Numbers Don’t Lie – A book you should read, but most won’t

If you are serious about public policy making, you’ll read Vaclav Smil.

If you want to better understand the solutions for some of the most challenging issues, you’ll read his work.

Smil is one of the most influential minds of today. Sadly,  most people have never bothered to read his publications. This Czech emigre, is hardly known in Brussels.

A Mr Bill Gates, of Redmond,  Washington, USA,  claims to have read nearly all of Smil’s work and wrote:

“I wait for new Smil books, the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie.”

He brings a straight forward and plain English approach to explain complex issues.

His latest book, ‘Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World‘, dropped through the post box on Thursday. All 300 pages were digested by Sunday afternoon.

This book is his most accessible book to date. It is similar to the late Hans Rosling’s Factfulness. 

Who should read it

If you think that the flow of Communications from the Berlaymont will improve the lot of the rainfirests, the blue whale, and the meaninfully reduce Co2 emmissions, please don’t read this book.

If you prefer dealing with reality, and enjoy sober and informed analysis, read it.

I enjoy Smil’s work because he has a knack of making the complex clear. Years ago, he explained to me the real challenge of the energy transition. Just because politicians hope it will hope it will happen, does not mean it is going to happen.

Some useful things picked up along the way

You come away reading the 71 chapters better informed. You’ll realise that anyone offering easy solutions to complex public policy challenges is hoodwinking you, or just faking it. Whilst there are easy solutions to some problems – like treble glazed windows, wasting less food, eating less meat –  there are not too many of them.

Smil has a way with words which I enjoy. He writes “The need for more compact, more flexible, larger scale, less costly electricity storage is self-evident. But, the miracle has been slow coming” (p.165).

Anyone promising a climate-neutral world by 2050 is not going to like the book. He writes:

” That is not impossible – but it is very unlikely. Reaching that coal would require nothing short of a fundemental of the global transformation of the global economy on scales and at a speed unprecedented in human history, a task that would be impossible to to without major economic and social dislocations …. The contrasts between expressed concerns about global warming, the continued release of record volumes of carbon, and our capabilities to change that in the near time could not be starker”

Innovation is not as fast as you hope

A lot of people think that innovation works on Moore’s law. The exponential annual growth of 35% a year is something for electronic components.  This rate of progress has not happened much elsewhere in the real world. For most other things, you need to settle down for exponential growth of between 1.5% to 3% (if you are lucky). The hope that technology is going to solve everything overnight or renewable green  energy is going to provide 99% of our energy in the next 5 years is unlikley going to happen.  When you realise that the pace of change is gradual, and not as fast as some people making decisions think it is, you need to move beyond hope and back to what is realistic.

It won’t be read by many

It should be read by a lot of people in Brussels. I won’t be. Few people read today, even people who hold themselves out as public policy experts.

Reading is for me is still the most effective way I have found ta better way to understand something. It is a good way to take on board new evidence to support better thinking.

Smil writes more in an year than most people read in a lifetime. It appears he has no mobile phone and ignores social media. Success may leave clues here.

What you’ll find out that publishing a new Communication won’t lead to a better tomorrow.