Vaclav Smil Quotes

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

"Collaboration and augmentation are the foundational principles of innovation."

"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."

"Renewable energy is very significant."

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

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

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

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

"I really don't think I have anything special to say."

"There is no reason we can't design a car to last for 35 years instead of six or seven."

"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."

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

"No human civilization could ever sever our dependence on photosynthesis."

"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."

"Meat is undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food."

"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."

"Economic and technical imperatives - not any preconceived directives - will keep propelling the process of energy transition."

"When you talk in terms of electricity, renewable is very important. Hydro in Manitoba. Hydro in Sweden. Wind in Denmark. Of course, those are very important."

"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."

"Most innovation is not done by research institutes and national laboratories. It comes from manufacturing - from companies that want to extend their product reach, improve their costs, increase their returns. What's very important is in-house research."

"Innovation usually arises from somebody taking a product already in production and making it better: better glass, better aluminum, a better chip. Innovation always starts with a product."

"Mass adoption of renewable energies would thus necessitate a fundamental reshaping of modern energy infrastructures."

"I appreciate and love blue-green algae."

"I just don't stand for any nonsense."

"Your past always leads to who you are."

"I wouldn't put a big trust in what people in Silicon Valley say. They may be good at manipulating ones and zeroes and writing software, but beyond that, their contribution to human progress has been pretty dismal. I'm not impressed."

"I'm old fashioned. I'm not one of these young guys who think they are so smart that they can prescribe what humanity ought to do. Humanity never learns any lessons. Prescriptions don't matter. We already know exactly what to do. We just don't do it."

"Evolution has made us omnivores, and substantial quantities of meat can be produced by feeding plant matter whose production does not directly compete with growing food crops: crop residues, food processing waste, low-quality grain, and controlled grazing by ruminants."

"All I want is to be left alone to write my books."

"Most of the energy in North America is just consuming - Wal-Mart, shopping centres, government offices - or personal consumption: houses, cars, flying to Hawaii, gambling in Las Vegas. We could live affluent lifestyles with half as much energy."