Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

Collaboration and augmentation are the foundational principles of innovation.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

I studied what the Germans call the Naturwissenschaften, the natural sciences. Everything from biology to geology. How the clouds are formed, how the animals live, and what makes the rocks. So I know about nature. Period.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

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

Vaclav Smil
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
Vaclav Smil

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

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

I live in a province where we have the cheapest electricity in North America - indeed, in the Western world - but all of it is perfectly renewable because we have beautiful Manitoba Hydro. Every few tens of kilometers, we can put a river dam. Bingo. One gigawatt here. One gigawatt here.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

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

Vaclav Smil
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 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.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

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.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

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

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

I appreciate and love blue-green algae.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

Canadians are hardly assertive or demanding. We don't expect U.S. presidents to bow down to our prime ministers when they visit us in Ottawa, nor are we looking for the occasional kickback on an F-16 deal.

Vaclav Smil
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
Vaclav Smil

Killing animals and eating meat have been significant components of human evolution that had a synergistic relationship with other key attributes that have made us human, with larger brains, smaller guts, bipedalism, and language.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

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.

Vaclav Smil
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
Vaclav Smil

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.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

Most scientific or engineering discoveries would never become successful products without contributions from other scientists or engineers. Every major invention is the child of far-flung parents who may never meet.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

I just don't stand for any nonsense.

Vaclav Smil
Vaclav Smil

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.