Not the kind of article we’d expect to see in Time Magazine. A 100% endorsement of the inescapable need for fossil fuels?

The Modern World Can’t Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels

By Vaclav Smil, Time Magazine

Cyron Ray Macey

Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs. The world now produces annually about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, nearly 400 million tons of plastics, and 180 million tons of ammonia. But it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilizers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people.

Does any other odd factoid capture the rise of China so well?

China now produces more than half of the world’s cement and in recent years it makes in just two years as much of it as did the […]