Vaclav Smil writes engagingly and at length (rather great length!) about science and public policy issues. His 2022 book How the World Really Works analyzes the global situation through the lens of energy and materials, and applies good methods to help understand tough problems. It shines a spotlight on what Smil calls the "four pillars of modern civilization: ammonia, steel, concrete, and plastics" – along with the inputs and processes needed to make and distribute and use them and other key components of life.

From the concluding chapter of How the World Really Works, important points on size and inertia of large modern systems, and on the pitfalls of forecasting:

... We do not have a civilization envisioned in the early 1970s—one of worsening planetary hunger or one energized by cost-free nuclear fission—and a generation from now we will not be either at the end of our evolutionary path or have a civilization transformed by Singularity. We will still be around during the 2030s, albeit without the unimaginable benefits of speed-of-light intelligence. And we will still be trying to do the impossible, to make long-range forecasts. That is bound to bring more embarrassments and more ridiculous predictions, as well as more surprises caused by unanticipated events. Extremes are fairly easy to envisage; anticipating realities that will arise from combinations of inertial developments and unpredictable discontinuities remains an elusive quest. No amount of modeling will eliminate that, and our long-range predictions will continue to err.

This is not a contradiction, not a forecast to dismiss future forecasts, just a highly probable, if not inevitable, conclusion based on the unforeseeable interplay of the inherent inertia of complex systems, with their embedded constants and long-term imperatives on one hand, and sudden discontinuities and surprises—be they technical (the rise of consumer electronics; possible breakthroughs in electricity storage) or social (the collapse of the USSR; another, much more virulent pandemic)—on the other. What makes all forecasts even harder is that now the key transformations have to unfold on enormous scales.

... echoes of John Sterman's observations about forecasting complex systems!

(cf Forecasting Lessons from Systems Dynamics (2017-07-05), Systems Dynamics Advice (2017-07-12), ...) - ^z - 2023-06-21