Vaclav Smil

He has also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.

Vaclav Smil studied at Pennsylvania State University and Charles University. The recorded working language is Czech and English. The field of work recorded is energy industry, natural environment and natural resource. Employment is recorded with University of Manitoba. Works named in the authority record are The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change and Numbers Don’t Lie. Distinctions recorded are Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

• Name — Vaclav Smil • Born — 9 December 1943 • Birthplace — Plzeň, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia • Citizenship — Canadian • Field — Environmental science, public policy studies • Workplaces — University of Manitoba • Education — Charles University in Prague, Pennsylvania State University • Thesis Year — 1969 • Thesis Title — "Světová a československá energetika" Trans. "Energy Policy in Czechoslovakia and the world."

Smil was born during World War II in Plzeň, at that time in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (present-day Czech Republic). His father was a police officer and his mother a bookkeeper. Growing up in a remote mountain town in the Plzeň Region, Smil cut wood daily to keep the home heated. This provided an early lesson in energy efficiency and density. 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) at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Charles University in Prague, where he took up to 35 hours of lectures a week, 10 months a year, for five years. "They taught me nature, from geology to clouds," Smil said. After graduation he refused to join the Communist party, undermining his job prospects, though he found employment at a regional planning office. He married Eva, who was studying to be a physician. 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. "That was not a minor sacrifice, you know?" Smil says. Smil then received his Ph.D. in geography from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of Pennsylvania State University in 1971.

In 1972, Smil took his first job offer at the University of Manitoba where he remained for decades, until his retirement. He taught introductory environmental science courses among other subjects dealing with energy, atmospheric change, China, population and economic development.

Smil is skeptical that there will be a rapid transition to clean energy, believing it will take much longer than many predict. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

His wife Eva is a physician 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. 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." Smil is known for being "intensely private", shunning the press while letting his books speak for themselves. 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.

• "Good Eats". Inference, vol. 5, no. 1 (December 12, 2019) • "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). • "Global material cycles". Encyclopedia of Earth, June 2, 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). *

• Surviving Progress, a 2011 Canadian documentary in which Smil appears • Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, a 2019 Netflix Documentary in which Smil appears

Vaclav Smil was born on 9 December 1943 in Plzeň. Smil held the nationality of Canada and Czechoslovakia. Smil was educated at Pennsylvania State University and Charles University. Smil worked as geographer, economist, university teacher and scientist, and the authority record catalogues a further 5 occupations under the same name, among them writer, science communicator, naturalist, teacher and researcher. Smil was employed by University of Manitoba. Smil worked in Czech and English.