A cold weekend is the perfect time to finish Vaclav Smil’s new book.
Smil restores your faith that complex issues can be communicated clearly and with real evidence.
People working in public policy and lobbying would be well served by reading Smil and emulating his style. Those who did so would stand out in Brussels as beacons of lucidity and common sense.
This latest book will upset the many who believe in fairy tale solutions. A lot of what is passed off as sound public policy amounts verges on belief in the Second Coming tomorrow and some “revolutionary” breakthrough that fails to deliver.
Calling Out
Smil’s hints to sanity are amusing:
- Ambitions and aspiration are one thing, realities another (page 171).
- To put it mildly – quote unrealistic (page 158)
- On Paleo: There can be no doubt that the promoters of a highly meaty dishes are especially delusional and that they have no thought about how to supply the requisbst amounts of meat without further massive deployment of the energies and material resources required to multiply the production of meat (page.130). He is not glowing in praise for a vegan diet.
Solutions
As to solutions to feed the world he provides :”No unprecedented gains and no untried radical solutions are required to provide the next generation with adequate food supplyL we just need to keep on improving production efficiencies, reducing waste, adjusting diets, and promoting measures that reduce food’s overall environmental impact (page 201)”.