Smil completed his undergraduate studies and began his graduate work (culminating in the RNDr., an intermediate graduate degree similar to the Anglo-American Master of Philosophy credential, in 1965)[5] at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Charles University in Prague, where he took 35 classes a week, 10 months a year, for five years.[4] "They taught me nature, from geology to clouds," Smil said.[4] After graduation he refused to join the Communist party, undermining his job prospects, though he found employment at a regional planning office.[4] He married Eva, who was studying to be a physician.[4] In 1969, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Eva's graduation, the Smils emigrated to the United States, leaving the country months before a Soviet travel ban shut the borders.[4] "That was not a minor sacrifice, you know?" Smil says.[4] Smil then received his Ph.D. in geography from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of Pennsylvania State University in 1971.[5][4][6]
Careeredit
In 1972, Smil took his first job offer at the University of Manitoba where he remained for decades, until his retirement.[4] He taught introductory environmental science courses among other subjects dealing with energy, atmospheric change, China, population and economic development.[4]
Position on energyedit
Smil is skeptical that there will be a rapid transition to clean energy, believing it will take much longer than many predict.[4] Smil said "I have never been wrong on these major energy and environmental issues because I have nothing to sell," unlike many energy companies and politicians.[4]
Smil noted in 2018 that coal, oil, and natural gas continue to make up 90% of the primary energy sources used in the world. Although renewable energy technologies have improved over time, the global share of energy produced from fossil fuels since 2000 has increased.[4] Smil emphasizes that replacing the use of fossil carbon in the production of primary iron, cement, ammonia, and plastics is a significant and ongoing challenge in the industrial sector. Together, these industries account for 15% of the world's total fossil fuel consumption.[7] Smil stresses the need for energy prices to reflect their true costs, including greenhouse gas emissions, and promotes a decrease in the demand for fossil fuels through energy-saving measures.[8]
Position on economic growthedit
Smil believes economic growth has to end, that all growth is logistic rather than exponential, and that humans could consume much lower levels of materials and energy.[9][10][11]
Receptionedit
Included among Smil's admirers is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates,[12] who has read all of Smil's 36 books.[13] "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie," Gates wrote in 2017.[4] "He's a slayer of bullshit," says David Keith, an energy and climate scientist at Harvard University.[4]
Personal lifeedit
His wife Eva is a physician[4] and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.
He lives in a house with unusually thick insulation, grows some of his own food, and eats meat roughly once a week.[10] He reads 60 to 110 non-technical books a year and keeps a list of all books he has read since 1969. He "does not intend to have a cell phone ever."[14]
Smil is known for being "intensely private", shunning the press while letting his books speak for themselves.[4] At the University of Manitoba, he only ever showed up at one faculty meeting (since the 1980s). The school accepted his reclusiveness so long as he kept teaching and publishing highly rated books.[4]
He has been an invited speaker in more than 300 conferences and workshops in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, European Union and international institutions.
His book How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going was a nominee for the 2022 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy.[19]
Publicationsedit
Booksedit
2023 : Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262048057
2023 : Size: How It Explains the World. Viking/Penguin. ISBN 978-0241506998
2022 : How the World Really Works: A Scientist's Guide to Our Past, Present and Future. Viking/Penguin. ISBN 978-0241454398
"Sputnik at 60". IEEE Spectrum, September 26, 2017.
"A Skeptic Looks at Alternative Energy". IEEE Spectrum, July 2012.
"Energy innovation as a process: Lessons from LNG". Master Resource: A Free-Market Energy Blog, January 11, 2010.
"Two decades later: Nikkei and lessons from the fall". The American, December 29, 2009.
"The Iron Age & coal-based coke: A neglected case of fossil-fuel dependence". Master Resource: A Free-Market Energy Blog, September 17, 2009.
"U.S. energy policy: The need for radical departures". Issues in Science and Technology, Summer 2009:47–50.
"Long-range energy forecasts are no more than fairy tales". Nature 453:154 (2008).
"Moore's curse and the great energy delusion". The American 2(6): 34–41 (2008).
"Water news: bad, good and virtual". American Scientist, 96:399–407 (2008).
