SUMMARY - Making The Modern World: Materials And Dematerialization By Vaclav Smil

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. As you read this summary, you will learn that the increased consumption of materials is the major feature of the modern world. You will also learn that : the invention of the steam engine revolutionized mankind; a long-term dematerialization without radical changes in lifestyle is very unlikely; humanity's material progress is experiencing two successive ages; energy is the most important of all materials; our civilization is at a crossroads in terms of our consumption of materials; the current level of material consumption is very recent if we place it in the long historical period. The consumption of materials is at the heart of economic production, without which it could not exist. Materials of all kinds, be they mineral, vegetable, etc., condition our daily life, modern life, that of industrialized countries whose societies are consumer societies. Their production, use and destruction, once they have become waste, are the subject of this book, which examines the costs of our society's dependence on materials, as well as the possible paths to a progressive dematerialization, which the threatened integrity of the biosphere makes indispensable.