Vaclav Smil, whose research spans the fields of energy, environment, and technical innovation, is professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and member of the Order of Canada. All of his books attract wide interest. Whatever the viewpoint, authoritativeness is extensively acknowledged to this author, whose writings—more than 40 books and about 500 papers—offer valuable information in terms of data, interconnections, and historical perspective on such fundamental issues correlating technology, resources, and population change that anyone can use as references for their studies, aiming at either scientific or humanistic approaches.
In 2022, while presenting his previous issued book How the World Really Works (Penguin 2022), Smil claimed he is neither a pessimist nor an optimist about the contemporary world (p. 6). He defined himself as a scientist trying to explain a global system in which to get a chicken to the table takes...