"On meat, fish and statistics: The global food regime and animal consumption in the United States and Japan". Japan Focus, October 19, 2008.
James N. Galloway, Marshall Burke, G. Eric Bradford, Rosamond Naylor, Walter Falcon, Ashok K. Chapagain, Joanne C. Gaskell, Ellen McCullough, Harold A. Mooney, Kirsten L. L. Oleson, Henning Steinfeld, Tom Wassenaar and Vaclav Smil. "International trade in meat: The tip of the pork chop". Ambio 36:622–629 (2007).
"The two prime movers of globalization: history and impact of diesel engines and gas turbines". Journal of Global History, 3:373–394 (2007).
"The unprecedented shift in Japan's population: Numbers, age, and prospects". Japan Focus, May 1, 2007.
"Light behind the fall: Japan's electricity consumption, the environment, and economic growth". Japan Focus, April 2, 2007.
"21st century energy: Some sobering thoughts". OECD Observer, 2006.
"Peak oil: A catastrophist cult and complex realities". World Watch 19: 22–24 (2006).
Naylor, R., Steinfeld, H., Falcon, W., Galloway, J., Smil, V., Bradford, E., Alder, J., Mooney, H. "Losing the links between livestock and land". Science 310:1621–1622.
"The next 50 years: Unfolding trends:. Population and Development Review, 31: 605–643 (2005).
"Feeding the world: How much more rice do we need?" In: Toriyama K., Heong K.L., Hardy B., eds. Rice is life: scientific perspectives for the 21st century. Proceedings of the World Rice Research Conference held in Tokyo and Tsukuba, Japan, November 4–7, 2004. Los Baños (Philippines): International Rice Research Institute, pp. 21–23.
"The next 50 Years: Fatal discontinuities". Population and Development Review, 31: 201–236 (2005).
"Improving efficiency and reducing waste in our food system". Environmental Sciences, 1:17–26 (2004).
^Bill Gates Notes: Vaclav Smil on his book, "Making the Modern World" – June 12, 2014
^http://www.vaclavsmil.com/ Official Site of Vaclav Smil
^"Distinguished Professors Emeritus/Emerita | Governance | University of Manitoba". umanitoba.ca. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstPaul Voosen (March 23, 2018). "The Realist". Science Magazine. 359 (6382): 1320–1324. Bibcode:2018Sci...359.1320V. doi:10.1126/science.359.6382.1320. PMID 29567690. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
^ ab"Vaclav Smil, PhD Biography". ProCon.org. Encyclopaedia Britannica. May 5, 2017. Retrieved May 14, 2022.
^Robert Bryce (July 2007). "An Interview with Vaclav Smil". Robert Bryce website. Archived from the original on December 16, 2013.
^Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019, event occurs at 30min from the beginning of his presentation
^Smil, Vaclav (January 2014). "A Global Transition to Renewable Energy Will Take Many Decades". Scientific American. Retrieved July 23, 2021.
^"Vaclav Smil: 'Growth must end. Our economist friends don't seem to realise that' | Science and nature books | the Guardian".
^ abVoosen, Paul (March 21, 2018). "Meet Vaclav Smil, the man who has quietly shaped how the world thinks about energy". Science Magazine.
^Gates, Bill (March 26, 2013). "Humans are using up earth's biomass". GatesNotes: The Blog of Bill Gates.
^King, Ritchie (August 8, 2013). "Meet Vaclav Smil, the Canadian polymath whose books Bill Gates is racing to read". Quartz. Retrieved August 8, 2013.
^Bennet, James (November 2015). "We Need an Energy Miracle". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 14, 2015.
^Vaclav Smil (2019). "Energy Systems: Transition & Innovation". Agora. Retrieved July 30, 2022 – via YouTube.
^"All Fellows: Records 1651 to 1700". Royal Society of Canada. Archived from the original on February 24, 2012.
This Is the Man Bill Gates Thinks You Absolutely Should Be Reading, Wired, 2013/11/25
Desrochers, Pierre. “The Paradoxical Malthusian. A Promethean Perspective on Vaclav Smil’s Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities (MIT Press, 2019) and Energy and Civilization: A History (MIT Press, 2017).” Energies 2020, 13 (20): 5306.