Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019

What people said

carapace · 2024-09 · Strong recommendation

> the degrowth position is that people are inevitably going to lead worse lives than at present, but that we can choose between things getting kind of bad, by systematically pursuing degrowth, and things getting apocalyptically bad, which is what will happen if we continue pursuing growth I can't speak for others who advocate for degrowth, but that seems about right to me, with the caveat that I believe ecologically harmonious lifestyles would be more fun and fulfilling than what we have now. The challenge is to return to harmony with Nature while still enjoying the benefits of science and technology. - - - - > fourth, the most urgent environmental problem for human quality of life is global warming, and atmospheric carbon capture is necessary to solve it, a measure which will almost certainly require vast expansion of human energy exploitation and therefore economic growth (because you can have growth without increased resource exploitation, but probably not vastly increased resource exploitation without growth) Václav Smil has me convinced that atmospheric carbon capture on a scale great enough to counter-act our continued fossil fuel use is a pipe dream, pretty much for the reason you say: it takes too much energy to sequester the carbon. Here he is at Driva Climate Investment Meeting in 2019. It's a great lecture IMO, and he starts bagging on carbon capture around minute 39: [VIDEO]

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carapace · 2022-03 · Strong recommendation

> the ability to dramatically reduce world hunger is a direct consequence of humans' capacity to improve crop yields such as rice and corn through breeding and engineering. Not through "breeding and engineering", through artificial nitrogen fertilizer. We have been turning oil into people . > prevented the starvation of millions of people. That delayed the starvation of millions of people and now we are facing the prospect of the starvation of billions of people. FWIW, I do applauded Maddie and her team, and I wish them luck and hope they succeed. But the only way we are going to avert disaster is to stop taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air. That's it. Here's a fascinating talk by Václav Smil at the Driva Climate Investment Meeting in 2019, where he makes the point better than I ever could: [VIDEO] - - - - edit: i'm rate limited at the moment. Replying to HWR_14 below Dwarf wheat was generated through selective breeding, same as the last N-thousand years. And it was only necessary due to the defects of using artificial nitrogen fertilizer: > Taller wheat grasses better compete for sunlight, but tend to collapse under the weight of the extra grain—a trait called lodging—from the rapid growth spurts induced by nitrogen fertilizer Borlaug used in the poor soil. To prevent this, he bred wheat to favor shorter, stronger stalks that could better support larger seed heads. [LINK] Anyway, my point isn't that science doesn't work or isn't good, it's that engine

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carapace · 2021-10 · Strong recommendation

Here's a fascinating talk by Václav Smil at the Driva Climate Investment Meeting in 2019: [VIDEO] Bill Gates calls him "one of my favorite thinkers" and reviews his recent book "Growth": > Vaclav Smil ... reaches the ... conclusion: Earth is fragile and “before it is too late, we should embark in earnest on the most fundamental existential [task] of making any future growth compatible with the long-term preservation of the only biosphere we have.” [LINK]

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