âThe challenge is to navigate between the twin errors of complacency and catastrophism - and both errors are common.â â Vaclav Smil
Environmental discourse today suffers from a persistent bifurcation: on one side, those who minimize or deny environmental challenges; on the other, those who believe civilization is on the verge of imminent collapse. Smil navigates between these poles with characteristic rigor, insisting on what the actual data shows - which is complex, mixed, and neither reassuringly good nor apocalyptically bad.
Understanding our environment, like understanding energy and food, requires quantitative literacy. And the data shows a world that has made genuine progress on some environmental challenges while facing real, serious, long-term threats on others.
Environmental discourse often focuses so heavily on what is getting worse that genuine improvements go unrecognized. Smil insists on acknowledging both:
Air quality in wealthy countries: Despite population and economic growth, air pollution in most developed nations has improved dramatically since the 1970s. The US Clean Air Act, Europeâs emissions standards, and similar regulations have dramatically reduced sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate emissions from power plants, vehicles, and industry.
The ozone layer: The international ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) under the Montreal Protocol (1987) is one of the great environmental policy successes in history. The ozone hole over Antarctica is slowly recovering.
Forest cover in developed nations: Many wealthy countries have seen net increases in forest cover over recent decades, as agricultural land has been abandoned and reforestation programs implemented.
Declining coal use in wealthy countries: Coal - the most carbon-intensive and polluting fossil fuel - has been in steep decline in Europe and North America, replaced by natural gas and, increasingly, renewables.
These successes demonstrate that environmental problems, when taken seriously and addressed with consistent policy, can be solved.
Biodiversity loss: Species extinction rates are currently estimated to be 100-1,000 times higher than the natural background rate. Habitat loss, invasive species, overexploitation, and climate change are driving what many ecologists call the sixth mass extinction event in Earthâs history.
Soil degradation: Modern intensive agriculture has caused widespread erosion, compaction, salinization, and loss of organic matter from the worldâs soils. Some estimates suggest that topsoil is being lost 10-40 times faster than it is being formed. Since topsoil formation is a geological-timescale process, this represents a genuine long-term threat to agricultural productivity.
Freshwater depletion: Many of the worldâs most important agricultural regions draw on fossil aquifers - groundwater deposits that accumulated over thousands of years and are being depleted in decades. The Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains of the United States, the aquifers under northern India and the North China Plain, are being drawn down at rates far exceeding natural recharge.
Ocean health: Ocean acidification (caused by COâ absorption), overfishing, plastic pollution, and dead zones caused by agricultural nutrient runoff are degrading marine ecosystems globally.
Smil accepts the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change without reservation: human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing global warming with real and serious consequences. But he insists on quantitative precision in describing those consequences:
What is established:
What remains uncertain:
Smilâs concern is that both minimization (itâs not happening, itâs not serious) and maximalism (extinction within decades, civilization collapse imminent) are unjustified by the current evidence. The reality - serious, long-term, requiring urgent action, but not requiring the narrative of imminent catastrophe - is harder to communicate but more honest.
The common narrative: We have 10-12 years to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The more precise reality: âCatastrophicâ is not a scientific term with a precise definition. The 1.5°C target in the Paris Agreement, if we are to have a 66% chance of remaining within it, requires global net emissions to reach zero by around 2050. The 2°C target - still far from catastrophic - allows somewhat more time. At current emissions trajectories, we are on track for roughly 2.5-3°C by 2100.
This is serious and requires urgent action. But the narrative of â12 years to civilizational collapseâ is not supported by the science and tends to generate either panic or, when the predicted collapse doesnât materialize in 12 years, cynical backlash.
Smil argues for an environmental ethic grounded in honest accounting:
Which environmental issues do you feel most urgently about, and which receive the least of your attention? Based on what youâve read in this chapter, does that allocation match the evidence? What would a more quantitatively informed environmental priority list look like for you personally?