Grand TransitionsPub Date : 2021-02-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0005
Vaclav Smil
{"title":"Economies","authors":"Vaclav Smil","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"The most obvious markers of economic transition have been the increasing rate of growth, fundamental structural transformation, and the creation of economies characterized by material abundance, high mobility, and instant communication. Growth rates of traditional economies were a mere fraction of a percent, while modernizing economies grew commonly by 3–5%, some even on the order of 10%. As labor productivities rose, labor force moved from the countryside to cities, and manufacturing became temporarily the most important economic sector before the next major shift transferred most labor to services. High-energy consumer societies created by these transitions enjoy unprecedented levels of material abundance, leisure, and mobility, but these gains have been accompanying by significant economic inequality and have yet to reach most of the world’s population.","PeriodicalId":120449,"journal":{"name":"Grand Transitions","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130401953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Grand TransitionsPub Date : 2021-02-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0006
Vaclav Smil
{"title":"Environment","authors":"Vaclav Smil","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Large-scale, anthropogenic impact on the biosphere is not a new phenomenon, but the past two centuries have seen an unprecedented extent and intensity of land-use changes, ecosystemic degradation, and pollution driven by population growth, rising food production, energy use, and economic activity. Some two-thirds of terrestrial surfaces have been affected by human action, every biome lost some of its biodiversity, and some forms of environmental pollution (including photochemical smog, coastal dead zones, and plastics in the ocean) are now encountered in many places around the world. The most worrisome impact is the one that affects the entire biosphere: global climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels and from agriculture and land-use changes. Managing this challenge will be exceedingly difficult.","PeriodicalId":120449,"journal":{"name":"Grand Transitions","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129042390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Grand TransitionsPub Date : 2021-02-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0004
Vaclav Smil
{"title":"Energies","authors":"Vaclav Smil","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional societies depended on biofuels and animate power from draft animals and human labor. The energy transition reduced biomass fuels to a globally marginal role, as fossil fuel extraction and electricity generation provided abundant and affordable energy. Consequences of this supply were magnified by conversions of fuels and electricity in new prime movers (first steam engines, and then internal combustion engines, electric lights, and motors). Indeed, they have nearly eliminated animate power, resulting in mechanization of agriculture and industrial production, in the rise of mass mobility, and in the deployment of electronic devices throughout the entire economy. Higher average per capita energy supply has been even more impressive when steady gains in conversion efficiency, and the resulting declines of energy intensities of products and services, are taken into account.","PeriodicalId":120449,"journal":{"name":"Grand Transitions","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125383255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Grand TransitionsPub Date : 2021-02-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0001
V. Smil
{"title":"Epochal Transitions","authors":"V. Smil","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"The modern world has been created by five relatively rapid and interconnected transitions. They led to temporarily high growth rates of the global population and, eventually, to much reduced fertility, longer life expectancies, and mass-scale urbanization. Increased agricultural productivity eliminated famines, reduced undernutrition, and resulted in a surfeit and waste of food in affluent countries. Transition from traditional biofuels to fossil fuels brought large increases of per capita energy supply and higher efficiencies of energy conversion, along with new powerful machines. Economic growth reached unprecedented rates, transformed sectoral contribution, created material abundance, and enabled high levels of mobility and instant communication. Environmental consequences of these transitions range from land-use changes to many forms of pollution and to global climate change. Future transitions have to address many problems created by our past successes and failures, but given the magnitude of the challenges, they will have to unfold gradually.","PeriodicalId":120449,"journal":{"name":"Grand Transitions","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121708432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Grand TransitionsPub Date : 2021-02-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0002
Vaclav Smil
{"title":"Populations","authors":"Vaclav Smil","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190060664.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Demographic transition has been completed everywhere except for large parts of Africa. Steady decline of traditionally high fertilities and mortalities brought temporarily high rates of population growth (globally peaking during the 1960s), as the worldwide count rose from about 1 billion in 1800 to more than 7.8 billion by 2020. The new prevailing pattern of population dynamics is characterized by very low infant mortalities, fertilities well below the replacement level, increasing longevities, and aging, even decline, of many populations. Generations of high growth rates and productivity gains in agriculture and abundance of fossil fuels led to an unprecedented pace of urbanization. More than half of humanity now lives in cities, including a rising number of megacities, each with more than 10 million people.","PeriodicalId":120449,"journal":{"name":"Grand Transitions","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125365203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：