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…

— 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…

— Vaclav Smil

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

— Vaclav Smil

...no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but subsystems of the biosphere, the Earth's thin veneer of life, which…

— Vaclav Smil

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…

— Vaclav Smil

Everyone [in higher education] was what I call drillers of deeper wells. These academics sit at the bottom of a deep well…

— Vaclav Smil

Meat is undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food.

— Vaclav Smil

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

— Vaclav Smil

I've read about 80 books a year for the past 50 years. I come from cultural breeding. I don't have a cellphone.…

— Vaclav Smil

“I wrote this book because I wanted to narrate the great, and a truly nation-building, story of US manufacturing—and because I believe…

— Vaclav Smil

Apple! Boy, what a story. No taxes paid, everything made abroad—yet everyone worships them. This new iPhone, there’s nothing new in it.…

— Vaclav Smil

A useful analogy is to see traditional societies as relying on instantaneous (or minimally delayed) and constantly replenished solar income, while modern…

— 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

Your past always leads to who you are.

— Vaclav Smil

I live in a province where we have the cheapest electricity in North America - indeed, in the Western world - but…

— Vaclav Smil

Energy is the only universal currency: one of its many forms must be transformed to another in order for stars to shine,…

— Vaclav Smil

I'm old fashioned. I'm not one of these young guys who think they are so smart that they can prescribe what humanity…

— Vaclav Smil

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

— Vaclav Smil

A brilliant mind having a eureka moment could not create an Intel microprocessor containing a billion transistors any more than one person…

— Vaclav Smil

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

— Vaclav Smil

You cannot increase the efficiency of photosynthesis. We improve the performance of farms by irrigating them and fertilizing them to provide all…

— Vaclav Smil

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

— Vaclav Smil

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

— Vaclav Smil

I'm the product of the classical, old-fashioned European education that is broad-based. You want to get your degree in the world, you…

— Vaclav Smil