Vaclav Smil Quotes

The communities and countries best at using energy to optimize a microclimate for human life are also the ones whose people have the longest average lifespans. Canada, Sweden, and Iceland - places with inhospitable winter weather - are frontrunners in sustaining human health and life.

Research has shown that people who volunteer often live longer.

I think that age as a number is not nearly as important as health. You can be in poor health and be pretty miserable at 40 or 50. If you're in good health, you can enjoy things into your 80s.

May you live as long as you want and not want as long as you live.

I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living.

People don't want to give up their SUVs. They don't want to turn the thermostat down in the winter and up in the summer.

If you have the feeling of choice, if you feel free, you will be better off. And when I say better off I mean that if people feel they have control over their lives, they call in for fewer sick days from work. They have a lesser probability of having a heart attack or stroke. They live longer. They're happier.

It's pretty obvious that Western lifestyles which rely on gigantic amounts of electricity use up far more resources than a subsistence-based life. A little more poverty would be a good thing.

Typically, market-driven growth spawns urbanisation and leads to migration. Urban centres expand into humongous entities that thrive on an unending supply of energy.

The United States consumes power per land-area at a rate three times the average. Even though they are more energy efficient, densely populated industrial countries like Germany, Britain and Japan have even bigger power consumption per area.

I think developed countries - so-called developed countries - should reflect upon the way of living and the waste of energy.

Diet and supplements and exercise programs aren't what is achieving longevity. Having a faith-based community can add four to 14 years.

The good news is that even minimal activity can significantly extend life.

People are getting richer all over the world and they are going to want to live the way Americans live. And that is going to place a big strain on our environment and will be a great challenge.

Really hard laughs, they've gotta make you live longer or something.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

I'm a strong believer in modern medicine. I think it has its use in society. I think it adds longevity to our life expectancy.

I have no desire to be 60 years old and standing on the side of the pitch.

...A one-pound box of prewashed lettuce contains 80 calories of food energy. According to Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, growing, chilling, washing, packaging, and transporting that box of organic salad to a plate on the East Coast takes more than 4,600 calories of fossil fuel energy, or 57 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food.

There's Jevon's paradox that the better we get at efficiently using energy the more energy we use; so that and that machine technology improvements per se do not necessarily reduce our impacts because we immediately double down on how much we use.

A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.

A life isn't measured in hours or minutes. Its the quality not the length. All things considered I've been luckier than most. Almost sixteen years on Earth, and I've already had eight good ones here. I expect to have eight more before all's good said and done. Nearly thirty-two years total, and that's not too shabby

Come on 'long prosperous life!'

It's not how long you live, it's how well you live.

The US economy, because it's so energy wasteful, is much less efficient than either the European or Japanese economies. It takes us twice as much energy to produce a unit of GDP as it does in Europe and Japan. So, we're fundamentally less efficient and therefore less competitive, and the sooner we begin to tighten up, the better it will be for our economy and society.