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Available
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Publication
Picador (2018), 608 pages
Description
Biography & Autobiography. History. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493â??an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groupsâ??Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity facesâ??food, water, energy, climate changeâ??grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly cr… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member kukulaj
This is largely parallel biographies of William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Vogt is the prophet, warning us of looming catastrophe from a growing human population hitting planetary limits. Borlaug is the wizard, finding ways to make better use of planetary resources to feed a growing human population.
Use more or use less? This is probably the crucial issue of our time. I don't think Mann ever discusses e.g. Jared Diamond's book Collapse. He does mention in the introduction, as I recall, that other societies have crashed in the past from hitting resource limits. But this book doesn't look at historical cycles. It's just focused on the present predicament.
I am an old peak oil head - I worked with Ken Deffeyes in the 1970s. I was quite disappointed in the chapter on energy in this book. Certainly the notion that we will someday run out of petroleum, that is a problematic notion. Surely we will stop pumping petroleum out of the ground while there is still some left down there. There's conventional oil, there's tight oil, there are tar sands, gas condensates, ethanol, gas to liquid, coal to liquid, algae... modeling and forecasting require being somewhat precise about what is being modeled and forecast. Mann falls a bit short here. Similarly, looking at the book Limits to Growth... Mann tells how Ehrlich's Population Bomb was thrown together rather hastily. Limits to Growth doesn't look so hasty. If you look at the timelines of their forecasts, it's not clear that we have departed significantly from their trajectories. Mann dances around these details a bit too quickly.
Mann does touch on some of the deeper layers of the puzzle we're confronting. Sure, humans are just animals. But how many animals have figured out evolution by natural selection, for example? Are humans smarter than yeast? That's a classic doomer koan.
Mann points out that e.g. politics is really more the problem than technology. Even if we are smart enough to figure out how to manage the global situation, we don't really have the political organization needed to make it happen. It's not just that we have not implemented some necessary political strategy... really we have no idea what kind of political organization could possibly work. We seem to be collapsing into a political idiocracy as a first step into technical insufficiency.
There are lots of good stories here which very nicely sketch out the dilemma we're facing. Everybody should read this book. It doesn't even try to provide answers. It does a very good job of posing a key question: use more or use less?
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These are leaders of two factions, often called doomers and cornucopians. Mann tells in this book many stories from the lives of the prophet and the wizard, and also of several other people involved with their work. Use more or use less? This is probably the crucial issue of our time. I don't think Mann ever discusses e.g. Jared Diamond's book Collapse. He does mention in the introduction, as I recall, that other societies have crashed in the past from hitting resource limits. But this book doesn't look at historical cycles. It's just focused on the present predicament.
I am an old peak oil head - I worked with Ken Deffeyes in the 1970s. I was quite disappointed in the chapter on energy in this book. Certainly the notion that we will someday run out of petroleum, that is a problematic notion. Surely we will stop pumping petroleum out of the ground while there is still some left down there. There's conventional oil, there's tight oil, there are tar sands, gas condensates, ethanol, gas to liquid, coal to liquid, algae... modeling and forecasting require being somewhat precise about what is being modeled and forecast. Mann falls a bit short here. Similarly, looking at the book Limits to Growth... Mann tells how Ehrlich's Population Bomb was thrown together rather hastily. Limits to Growth doesn't look so hasty. If you look at the timelines of their forecasts, it's not clear that we have departed significantly from their trajectories. Mann dances around these details a bit too quickly.
Mann does touch on some of the deeper layers of the puzzle we're confronting. Sure, humans are just animals. But how many animals have figured out evolution by natural selection, for example? Are humans smarter than yeast? That's a classic doomer koan.
Mann points out that e.g. politics is really more the problem than technology. Even if we are smart enough to figure out how to manage the global situation, we don't really have the political organization needed to make it happen. It's not just that we have not implemented some necessary political strategy... really we have no idea what kind of political organization could possibly work. We seem to be collapsing into a political idiocracy as a first step into technical insufficiency.
There are lots of good stories here which very nicely sketch out the dilemma we're facing. Everybody should read this book. It doesn't even try to provide answers. It does a very good job of posing a key question: use more or use less?
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stbalbach
The Wizard and the Prophet is about two men with competing visions for the future. The first is a Wizard. He sees the solution in ever more technology (think GMOs and nuclear power). The other is a Prophet. He sees the problems of humanity arising from too much technology with the solution to work
The division began to emerge in the late 1940s with the publication of William Vought's Road to Survival. It is credited as the first modern environmental book and, prior to Silent Spring which it heavily influenced, was the most important book of its type. The Wizard in Mann's book is the father of the Green Revolution, Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug. He was chosen by Mann as an archetypal Wizard and there are some connections with Vought.
