Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil

Abstract

Reviewed by: Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil Ruth Schwartz Cowan (bio) Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities By Vaclav Smil. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. Pp. 634. Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities By Vaclav Smil. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. Pp.634. Remember that kid in third grade? The one who memorized all the rivers in Africa, then made you feel like a jerk because she knew so much more than you? Or maybe that kid was you? Or me? Thankfully, we both grew out of it. Vaclav Smil did not. Smil, distinguished professor of environmental science emeritus at the University of Manitoba, is the author of 37 previous single-authored books, all focused on some aspect of pre-pandemic global environmental, economic, and social crises. Growth has a similar focus, but you won't find that out until you have plowed your way through 448 poorly organized pages containing dozens and dozens of graphs about the growth patterns of—the subtitle actually minimizes the scope of the enterprise—everything from microorganisms to megacities, plus empires and civilizations. In his preface, Smil tells us that he intends to examine growth quantitatively, looking for patterns in the data, particularly "S-shaped (sigmoid) growth curves" (p. xxi). He's a bit cagey, however, about whether all the data and S-shaped curves he intends to display will, or even should, lead to secure forecasts of future growth, or lack thereof. He cautions against "any simplistic embrace of even the best statistical fits for long-term forecasting," then in the next paragraph declares that "parts of the book are helpfully predictive" (p. xxiii). The pages of Growth are riddled with similarly ambivalent and protective statements about the ultimate meaning of the S-shaped growth patterns he describes. In excruciating detail. But before we get to that detail, a sixty-nine-page introductory chapter, as its title suggests, is intended to elucidate "Trajectories: or common patterns of growth." Unfortunately, much of the chapter will only be intelligible to readers who understand a "perfect power-law function (approximating the form f(x)=ax-k where a and k are constant)" (p. 60). A reader unfamiliar with the nuances of advanced statistics may well cower in frightful admiration, an effect (and affect) which strikes me as the grownup version of what that kid in third grade was hoping to achieve. Four substantive chapters, occupying 448 pages, follow the introduction: Nature, Energies, Artifacts, and Populations, Societies, Economies. Each chapter is divided into subsections with no rhyme and little reason; each subsection is filled with a miscellany of data analyses and charts. None ends with a concluding generalization that makes sense out of the very different growth patterns discussed. Historians of technology who might want to use Growth as a handy reference [End Page 916] work about growth patterns on such diverse subjects as the maximum thrust of jet engines or the total length of Chinese highways will need to be exceedingly careful. One graph, presumably based on data that I happen to know something about (adoption rates of household appliances in the U.S., 1900–2005, p. 294) is multiply fraudulent. Leaving aside the fact that there is no reliable national data for the period 1900–1960, the graph Smil publishes cannot be found in the source he cites. That source (for which Smil gives both the wrong date and wrong URL) contains data (and a graph) about something else altogether, and only the years 1973–2006. The mistakes just keep coming. P. Taylor et al. "Luxury or necessity?" is at www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/10/Luxury.pdf. One can compare the URL publication date in Growth (p. 605). Colleagues, you have been warned! Growth concludes with a sixty-page chapter "What Comes After Growth: or demise and continuity" and a five-page "Coda." Here Smil reveals that the growth trajectory he really cares about is the one for "high energy civilization." Unfortunately, after treating us to extended critiques of both pro-growth and limits-to-growth economists, as well as arguments against the concepts of sustainable growth and de-materialization, Smil concludes that everyone who has ever modeled the...