Vaclav Smil

I finally found it.

It's a book about the, it's called Invention and Innovation by Václav Smil.

It has some AI in it, but I think it's not super current.

The reason I'm quoting the book is that he pointed out specifically that a lot of processes in the real world cannot ever become exponential.

Ian and I have been highlighting this for a while.

You can put that food professor tweet up.

We've been highlighting this for a long time, a year, that diesel is the blood that flows in the arteries of Canada, almost anywhere in the world.

Diesel is what fuels industry.

No substance or the world is screaming for diesel because there's really no alternative for diesel.

And, you know.

A great Canadian professor, academic, intellectual, or whatever, Václav Smil, writes about this all the time.

I feel like Canada doesn't give him enough cred.

It's not good news for a lot of people.

One person, for example, who's been critiquing renewable energy's potential to rapidly scale down our carbon emissions is Vaclav Smil, who's an energy expert, a scientist.

He's written dozens of books on energy and industry.

And he called the idea that we can rapidly use renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions quote, the academic equivalent of science fiction.

And I had a friend who recently wrote to Vaclav Smil to ask him about the Green New Deal, about 100 percent renewable energy and so on.

And his response was this.

He said, quote, Please just leave me out of this.

Well, some of the answers might be in biocultural diversities of all our communities and history.

On that same note, I mean, in term of g- providing advice, what books or, or mentors kind of, uh, have had a, the greatest influence or a great influence on your, on, on your thinking that you could kind of recommend?

The single best book I've read in the last five years is by Vaclav Smil, the Canadian economist, a political economist.

It's called "How the World Really Works." And he is so good at putting the pieces together between agriculture and energy, and technology and energy, and industrial use and energy, et-et cetera.

I've-- I highly recommend that book to really, you know, anyone.

Zero carbon, because of all the things we've just looked at, is a very highly unlikely outcome.

This is the cover from a book by Vaclav Smil.

He was a real guru on energy issues.

Over on the left, from the World Bank, how much will tackling climate change cost? This is a few years ago.