The book is a history of these two men and their work, and seeks to answer the question: which vision is right? Mann says he has long been a Wizard but with global warming and other natural limits looming he isn't so sure anymore. He wrote the book to work it out. There is a lot of thinking and consideration though he never comes firmly down on either side. The lasting value is the concept of Wizard and Prophet, but also a worthwhile history of Vought and Borlaugh. They are not household names but maybe should be better known. As a former Wizard myself, who later became a Prophet, the book questions assumptions and left me adrift. As someone who reads the Reddit forums Futurism and Environmentalism on occasion, it couldn't be a more perfect "Ah hah!" on the fundamental division over competing (and seemingly contradictory) views of the path forward.
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closer with nature (think organic farming and wind farms). These two visions define our world with real consequences of decisions made by people, companies and states.The division began to emerge in the late 1940s with the publication of William Vought's Road to Survival. It is credited as the first modern environmental book and, prior to Silent Spring which it heavily influenced, was the most important book of its type. The Wizard in Mann's book is the father of the Green Revolution, Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug. He was chosen by Mann as an archetypal Wizard and there are some connections with Vought.
The book is a history of these two men and their work, and seeks to answer the question: which vision is right? Mann says he has long been a Wizard but with global warming and other natural limits looming he isn't so sure anymore. He wrote the book to work it out. There is a lot of thinking and consideration though he never comes firmly down on either side. The lasting value is the concept of Wizard and Prophet, but also a worthwhile history of Vought and Borlaugh. They are not household names but maybe should be better known. As a former Wizard myself, who later became a Prophet, the book questions assumptions and left me adrift. As someone who reads the Reddit forums Futurism and Environmentalism on occasion, it couldn't be a more perfect "Ah hah!" on the fundamental division over competing (and seemingly contradictory) views of the path forward.
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LibraryThing member ohernaes
Two approaches to growing population and increased pressure on various resources: Wizards see innovation technological and scientific solutions, Prophets believe in restraint and cutting back. These two schools are represented by the agronomist Norman Borlaug, father of the green revolution (in
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particular the development of higher-yielding crops) and William Vogt, one of the founders of the environmentalist movement. Very good book with a lot of what should be common scientific knowledge, however, it is fairly dense at times and one needs to really pay attention to get the material. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to do that at the moment, perhaps another time. Recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member grandpahobo
Charles Mann is an excellent author of history. He is very thorough while still being extremely readable. He has a rare ability to make the subject more interesting as you go, so that the deeper you get into the book, the more you want to read.
LibraryThing member booktsunami
As I said to my friend Richard (who had highly recommended this book to me)....."It's a very thick book". Well it is pretty thick....some 474 pages of text and 135 additional pages of notes and citations. But it IS quite fascinating. I found a kind of deja vu feeling as I read the early part of the
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book about Norman Borlaug because I was posted to Mexico in 1972-74 and had some significant contacts with people ...plant breeders and agronomists at CIMMYT ....the institution where Borlaug made his name breeding dwarf wheats. I also vividly remember a conversation that I had with a high level official in the Ministry of Agriculture about Mexico's future food supply. ......At that time Mexico's economy was growing very rapidly....I think at about 6% pa but it's population was also growing at about the same rate or highe Show Less
LibraryThing member m.belljackson
Charles Mann seeks to examine the solutions offered by two opposing scientists, William Vogt and Norman Borlaug,
on how to provide food, water, and shelter for the projected 10 billion people on earth in the year 2050
without wrecking the earth. Or is it too late?
on how to provide food, water, and shelter for the projected 10 billion people on earth in the year 2050
without wrecking the earth. Or is it too late?
LibraryThing member nmele
Mann takes the lives and work of two men as the starting point for an examination of how best to assure our descendants of a livable, sustainable future. The wizards are certain technology can address whatever problems arise, the prophets are convinced that only by controlling population growth and
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conserving resources can humankind survive. Mann offers a narrative history of the evolution of these positions and also offers a nuanced consideration of the basic problems each side attempts to address: peak oil, climate change, hunger, lack of potable water sources. Excellent, Show Less
LibraryThing member dhmontgomery
An interesting two profile of two important scientists — William Vogt, who helped found the modern environmental movement, and Norman Borlaug, whose experiments cross-breeding plants have helped feed billions. Also a provocative framing of important environmental debates into a model of
Sometimes this framing is less successful than others. Take, for example, the "soft path" and "hard path" models to limited resources like water, where the "hard path" involves asking, "how can we get more water" and the "soft path" looks to find ways to use water more efficiently. Mann fits these terms into his own model of prophets and wizards. But later he says that both Prophets and Wizards endorse the idea of improving efficiency. The "soft path" approach seems at times to lack the neo-Malthusian attitude that characterize the purest Prophets, while also enabling more growth than Prophets are comfortable with.
