{"id":61383,"date":"2022-01-09T10:35:44","date_gmt":"2022-01-09T15:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61383"},"modified":"2022-01-09T10:35:44","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T15:35:44","slug":"vaclav-smil-we-must-leave-growth-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61383","title":{"rendered":"Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"article-header inline horizontal  has-secondary-zone\">\n<div class=\"lede-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"primary-area\">\n<div class=\"article-header-section\">\n<h3 class=\"headline-primary\" data-editable=\"overrideHeadline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2019\/09\/vaclav-smil-on-the-need-to-abandon-growth.html?fbclid=IwAR1mI0Tv4yQ2nLFthnpG3UKLfruMK0xy-1lemlw_ZSeRWojzEOIvJG102cQ\">Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"body\">\n<div class=\"article-content inline\" data-editable=\"content\">\n<div class=\"lede-image-wrapper inline horizontal has-secondary-area\">\n<div class=\"image-wrapper\"><picture><source srcset=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.2x.rhorizontal.w700.jpg 2x\" media=\"(min-resolution: 192dpi) and (min-width: 1180px), (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (min-width: 1180px)\" \/><source srcset=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 1180px) \" \/><source srcset=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.2x.rhorizontal.w700.jpg 2x\" media=\"(min-resolution: 192dpi) and (min-width: 768px), (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) and (min-width: 768px)\" \/><source srcset=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 768px)\" \/><source srcset=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.2x.rsquare.w700.jpg\" media=\"(min-resolution: 192dpi), (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2)\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"lede-image image-zoom\" src=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.rsquare.w700.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-src=\"https:\/\/pyxis.nymag.com\/v1\/imgs\/908\/092\/e2a6d87c42ae5438cccd75a3e877284937-23-climate-vaclav-smil.rsquare.w700.jpg\" data-content-img=\"\" \/><\/picture><\/div>\n<div class=\"lede-image-data\">\n<div class=\"mobile-secondary-area\">\n<aside class=\"article-details_heading-with-paragraph \" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/article-details\/instances\/ck0xx0ye4004r3g62qcsl3kg2@published\">\n<div class=\"article-details-info\">\n<p class=\"article-details-body\" data-editable=\"body\">Illustration: Stevie Remsberg\/Intelligencer. Photo: Andreas Laszlo Konrath<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph_drop-cap\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/ck0xwdwha00v8feye7latxer4@published\" data-word-count=\"94\"><strong>On September 23,<\/strong><em>\u00a0the United Nations opened its Climate Action Summit here in New York, three days after the\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2019\/09\/greta-thunberg-climate-change-movement.html\"><em>Global Climate Strike, led by Greta Thunberg<\/em><\/a><em>, swept through thousands of cities worldwide. To mark the occasion, Intelligencer will be publishing \u201cState of the World,\u201d a series of in-depth interviews with climate leaders from Bill Gates to Naomi Klein and Rhiana Gunn-Wright to William Nordhaus interrogating just how they see the precarious climate future of the planet \u2014 and just how hopeful they think we should all be about avoiding catastrophic warming. (Unfortunately, very few are hopeful.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/ck0xwj1vk00213g62yp1t3hre@published\" data-word-count=\"79\">Vaclav Smil cuts an unusual figure in the climate world \u2014 an iconoclastic Czech-Canadian scientist, he is often called the person who understands energy transitions better than anyone else in the world. (Bill Gates is a particular fan.) But his view of energy transitions is, famously, dour \u2014 that it will take, at least, many more decades to produce a transition to renewable energy than most analysts and advocates predict and that a total transition may prove tremendously difficult.<\/p>\n<p class=\"clay-paragraph\" data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/ck0xwk0zw000v3g62gbpnoc6o@published\" data-word-count=\"55\">In his new book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/books\/growth\"><em>Growth<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a dense, 500-page treatise that covers everything from \u201cmicroorganisms to megacities,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2019\/09\/book-excerpt-vaclav-smils-growth.html\">whose afterword we\u2019re excerpting here<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Smil makes perhaps an even-more-off-putting proposition: that in order to \u201censure the habitability of the biosphere,\u201d we must at the very least move away from prioritizing growth and perhaps abandon it entirely.<\/p>\n<p data-editable=\"text\" data-uri=\"nymag.com\/intelligencer\/_components\/clay-paragraph\/instances\/ck0xwk0zw000v3g62gbpnoc6o@published\" data-word-count=\"55\"><strong>Let me start by asking you about the very end of the book. I know so much of this was written in a spirit of caution and care and wanting to avoid drawing long-term, large-scale conclusions from the material. But from my read, at least, it ends on a quite definitive note&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vaclav Smil: We Must Leave Growth Behind Illustration: Stevie Remsberg\/Intelligencer. Photo: Andreas Laszlo Konrath On September 23,\u00a0the United Nations opened its Climate Action Summit here in New York, three days after the\u00a0Global Climate Strike, led by Greta Thunberg, swept through thousands of cities worldwide. To mark the occasion, Intelligencer will be publishing \u201cState of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[24472,391,32425,5934],"class_list":["post-61383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-david-wallace-wells","tag-growth","tag-new-york-intelligencer","tag-vaclav-smil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61384,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61383\/revisions\/61384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}