I tilted toward reading more #Canadian #books in 2025, for reasons I probably don’t have to explore here, with some extremely favourable results. Here’s my piece on last year’s top #reads. doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five... #BookSky #CanadaSky #CharlesTaylor #VaclavSmil #Canada
My #best reads list for 2025 was, well, hopelessly #eclectic: #CharlesTaylor, #ManueldeLanda, #VaclavSmil, #PhilipKDick, #IrisMurdoch, #AlisdairMacIntyre, #JamesCScott, #HPLovecraft, etc
#books #BookSky #BestReads #fiction #nonfiction #reading doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...
“A disproportionate share of people in charge of national #policies are #economists, #lawyers and #techno-optimists … who rarely think about the biosphere’s indispensability for the #survival of #human #societies.” - #VaclavSmil, #Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
2 “But #economists have been trying to do precisely that for more than two centuries.” - #VaclavSmil, #Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
#VaclavSmil on #GDP in his book #Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities: “This adulation of a simple quotient seen in isolation is irrational.”
2 “ … and treat the depletion of finite #resources as current income that adds to #wealth.” - #VaclavSmil, #Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities.
photo of 1st page of ToC
photo of 1st content page - note bold terms which refer to other chapter names
photo of 2nd page of ToC
photos of TableOfContents and sample page from #VaclavSmil's #Energies book (1999). #wikibook
4/11
Energy ecologist #VaclavSmil is equally dismissive of SMRs.
Asked about their future, he says: "Give me a call or send me an email once you see such wonders built on schedule, on budget, & in aggregate capacities large enough to make a real difference."
He's not expecting a call for decades.
I’m reading #Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by #VaclavSmil.
#books #BookSky
Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure
#VaclavSmil #BillGates #trp897 #interfm #BookReview #findyourcolors #deltarunespoilers #LYKN #RiyadhSeason #TodosConGrabois
A BILL GATES RECOMMENDED BOOK
More #VaclavSmil, less Malcolm Gladwell.
2 “ … designs or practices: they take early-stage #growth rates, often impressively #exponential, and use them to forecast an imminent dominance of emerging phenomena.” - #VaclavSmil, Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
2 “ … the long-term preservation of the only #biosphere we have.” - #VaclavSmil, #Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities.
So Lazy Sunday, I've finished reading favorites.
Size: How It Explains the World (English Edition)
#VaclavSmil #BillGates #BooksWorthReading #booklog #bookblogger #booktube #lazy897 #findyourcolors #size #world
'There is no author whose books I look forward to more' Bill Gates
#VaclavSmil identified #ammonia, #concrete, #steel, and #plastics as the four material pillars of modern civilisation.
We built the modern world with these pillars, but they also tie us directly to ecological #overshoot, #collapse, and #extinction.
#AUSPOL #Environment #BuiltEnvironment #Ecology
Book recommendations: “How the World Really Works” by #VaclavSmil & “The New Climate War” by @michaelemann.bsky.social & “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by #EdwardTufte
“I do not foresee any imminent break with history in either direction; I do not see any already predetermined outcomes, but rather a complicated trajectory contingent on our - far from foreclosed - choices.” - #VaclavSmil, How the World Really Works
