Quotes from 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.

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.

A brilliant mind having a eureka moment could not create an Intel microprocessor containing a billion transistors any more than one person could dream up a Boeing 787 from scratch.

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 eating meat. It's part of our evolutionary heritage! Meat has helped to make us what we are. Meat helps to make our big brains.

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.

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

The history of energy use is a sequence of transitions to sources that are cheaper, cleaner, and more flexible.

Economic and technical imperatives - not any preconceived directives - will keep propelling the process of energy transition.

Exceptional circumstances can accelerate the gradual process of energy transitions: France's decision to develop nuclear energy on a grand scale is perhaps the best example of how that can be done by government fiat. In contrast, America's accelerated shift from coal has been driven by an inevitable embrace of cheaper natural gas.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

Obviously, the higher the density of an energy resource, the lower are its transportation (as well as storage) costs, and this means that its production can take place farther away from the centers of demand.

modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on the fossil fuels used in the production of these indispensable materials. No AI, no apps, and no electronic messages will change that.

we will not succeed if our actions are based on myths and misinformation.

Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.

???? (hara hachi bun me, "belly eight parts [in ten] full")—an ancient Confucian precept

during the past 30 years the maximum energy density of batteries has roughly tripled, and even if we were to triple that again densities would still be well below 3,000 Wh/kg in 2050—falling far short of taking a wide-body plane from New York to Tokyo or from Paris to Singapore, something we have been doing daily for decades with kerosene-fueled Boeings and Airbuses.

Numbers may not lie, but individual perceptions of them differ.

Milk has been a key growth factor, be it in Japan or in the Netherlands. Before the Second World War, Dutch males were smaller than American men, but post-1950 US milk consumption declined while in the Netherlands it rose until the 1960s—and it remains higher than in the US. The lesson is obvious: the easiest way to improve a child's chances of growing taller is for them to drink more milk.

In short, for decades it will be impossible to adequately feed the planet without using fossil fuels as sources of energy and raw materials.

When ranked by the size of their labor force, in 1960 11 out of America's 15 largest companies (led by GM, Ford, GE, and United States Steel) were producers of goods employing more than 2.1 million workers; by 2010 just two makers of goods, HP and GE, employing about 600,000 people, were among the top 15, and the group is now dominated by retailers and service-providing firms (Walmart, UPS, McDonald's, Yum, Target).