Vaclav Smil


Václav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China. His name is pronounced as "vah:tslahf" and "smil".

Early life and education

Smil was born during WWII in Plzeň, at that time in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. His father was a police officer and his mother a book keeper. 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 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Charles University in Prague, where he took 35 classes a week, 10 months a year, for 5 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 also Eva's graduation, the Smils emigrated to the US, leaving the country months before a Soviet travel ban shut the borders. "That was not a minor sacrifice, you know?" Smil says. Over the next two years, Smil completed a doctorate in Geography at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University.

Career

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.

Position on energy

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 still supply 90% of the world's primary energy. Despite decades of growth in newer renewable energy technologies, the worldwide proportion of energy supplied by fossil fuels had increased since 2000. He emphasizes that "the greatest long-term challenge in the industrial sector will be to displace fossil carbon used in the production of primary iron, cement, ammonia and plastics" which account for 15% of the total fossil fuel consumption globally.

Position on economic growth

Smil believes economic growth has to end, and that humans could consume much lower levels of materials and energy.

Reception

Included among Smil's admirers is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has read all of Smil's 36 books. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie," Gates wrote in 2017. "I'll forever be Bill Gates's scientist," Smil ruefully said. "He's a slayer of bullshit," says David Keith, an energy and climate scientist at Harvard University.

Personal life

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. The school accepted his reclusiveness so long as he kept teaching and publishing highly rated books.

Awards and honors

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology in 2000. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of FP Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013, he was appointed by the Governor General to the Order of Canada. In the fall of 2013, he was the EADS Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.
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.

Publications

Books

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