Kirk R. Smith

Kirk R. Smith is an expert on the health and climate effects of household energy use in developing nations. He is a professor of Global Environmental Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Quotes

• If you reduce the amount of methane emissions, the level in the atmosphere goes down fairly quickly, within decades, as opposed to CO₂, if you reduce the emissions to the atmosphere, you don’t really see a signal in the atmosphere for a hundred years or so. […] I had an invite to a meeting with Al Gore, some years ago now, and made these methane arguments, and he was really pushback. That’s just his argument, “It’s hard enough to get people to think about CO₂. Don’t confuse them.” […] Some people say, “Well, let’s fix CO₂, and then we can worry about methane.” Well, that’s the wrong. It’s the other way around that actually makes sense. Do something about methane, because you’ll get a response right away.
  • Interview in the documentary-film Cowspiracy by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2014).

• “Our investment in prevention and research is an investment in our nations … it all depends on healthy people, the result of our knowledge must be prevention. If we trust treatment without an investment in prevention, then we have failed.” [1]

Quotes about Kirk R. Smith

• He epitomizedeverything a Berkeley professor should be: visionary and innovative, but always focusing onhelping those who were poor and disenfranchised.
  • Michael Jerrett [2]