Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil CM ( born December 9, 1943 in Pilsen) is a Canadian Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He mainly deals with interdisciplinary questions on the topics of energy, environment, food, population, economy, history, and public policy.

Life and work

Smil studied at the Charles University at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, where he received his doctorate in 1965. 1969, shortly after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact countries in the CSSR he went to the United States where he studied at the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. completed.

Smil says that globalization would lead only to the surface to a convergence of living standards. In fact, in recent years is the inequality in the so-called developed world, including the United States and in Canada, rose sharply.

"The surface june SEEM to be getting flatter (the same brands, cars, small electronics, the world of Sony, Toyota and LG, are Encountered from Seoul to Soweto ). But underneath, the differences (economic but cultural and therefore, most distressingly, the religious ones ) are Actually getting Greater. This is not only in China and India ( where the proverbial tide lifts all boats, but Those Of The new urban class float now Relatively lot higher than Decades ago) but for the past generation even in the U.S. and Canada, where inequality is Increasing. Think of nearly 50 million Americans living on food stamps. "

In 2010 he was counted by the magazine Foreign Policy of the 100 most influential global thinkers ( No. 49 ).

In the fall of 2013, he has been EADS Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.

Publications

Monographs

  • Biomass Energies: Resources, Links, Constraints. Plenum Press, New York 1983.
  • The Bad Earth: Environmental Degradation in China. Sharpe, Armonk 1984.
  • Carbon Nitrogen Sulfur: Human Interference in Grand Biospheric Cycles. Plenum Press, New York 1985.
  • Energy Food Environment: Myths Realities Options. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987.
  • Energy in China 's Modernization. Sharpe, Armonk 1988.
  • General Energetics: Energy in the Biosphere and Civilization. Wiley, New York 1991.
  • Global Ecology: Environmental Change and Social Flexibility. Routledge, London 1993.
  • China 's Environment: An Inquiry into the Limits of National Development. Sharpe, Armonk 1993.
  • Energy in World History. Westview Press, Boulder 1994.
  • Energies: An Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1998.
  • Cycles of Life: Civilization and the Biosphere. Scientific American Library, New York 2000.
  • Feeding the World: A Challenge for the 21st Century. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000.
  • Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001.
  • The Earth 's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics and Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002.
  • China 's Past, China 's Future. RoutledgeCurzon, New York, Londres, 2004.
  • Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact. Oxford University Press, New York, 2005.
  • Transforming the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006.
  • Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007.
  • Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2008, ISBN 978-0262195867.
  • Oil: A Beginner 's Guide. Oneworld, Oxford, 2008.
  • Why America is Not a New Rome. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-262-19593-5.
  • Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate.AEI Press, Washington, DC 2010, ISBN 978-0-8447-4328-8.
Foreign Policy (magazine) Integrated Authority File
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