Great transformations

Demography, agriculture, energy and the economy - these are the four "great transitions of civilisation" that have completely transformed our way of life. Although many societies have gone through them, there are still hundreds of millions of people on Earth who are unaffected by these developments. What does this mean for the planet and where will this imbalance take humanity in the near future? Internationally renowned scientist Václav Smil presents the greatest challenges of our time that are already shaping the shape of our world. This time Vaclav Smil presents an interdisciplinary exploration of five fundamental transitions whose interaction has created the modern world. It focuses on the history of these population transitions, Agriculture, energy, economy and the environment and examines their origins, as well as the factors, that made them possible and contributed to their growth. It discusses their progress, processes and dispersal and describes their trajectories, interactions and consequences. It explores how we got to this point in human evolution and how the great transitions gave birth to today's everyday reality. Reality, that's so far outside the realm that we were able to imagine yesterday, but whose benefits have not yet reached billions of people in less developed societies, and even so, that progress, we've already arrived at, threatens the integrity of the biosphere.