A biography for Vaclav Smilhasn’t been written yet.
“I wouldn't put a big trust in what people in Silicon Valley say. They may be good at manipulating ones and zeroes and writing software, but beyond that, their contribution to human progress has been pretty dismal. I'm not impressed.”
“Renewable energy is very significant.”
“If everyone wants to eat like people in Bangladesh, then we would have food coming out of everybody's ears.”
“Canadians are hardly assertive or demanding. We don't expect U.S. presidents to bow down to our prime ministers when they visit us in Ottawa, nor are we looking for the occasional kickback on an F-16 deal.”
“America tends to assume Silicon Valley-style innovators can drive quick and transformative changes, but even Silicon Valley's would-be masters of the universe have discovered that energy transitions are subject to time spans and technical constraints that defy their reach.”
“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.”
“I am probably one of the last people on the planet without a cell phone.”
“Economic and technical imperatives - not any preconceived directives - will keep propelling the process of energy transition.”
“Some countries that grow lots of pork, like Denmark and the Netherlands, are either eliminating antibiotics or reducing them. We have to do that. Otherwise we'll create such antibiotic resistance, it will be just terrible.”
“No human civilization could ever sever our dependence on photosynthesis.”
“Energy use is merely a means to many rewarding ends: economic security, education, health.”
“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.”
“The great hope for a quick and sweeping transition to renewable energy is wishful thinking.”
“Most of the energy in North America is just consuming - Wal-Mart, shopping centres, government offices - or personal consumption: houses, cars, flying to Hawaii, gambling in Las Vegas. We could live affluent lifestyles with half as much energy.”
“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.”
“When you talk in terms of electricity, renewable is very important. Hydro in Manitoba. Hydro in Sweden. Wind in Denmark. Of course, those are very important.”
“Without any physical, chemical, and biological fundamentals, and with equally poor understanding of basic economic forces, it is no wonder that people will believe anything.”
“In every society, manufacturing builds the lower middle class. If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots, and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks.”
“Collaboration and augmentation are the foundational principles of innovation.”
“Meat is undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food. Large animals have inherently low efficiency of converting feed to muscle, and only modern broilers can be produced with less than two units of feed per unit of meat.”