible path, but that it's the necessary one.

(It's also very much a vehicle for advancing KSR's political views, which is another discussion. That said, as a minority opinion, I think the airing is well-deserved.)

[kX4A8o4mVmX8aW]

I agree with your position that MotF portrays what generally needs to happen for us to have a non-horrifying future, though as a matter of probability it's like getting heads on ten coin flips in a row.

Fukuyama's criticism about characterization is unfair because I don't think KSR was trying and failing to make amazing characters. They were just vehicles for the larger story. Being disappointed that a main character didn't have sex at the end is really missing the point.

An aside: while reading MotF I felt the same sort of relentless sense of passing time that you get in Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar. Interestingly both the book and movie are about climate change and time and, also, about centering the story and setting at the expense of characterization.

I'm ambivalent about the advantages of arguing for political change as a necessary part of environmental change. But as you said in an earlier comment, rapid transition (which I think is likely, as we go right to the cliff and then fall off) will itself be horribly traumatic. It will require massive government intervention to prevent total societal collapse. After hurricanes and earthquakes, you don't adjust tax rates, you send in the military.

My own major criticism of MotF is that, as the COVID crisis makes clear, people live by motivated reasoning, and as climate change gets worse that motivation will be fear, and frightened people will act badly. Most of the opposition in MotF are rich people trying to hold onto what they have or technocratic rulers too timid to act. In the actual world the real problem will be billions of terrified people whose past has been or is about to be destroyed and with no clear future. However that story told honestly would look like a Cormac McCarthy novel and maybe KSR just doesn't want to go there yet.