But these are relatively minor flaws; no archetype-based model will ever perfectly capture our complex world. Instead, they give us a framework to understand those complex idea while leaving room for us to acknowledge exceptions. And Wizards vs. Prophets is certainly a helpful framework when considering, for example, the relative merits of nuclear power, community solar, shutting down factories and geoengineering for combatting climate change.
Mann does not endorse either side in this debate, though at times he says one side or the other seems to have had the better approach for specific issues. Both models have value, he argues. But more importantly, Mann believes both sides share a common shortcoming: an ignorance of the actual human beings their scientific approaches would affect. Consider one crucial passage, where Mann has described the visits to 1940s Mexico by his two main characters. Arch-Prophet William Vogt tours the country and sees its environment being turned into a desert by too many people farming where farming should not be done; Ur-Wizard Norman Borlaug has seen the same poverty and wondered how science can enable these poor farmers to grow enough food to feed themselves despite the poor soil.
But the two "had a striking similarity: neither attempted to understand how Mexican farmers had got into these straits," Mann writes. The reason was politics, including past governments that had encouraged consolidating Mexico's good land in the hands of a few wealthy landowners and revolutions seeking unsuccessfully to redistribute this land back to the poor:
In 1934 a new president, Lázaro Cárdenas, tried again. The Cárdenas administration seized almost 50 million acres from estates and awarded them to ejidos, peasant-run collectives... As before, landowners fought back, some plotting coups and assassination attempts. Others ensured that the ejidos were forced to accept bad land — plots that were too dry or steep to cultivate. By 1940 the eleven thousand new ejidos were working almost 2.5 million acres of land that had been left alone ten years before. Unsurprisingly, the consequences were often destructive; erosion and soil depletion soared. Much of the devastation that Vogt saw as the unavoidable consequence of high birth rates was tied to political events that were anything but inevitable... much of the poverty that [Wizards] saw as lack of access to knowledge was the result of efforts by wealthy elites to maintain their position. (118-19)
As Wizards and Prophets fight over which approach to the environment is best for humanity, Mann argues, they too often leave humanity out of it. His closing appeal — one I can certainly agree with — is for scientists to consider the social sciences as they plot their work to save the planet and species.
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"Prophets" who believe humans must cut back to avoid exceeding Earth's limits and "Wizards" who believe human ingenuity can transcend those limits by finding more powerful and efficient ways to produce food, power, and other essentials. Sometimes this framing is less successful than others. Take, for example, the "soft path" and "hard path" models to limited resources like water, where the "hard path" involves asking, "how can we get more water" and the "soft path" looks to find ways to use water more efficiently. Mann fits these terms into his own model of prophets and wizards. But later he says that both Prophets and Wizards endorse the idea of improving efficiency. The "soft path" approach seems at times to lack the neo-Malthusian attitude that characterize the purest Prophets, while also enabling more growth than Prophets are comfortable with.
But these are relatively minor flaws; no archetype-based model will ever perfectly capture our complex world. Instead, they give us a framework to understand those complex idea while leaving room for us to acknowledge exceptions. And Wizards vs. Prophets is certainly a helpful framework when considering, for example, the relative merits of nuclear power, community solar, shutting down factories and geoengineering for combatting climate change.
Mann does not endorse either side in this debate, though at times he says one side or the other seems to have had the better approach for specific issues. Both models have value, he argues. But more importantly, Mann believes both sides share a common shortcoming: an ignorance of the actual human beings their scientific approaches would affect. Consider one crucial passage, where Mann has described the visits to 1940s Mexico by his two main characters. Arch-Prophet William Vogt tours the country and sees its environment being turned into a desert by too many people farming where farming should not be done; Ur-Wizard Norman Borlaug has seen the same poverty and wondered how science can enable these poor farmers to grow enough food to feed themselves despite the poor soil.
