1 Smil, a distinguished
emeritus professor
at the University of
Manitoba, has
published more than
40 books.They include
‘‘Growth: From
Microorganisms to
Megacities’’; ‘‘Global
Catastrophes and
Trends: The Next 50
Years’’; and ‘‘The
Earth’s Biosphere:
Evolution, Dynamics,
and Change.’’2 The United Nations
Climate Change
Conference held in
Glasgow last fall.3 Especially
considering that we
have yet to develop
a widespread and
widely agreed upon
method of carbon
sequestration.4 The argument
proposed by the
17th-century French
philosopher Blaise
Pascal that belief in
God is a good bet
because the
potential benefits
far outweigh
any drawbacks.5 That was in a
paper published
by a nonprofit arm of
the Spain-based
natural-gas-and-
electricity company
Naturgy, in which
Smil took aim at the
climate activist’s
contention that
moving from coal
to natural gas
was tantamount
to breaking ‘‘our
OxyContin habit by
taking up heroin.’’6 In Smil’s view, that
means ‘‘doing things
on the margins’’ —
i.e., with far greater
efficiency and
less waste than we
do them now.7 An electricity
distribution network
that is able to
respond dynamically
and proactively to
changing conditions
and energy demands
and adapt to the
latest communication
technology.15headlines. We’ve been aware of this for
30 years, on a planetary scale — all these
I.P.C.C. meetings. Our emissions have
been going up steadily every year. So
here’s the question: Why haven’t we done
anything? I could give you a list of things
we could do but we haven’t done. Why do
we keep saying it’s a catastrophic problem
but do nothing about it?
Because of systemic and institutional
inertia combined with vested interests
working against change. But you aren’t
suggesting that because we haven’t done
enough in the past, then we don’t need to
do something in the future? No. I’m just
telling you that this is a totally unprece-
dented problem, and people don’t realize
how diffi cult it will be to deal with. You
don’t have to have 200 countries to sign
on the dotted line to reduce emissions.
But you have to have at least all the big
emitters: China, the United States, India,
Russia. What are the chances today of Rus-
sia, China and the U.S. signing on as to the
actual reduction of emissions by 2030? In
an ideal world, we could cut our emissions
if we put our minds into it.^6 But it has to be
done by all these actors in concert.
So how do you understand the risk of
climate change? Are we just screwed?
The key to understanding risk — forget
about climate change — is very simple.
It’s discounting the future. People will eat
pork bellies and drink a liter of alcohol
every day because the joy of eating pork
belly and drinking surpasses the possi-
ble bad payoff 30 years down the road.
Suppose we start investing like crazy and
start bringing down the carbon as rapid-
ly as possible. The fi rst benefi ciaries will
be people living in the 2070s because of
what’s already in the system. The tempera-
ture will keep rising even as we are reduc-
ing these emissions. So you are asking
people now to make quote-unquote sac-
rifi ces while the fi rst benefi ts will accrue
to their children and the real benefi ts will
accrue to their grandchildren. You have to
redo the basic human wiring in the brain
to change this risk analysis and say, I value
2055 or 2060 as much as I value tomorrow.
None of us is wired to think that way.
I wonder if you and I might just have
different ideas about human behav-
ior. Isn’t it in our nature to help our
children survive? Or, I don’t know, I
eat much less meat than I used to; I’m
moving into a new house and looking
at solar panels and heat pumps. Theseon the basis of natural law and thermody-
namics and energy conversions, and the
fact is if I want to smelt my steel, I need
a certain amount of carbon or hydrogen
to do it. The Red Book of Mao or Putin’s
speeches or Donald Trump is no help in
that. We need less politics to solve our
problems. We need to look at the realities
of life and to see how we can practically
aff ect them.
You’ve talked elsewhere about how the
real challenge in decarbonizing is in
the developing world, where countries
will rely on burning carbon as they try
to ramp up building their infrastruc-
ture. Is there an argument to be made,
though, that countries developing new
infrastructure have incentives to orient
themselves toward renewables? There
are real-world examples: Indonesia has
made a commitment to electric vehicles;
Thailand is investing in solar energy. The
more photovoltaics the better. However,
to have photovoltaics on a large scale, you
have to have interconnections. If the coun-
try doesn’t have any grid or has a weak
national grid, how will you distribute elec-
tricity? Countries need electricity for giant
plants, for making chemicals, processing
foods, making textiles. So you have to
have photovoltaics on a large scale, which
means a big electric grid. Even the U.S.
has a poor active grid.^7 So forget about
Nigeria. No country in the world today
runs itself on pure photovoltaics.
Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Not tomor-
row. Again, it’s the scale. You see, you
have almost become a victim. It’s inevi-
table because you are living in it, you are
soaked in it, you are in New York City
— this pushing people to one side or the
other. We don’t need pushing to the sides.
What we need is the dull, factually cor-
rect and accurate middle. Because only
from that middle will come the solutions.
Solutions never come from extremes. It’s
also irresponsible to state the problem in
ways where, when you look closer, it’s not
like that. There are these billions of people
who want to burn more fossil fuel. They
will burn it unless you give them some-
thing diff erent. But who will give them
something diff erent? You have to recog-
nize the realities of the world, and the real-
ities of the world tend to be unpleasant,
discouraging and depressing. is interview has been edited and condensed
from two conversations.aren’t things I was thinking about until
climate change caused a social tipping
point. So am I naïve, or are you pessi-
mistic? Yes and no. It depends. The point
is that we are being greedy, we are wast-
ing yet improving our effi ciencies at the
same time. This is where I become unpal-
atable to the media because I do not have
one message like ‘‘everything is getting
better.’’ I see it as checkered. People do
sacrifi ce for our children, take the right
steps. But the same people who will buy
a solar panel and heat pump will buy an
S.U.V. People will stop eating meat, then
fl y for a vacation in Toscana. We are messy,
hard-to-defi ne individuals. We are subject
to fashions and whims — this is the beau-
ty of humanity. Most of us are trying to
do the right things with climate, but it is
diffi cult when you have to move on the
energy front, food front, materials front.
People have to realize that this problem is
unprecedented because of the numbers —
billions of everything — and the pressure
of acting rapidly as we never acted before.
This doesn’t make it hopeless, but it makes
it excruciatingly more diffi cult.
Do you think we are facing a civiliza-
tional threat in climate change? I can-
not answer that question without having
the threat defi ned. What does it mean?
You’ve seen it with Covid: Was Covid
an unprecedented catastrophe, as many
people portrayed it? Or was it nothing,
as other people portrayed it? Anti-lock-
down, anti-mask people would say, Oh,
it’s another fl u. Clearly it was not another
fl u. But you know as well that it was not an
unprecedented catastrophe. What do you
want me to say? I cannot tell you that we
don’t have a problem because we do have
a problem. But I cannot tell you it’s the end
of the world by next Monday because it is
not the end of the world by next Monday.
What’s the point of you pressing me to
belong to one of these groups? We have a
problem; it will be diffi cult to solve. Even
more diffi cult than people think.
Does your understanding of the sci-
ence around energy and climate change
compel you in any particularly political
directions? No. I used to live in the west-
ernmost part of the evil empire, what’s
now the Czech Republic. They forever
turned me off any stupid politics because
they politicized everything. So it is now,
unfortunately, in the West. Everything’s
politics. No it is not! You can be on this
Opening page: Source photograph by David Lipnowski. Opposite page: University of Manitoba. side or that side, but the real world works