There is no doubt that human evolution has been linked to meat in many fundamental ways. Our digestive tract is not one of obligatory herbivores; our enzymes evolved to digest meat, whose consumption aided higher encephalization and better physical growth. Vaclav Smil Read Quote
Energy use is merely a means to many rewarding ends: economic security, education, health. Vaclav Smil Read Quote
Our increasingly electrified, electronic, and data-driven society places steadily rising demand on reliable baseload power – that is, on electricity available 24/7/365. Servers never sleep, nor does air conditioning during hot nights, and in Asia’s megacities, subways and electric trains take only brief naps between midnight and 5 A.M. Vaclav Smil Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Behind every morsel of bread, fruits, or meat is a large amount of transformed fossil fuels. Vaclav Smil Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Vaclav Smil Read Quote