But the two "had a striking similarity: neither attempted to understand how Mexican farmers had got into these straits," Mann writes. The reason was politics, including past governments that had encouraged consolidating Mexico's good land in the hands of a few wealthy landowners and revolutions seeking unsuccessfully to redistribute this land back to the poor:
In 1934 a new president, Lázaro Cárdenas, tried again. The Cárdenas administration seized almost 50 million acres from estates and awarded them to ejidos, peasant-run collectives... As before, landowners fought back, some plotting coups and assassination attempts. Others ensured that the ejidos were forced to accept bad land — plots that were too dry or steep to cultivate. By 1940 the eleven thousand new ejidos were working almost 2.5 million acres of land that had been left alone ten years before. Unsurprisingly, the consequences were often destructive; erosion and soil depletion soared. Much of the devastation that Vogt saw as the unavoidable consequence of high birth rates was tied to political events that were anything but inevitable... much of the poverty that [Wizards] saw as lack of access to knowledge was the result of efforts by wealthy elites to maintain their position. (118-19)
As Wizards and Prophets fight over which approach to the environment is best for humanity, Mann argues, they too often leave humanity out of it. His closing appeal — one I can certainly agree with — is for scientists to consider the social sciences as they plot their work to save the planet and species.
Show Less
LibraryThing member willszal
This is a book about the "fathers" of the environmental movement and the Green Revolution—respectively William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. It is written by Charles Mann, also the author of "1491" and "1493," about the pre- and post-Colonial Americas.
Some of you may already find the premise
Mann is an entertaining writer. He often goes off on tangents leaving the reader wondering, "and how will this relate?" And, inevitably, it does (especially with a book so broad is scope).
In some ways, I was born into the debate for which Mann has created archetypes. The archetypes are pretty catchy—if you have to choose between "wizard," or "prophet," well, they both sound pretty cool!
I'm now in the middle of David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything," a sweeping history that took more than ten years to write.They ask a lot of questions about the assumptions behind the way that we speak about the role of agriculture in the arc of human history (and pre-history). I can't help but wonder if "The Wizard and the Prophet" will be disrupted by this new line of inquiry. In some ways, they are only tangentially related, in that Mann is mostly concerned with the 20th century, when Graeber and Wengrow are righting about ten millennia back. That said, Mann's background is in pre-history, and there are a number of hints to that domain within the text.
Another way that "The Dawn of Everything" pokes holes in the premise of "The Wizard and the Prophet" is by making fun of the Great Man archetype of historiography. It may be entertaining to write as though we can pinpoint an individual person that shaped history, but is this how things actually work? Well, not really. "Influential" could be said to be more a product of their contexts than nodal agents.
Meta-analysis aside, if you're interested in one origin story between the face-off between techno-utopians and deep greens, this is one way to sum things up. Increasingly though, it seems to me that this dichotomy is falling away. For example, people such as sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson have pointed out that we're already in the midst geo-engineering the planet, so it's not as though geo-engineering is off the table anymore (by definition, anthropogenic climate change is a form of geo-engineering).
Some of you may already find the premise
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questionable: a book written by a white man about two white men that "shaped" the 20th century relationship regarding human relationship with land. Yes, the book does fall into this common category of patriarchal history.Mann is an entertaining writer. He often goes off on tangents leaving the reader wondering, "and how will this relate?" And, inevitably, it does (especially with a book so broad is scope).
In some ways, I was born into the debate for which Mann has created archetypes. The archetypes are pretty catchy—if you have to choose between "wizard," or "prophet," well, they both sound pretty cool!
I'm now in the middle of David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything," a sweeping history that took more than ten years to write.They ask a lot of questions about the assumptions behind the way that we speak about the role of agriculture in the arc of human history (and pre-history). I can't help but wonder if "The Wizard and the Prophet" will be disrupted by this new line of inquiry. In some ways, they are only tangentially related, in that Mann is mostly concerned with the 20th century, when Graeber and Wengrow are righting about ten millennia back. That said, Mann's background is in pre-history, and there are a number of hints to that domain within the text.
Another way that "The Dawn of Everything" pokes holes in the premise of "The Wizard and the Prophet" is by making fun of the Great Man archetype of historiography. It may be entertaining to write as though we can pinpoint an individual person that shaped history, but is this how things actually work? Well, not really. "Influential" could be said to be more a product of their contexts than nodal agents.
Meta-analysis aside, if you're interested in one origin story between the face-off between techno-utopians and deep greens, this is one way to sum things up. Increasingly though, it seems to me that this dichotomy is falling away. For example, people such as sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson have pointed out that we're already in the midst geo-engineering the planet, so it's not as though geo-engineering is off the table anymore (by definition, anthropogenic climate change is a form of geo-engineering).
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LibraryThing member steve02476
Fine book by a great science writer. Loved it.
LibraryThing member JBD1
Long, detailed, fascinating, and provocative. Enjoyed it tremendously, but it also didn't make me feel any better about the state of the world or whether we as a species can actually tackle large problems together.
Awards
Massachusetts Book Award (Must-Read (Longlist) — Nonfiction — 2019)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2018
Physical description
5.94 inches
ISBN
1509884173 / 9781509884179