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.
More Quotes by Vaclav Smil
Collaboration and augmentation are the foundational principles of innovation.
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.
No human civilization could ever sever our dependence on photosynthesis.
Meat is undoubtedly an environmentally expensive food.
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.
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.