Vaclav Smil Quotes

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Vaclav Smil

Profession : Scientist

Birth : December 9, 1943

Energy use is merely a means to many rewarding ends: economic security, education, health.

Vaclav Smil

In every society, manufacturing builds the lower middle class. If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots, and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks.

Vaclav Smil

The great hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is wishful thinking.

Vaclav Smil

Renewable energy is very significant.

Vaclav Smil

Without any physical, chemical, and biological fundamentals, and with equally poor understanding of basic economic forces, it is no wonder that people will believe anything.

Vaclav Smil

America tends to assume Silicon Valley-style innovators can drive quick and transformative changes, but even Silicon Valley's would-be masters of the universe have discovered that energy transitions are subject to time spans and technical constraints that defy their reach.

Vaclav Smil

This is the question I'm asking: Do Americans live twice as long because they consume twice as much energy as Europeans? Are you people twice as smart as the average Frenchman? Do you enjoy life twice as much as the average Danish guy? What have we gotten for consuming twice as much energy as Europe? What have we gotten in return?

Vaclav Smil

Meat consumption is a part of our evolutionary heritage; meat production has been a major component of modern food systems. Carnivory should remain, within limits, an important component of a civilization that finally must learn how to maintain the integrity of its only biosphere.

Vaclav Smil

Behind every morsel of bread, fruits, or meat is a large amount of transformed fossil fuels.

Vaclav Smil

We're a society that demands electricity 24/7. This is very difficult with sun and wind.

Vaclav Smil

There is no doubt that human evolution has been linked to meat in many fundamental ways. Our digestive tract is not one of obligatory herbivores; our enzymes evolved to digest meat, whose consumption aided higher encephalization and better physical growth.

Vaclav Smil

I am probably one of the last people on the planet without a cell phone.

Vaclav Smil

People shouldn't be living in certain places - on earthquake faults or on flood plains. But they do, and there are consequences.

Vaclav Smil

No human civilization could ever sever our dependence on photosynthesis.

Vaclav Smil

If everyone wants to eat like people in Bangladesh, then we would have food coming out of everybody's ears.

Vaclav Smil

Meat is undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food.

Vaclav Smil

Some countries that grow lots of pork, like Denmark and the Netherlands, are either eliminating antibiotics or reducing them. We have to do that. Otherwise we'll create such antibiotic resistance, it will be just terrible.

Vaclav Smil

You cannot increase the efficiency of photosynthesis. We improve the performance of farms by irrigating them and fertilizing them to provide all these nutrients. But we cannot keep on doubling the yield every two years. Moore's law doesn't apply to plants.

Vaclav Smil

Meat eaters don't like me because I call for moderation, and vegetarians don't like me because I say there's nothing wrong with eating meat. It's part of our evolutionary heritage! Meat has helped to make us what we are. Meat helps to make our big brains.

Vaclav Smil

The history of energy use is a sequence of transitions to sources that are cheaper, cleaner, and more flexible.

Vaclav Smil