Modern societies rely upon prodigious amounts of oil for transport activity. The impacts over the near term of increasing oil scarcity and higher prices on transport will be among the major challenges facing humanity and will require a revolution in thinking about how we move people and goods.Transport Revolutions analyzes five prior episodes of rapid and radical change in the way people and goods travel. It examines the worldwide state of transport today, especially its e...

Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil sets out the challenges to our growing dependence on transport fuelled by low-priced oil. These challenges include an early peak in world oil production and profound climate change resulting in part from oil use. It proposes responses to ensure effective, secure movement of people and goods in ways that make the best use of renewable sources of energy while minimizing environmental impacts.Transport Revolutions synthesize...

First released in 2007, the bestselling Transport Revolutions argued that land transport in the first half of the 21st century will feature at least two revolutions. One will involve the use of electric drives rather than internal combustion engines. Another will involve powering many of these drives directly from the electric grid - as trains and trolley buses are powered today - rather than from on-board fuel.Now available for the first time in paperback and updated with the most...

Transport and Energy Transition, Volume 16 highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters written by an international board of authors. Topics in this new release include The role of organization, policy and planning in facilitating (or constraining) the transport energy transition, Behavioral dimensions and dynamics of transport energy transitions, Where crises and social movements meet: momentum for alternative mobility visions, Institutional i...

All countries have distinctive urban regions, but Canadian cities especially differ from one another in culture, structure, and history. Anthony Perl, Matt Hern, and Jeffrey Kenworthy reveal that despite the peculiarities and singular traits that each city embodies, a common logic has guided the development of transportation infrastructure across the country.Big Moves analyzes how Canada's three largest urban regions - Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver - have been shaped by...

**"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author… Numbers Don't Lie takes everything that makes his writing great and boils it down into an easy-to-read format. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning."—Bill Gates, GatesNotesFrom the author of How the World Really Works, an essential guide to understanding how numbers reveal the true state of our world—exploring a wide range of topics including energy, the environment, technology, transportatio...

In the face of today's environmental and economic challenges, doomsayers preach that the only way to stave off disaster is for humans to reverse course: to de-industrialize, re-localize, ban the use of modern energy sources, and forswear prosperity. But in this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more ab...

A “smart, honest, and down-to-earth” (Elizabeth Kolbert) citizen’s guide to the seven urgent changes that will really make a difference for our climate.If you think the only thing you can do to combat climate change is to install a smart thermostat or cook plant-based meat, you’re thinking too small.In The Big Fix, energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis offer a new, hopeful way to engag...

An objective, comprehensive, and accessible examination of today's most crucial problem: preserving the environment in the face of society's insatiable demand for energy.In Energy at the Crossroads, Vaclav Smil considers the twenty-first century's crucial question: how to reconcile the modern world's unceasing demand for energy with the absolute necessity to preserve the integrity of the biosphere. With this book he offers a comprehensive, accessible guide...

The story of how diesel engines and gas turbines, used to power cargo ships and jet airplanes, made today's globally integrated economy possible.The many books on globalization published over the past few years range from claims that the world is flat to an unlikely rehabilitation of Genghis Khan as a pioneer of global commerce. Missing from these accounts is a consideration of the technologies behind the creation of the globalized economy. What makes it possible f...

A look at what the American lifestyle has done to the environment—and how to move toward a better future.In the last century, three powerful forces—oil, cars, and suburbs—buoyed the American dream. Yet now, the quality of life in the United States is declining due to these same three forces. Our dependence on oil is a root cause of wars, recessions, and natural disasters. Cars consume an outsize share of our incomes and force us to squander time in traffic. Meanwhi...

This inquiry into the technical advances that shaped the 20th century follows the evolutions of all the principal innovations introduced before 1913 (as detailed in the first volume) as well as the origins and elaborations of all fundamental 20th century advances. The history of the 20th century is rooted in amazing technical advances of 1871-1913, but the century differs so remarkably from the preceding 100 years because of several unprecedented combinations. The 20th century had followed...