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Vaclav Smil

The Seven Books Bill Gates Thinks You Should Read This Summer

Bill Gates is out with his annual summer reading list and, while longer than last year’s, it’s a great place to kick off your summer reading. “Each of these books,” Gates writes, …

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Vaclav Smil: Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequence of Modern Carnivory

What can and should be done about human carnivory? Vaclav Smil answers in this adapted excerpt from Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory: There is no doubt that human …

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Smart People Are Reading These Books

Ok, so you’ve seen the nine books Bill Gates is reading this summer. Gates has some pretty smart friends and they were kind enough to share what they were reading this summer too. ****** Vinod …

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Several Uncomfortable Realities

Something to ponder. A sobering excerpt from Vaclav Smil‘s Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years: The first is that even the most assiduous deployment of the best available …

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Vaclav Smil: Why America is not a New Rome

On television, modern histories of Rome lead one to think that Romans were rather well off, enjoyed a lot of free time, and commanded the largest and most powerful empire in the history of the world. …

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Global Energy: The Latest Infatuations

Vaclav Smil paints a sobering picture of the energy crossroads before us. In a sense, the search for new energy is part of a much broader change whose outcome will determine the fortunes of the …

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