(2013-11-25) Smil Interview

Clive Thompson interviews Vaclav Smil (one of Bill Gates' favorite authors). His nearly three dozen books have analyzed the world’s biggest challenges—the future of energy, food production, and manufacturing—with nuance and detail. They’re among the most data-heavy books you’ll find, with a remarkable way of framing basic facts.

*In every society, manufacturing builds the lower Middle Class (Job Creation). If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks... Innovation usually arises from somebody taking a product already in production and making it better (D And D)... Only two countries have done this (Job Training) well: Germany and Switzerland. They’ve both maintained strong manufacturing sectors and they share a key thing: Kids go into ApprenticeShip programs at age 14 or 15.

Can IT jobs replace the lost manufacturing jobs? No, of course not. These are totally fungible jobs. You could hire people in Russia or Malaysia—and that’s what companies are doing. (Off Shoring)

We’re a society that demands electricity 24/7. This is very difficult with sun and wind (Alternative Energy). Look at Germany, where they heavily subsidize renewable energy. When there’s no wind or sun, they boost up their old coal-fired power plants. The result: Germany has massively increased coal imports from the US... The basic problem was that we rushed into Nuclear Power. We took HymanRickover’s reactor for submarines and pushed it so America would beat Russia. And that’s just the wrong reactor. It was done too fast with too little forethought.

So all we’ve got left is reducing consumption. But who’s going to do that? My wife and I did. We downscaled our house (Single Family Home). It took me two years to find a subdivision where they’d let me build a custom house smaller than 2,000 square feet.

Meat eaters don’t like me because I call for moderation, and vegetarians don’t like me because I say there’s nothing wrong with eating meat. It’s part of our evolutionary heritage! Meat has helped to make us what we are. Meat helps to make our big brains. The problem is with eating 200 pounds of meat per capita per year (Three Food Rules)... Some countries that grow lots of pork, like Denmark and the Netherlands, are either eliminating Antibiotic-s or reducing them. We have to do that. Otherwise we’ll create such antibiotic resistance, it will be just terrible. *