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Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made de Vaclav Smil

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

Autor Vaclav Smil
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 27 mai 2021

În Grand Transitions, Vaclav Smil propune un cadru analitic riguros pentru a înțelege mecanismele care au construit civilizația contemporană. Modelul său se bazează pe patru piloni fundamentale — demografia, hrana, energia și economia — a căror evoluție sincronizată a permis societăților moderne să atingă un nivel de prosperitate fără precedent. Merită menționat că autorul nu se limitează la o retrospectivă istorică, ci demonstrează cum interacțiunea acestor forțe a creat un decalaj major între națiunile care au finalizat aceste tranziții și cele care rămân încă în afara beneficiilor modernității.

Remarcăm o schimbare de perspectivă față de lucrările sale anterioare; dacă în Energy and Civilization Smil se concentra pe rolul energiei ca motor al istoriei, iar în How the World Really Works explica realitățile fizice ale supraviețuirii noastre, în volumul de față el introduce conceptul critic al celei de-a cincea tranziții. Aceasta reprezintă marea provocare a secolului nostru: reconcilierea progresului economic cu limitele biosferei. Dacă The Age of Sustainability de Mark Swilling v-a oferit cadrul teoretic al nevoii de schimbare, această carte oferă instrumentele practice de analiză a datelor pentru a înțelege de ce această transformare este atât de dificilă și prelungită.

Putem afirma că stilul lui Smil rămâne unul autoritar și dens, susținut de 42 de ilustrații care transformă cifrele aride în dovezi de netăgăduit ale amprentei umane asupra planetei. Tonul este unul de un realism lucid, evitând optimismul nefondat în favoarea unei examinări factuale a modului în care gestionarea resurselor va dicta succesul sau colapsul proiectului modern.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780190060664
ISBN-10: 0190060662
Pagini: 384
Dimensiuni: 231 x 163 x 33 mm
Greutate: 0.66 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

De ce să citești această carte

Această carte se adresează celor care doresc să înțeleagă macro-tendințele globale dincolo de discursul politic. Cititorul câștigă o perspectivă sistemică asupra modului în care energia și demografia dictează direcția economiei mondiale. Este o lectură esențială pentru profesioniștii din economie și politici publice care au nevoie de date concrete pentru a evalua viitorul sustenabilității, oferind un argument solid împotriva soluțiilor simpliste pentru probleme complexe.

Despre autor

Vaclav Smil este un distins profesor emerit la Universitatea din Manitoba, fiind recunoscut la nivel mondial ca expert în analize interdisciplinare ce acoperă energia, mediul, demografia și politicile publice. De origine ceho-canadiană, Smil este autorul a peste 40 de cărți traduse în numeroase limbi, fiind unul dintre autorii preferați ai unor lideri de opinie globali datorită capacității sale de a sintetiza volume uriașe de date statistice. Cercetările sale se concentrează pe realitățile materiale ale civilizației, fiind un critic al speculațiilor tehnologice care ignoră legile fizicii și ale termodinamicii.

Descriere

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization--in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics--which have transformed the way we live.Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments.Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition--environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming--will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.

Recenzii

Grand Transitions shows Vaclav Smil truly to be Bringing It All Back Home
Vaclav Smil is my favorite author.
His book roams impressively around the globe and across five centuries as it asks big questions and searches for big answers. . . .His five-pack of grand transitions encompasses population, agriculture and diets, energy, economy, and environment. . . . anyone who hasn't read about these subjects since graduation will be awestruck by the amount of research that has gone into these vaguely familiar stories. Smil pulls recent studies together, throws in a few of his own, offers interpretive twists, and fills his account with delicious nuggets of information. (This book actually got me in trouble at home, as I kept asking my family, "Did you know..." about some gem of an anecdote.)
No one writes about the great issues of our time with more rigor or erudition than Vaclav Smil. Grand Transitions is at once sweeping, sobering, and profoundly informative.
An expert portrait of spectacular technical and economic advances that many in the 21st century enjoy but which exclude large segments of the population and are creating problems that may or may not be solvable. Ingenious, insightful, and disturbing.
Underpinned by mesmerizing data and deep analysis, Grand Transitions provides a clear and compelling framework for thinking about the future of energy, the environment, and the economy. A feast for anyone interested in the future of energy. A must read.
Grand Transitions is the epitome of excellence in integrative systemic scientific analysis, anchored in a magisterial exploration of the main five transitions of mankind since civilizations emerged. And it provides a healthy antidote to the wishful thinking so prevalent today. Decision makers and the public should educate themselves with this authoritative evaluation, which will shape their decisions on how to ensure a harmonious, sustainable future for all.
For a generation, polymath Vaclav Smil has expounded on the big patterns in energy, food, and other means through which humans have transformed their environment. In Grand Transitions he has zoomed out even further to paint a picture of how the pieces fit together and to explain how the modern world works. In elegant prose with relentless attention to fact and reality-rare these days-he has written a masterpiece that forces you to think, disagree, wonder, and grapple with the accomplishments and challenges of today's industrial society.
In Grand Transitions, Vaclav Smil reminds us of the fundamental point that the economy cannot be untethered from nature. Technological ingenuity has loosened the links, but the outlook for economic gains--or losses--is inextricably tied to the dynamics of population change, and of food and energy production.
Investing requires quantification of impact. But Vaclav Smil convincingly challenges the increased reliance on applying mathematical modelling to single-frame narratives. He steadily illustrates why such approaches seldom provide useful enough insights, as they tend to ignore technical constraints and biospheric limits.
Smil offers a sweeping account of the deep material forces that have shaped the modern world... He tells a remarkable story of the human capacity to innovate, build, and integrate societies across vast distances.
Smil is a conjurer with numbers. In Grand Transitions, he works to show just how thoroughly this is now a planet of our making--and how rapidly the transformation is still happening.

Notă biografică

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. The author of more than 50 books, he conducts interdisciplinary research in energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. He has worked globally as a consultant and frequently delivers invited talks at conferences and workshops throughout the world.