Review: The Wizard and the Prophet: Science and the Future of Our Planet
Key theme(s):
Media Type: Book
Title: The Wizard and the Prophet: Science and the Future of Our Planet
Author: Charles C Mann
Year of Publication: 2018
I have a confession to make: This book has been sitting on my to-read pile ever since I listened to an episode of Freakonomics based on it back in 2018. At almost 600 pages (or 470 pages of text and 100ish of notes), it was undoubtedly a major undertaking to write, and it felt like a similarly daunting task to read. Despite this somewhat formidable appearance, though, it’s an absolute masterclass in storytelling (“unmatched”, according to the New York Times), and honestly something of a page-turner. I was a little sceptical about the idea of explaining two massive trends in scientific thought through the lives of just two individuals, but it is, on the whole, enormously effective. And judging from the other quotes on the cover, I’m not alone in this opinion.
The basic premise of the book is that there are two broad – and fundamentally opposed – ways of thinking about “science and the future of our planet”, and that these two ways of thinking can be traced back to, or are at least typified by, two particular scientists.
The first is William Vogt, the Prophet of the title, and the second is Normal Borlaug, the Wizard, both now deceased. The book starts by laying out the two archetypes in detail, then applying them to four key environmental challenges (food, freshwater, energy, climate change).
According to Mann, the central tenet of Prophet thinking is that the world and its resources are finite, and the human race is currently living way beyond those means. These ideas are perhaps more familiar to us today in the form of the Limits to Growth study by the Club of Rome, and the notion of Planetary Boundaries developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. For Vogt, the only way that humanity can avoid environmental catastrophe is to massively reduce consumption, particularly if the world’s population is to continue to grow.
Wizards, on the other hand, believe that human ingenuity and technology are what will save us from these disasters. For them, “Only by getting richer, smarter, and more knowledgeable can humankind create the science that will resolve our environmental dilemmas” (6). You can see examples of this kind of techno-optimistic thinking everywhere – no wonder, given that our entire economic system (at least in the West) seems to be predicated on innovation and ‘disruption’, with marketability and profit being an important factor in deciding what gets funded.
The fundamental difference is one of limits, and Mann summarises it beautifully as follows:
Both [Borlaug and Vogt] believed that Homo sapiens, alone among Earth’s creatures, can understand the world through science, and that this empirical knowledge can guide societies into the future. From this point, though, the two men diverged. One of them believed that ecological research has revealed our planet’s inescapable limits, and how to live within them. The other believed that science could show us how to surpass what would be barriers for other species. (9)
Now, here's a question: Did my earlier summary of the two positions give away which side I’m on?
I’m not sure I can maintain the scrupulous neutrality that Mann manages to adhere to – after more than 450 pages of explanation and illustration, I’m still not sure which he side he’s on. Of course, and as Mann acknowledges, presenting it as an ‘either/or’ is a massive oversimplification. As with so many important things, it’s more of a spectrum, with most people probably sitting somewhere in between.
In case you were wondering, I am by inclination more of a Prophet, i.e. I believe that reducing consumption is key if we (and future generations) are going to have a planet that’s worth living on. But that’s not to say I don’t believe in technology and innovation – far from it. It’s just that I believe technological development should be subservient to the greater goal of reducing consumption (at least of our finite resources – I firmly believe we should be making much great use of our quasi-infinite resources, like the energy that comes from our sun - more on that next month).
And this is where I think Mann’s categorisation is perhaps a bit rigid.
In laying out the two philosophies, Mann gives a potted autobiography of the two archetypes. To illustrate the Wizard position, he explains Borlaug’s painstaking and meticulous work on crossbreeding varieties of wheat in Mexico to improve their yields and increase their resistance to disease[1]. So far so good, this seems like a typically scientific approach (even if the actually process of crossbreeding varieties was essentially random trial-and-error, this being in the pre-lab-based-genetic-modification days). For Borlaug, the basic formula was:
better wheat productivity = more wheat = greater population that the planet can sustain
And the logic is impeccable, though doesn’t get into the complexity of the distribution systems that seem to be the root cause of hunger in the world. But putting that aside for the moment, there is another solution to the equation as well:
better wheat productivity = more wheat/m2 = less land required to feed the same population
Apply the same thinking to another issue: palm oil. I am not qualified to comment on the health impacts of palm oil, but I know that swathes of the Amazon rainforest are being cleared for palm oil plantations. Without wishing to sound naïve, I don’t believe that clearing rainforest is actually the goal of palm-oil growers, and I do believe that if they could achieve the same level of profit without clearing the forest, they would. Could we not, therefore, apply the Wizard solution of increasing palm oil production per square metre in order to achieve the Prophet end of reducing consumption of our natural rainforest resources? Which of these is the primary goal? Or is it just a question of time-scales?
Another idea that Mann doesn’t address and that doesn’t fit particularly neatly into the categorisation is the circular economy. I would argue that the circular economy is, similarly, a solution that combines the key principles of both Prophets and Wizards. Its primary goal is a simple one: to reduce consumption (Prophet). But there are huge barriers to making it a reality, the solutions to which are probably technological[2] (Wizard). Of course, Vogt predates the idea of the circular economy (at least as far as I’m aware), and perhaps the idea that ‘re-consumption’ of previously extracted resources would reduce ‘primary consumption’ just didn’t occur to him, or didn’t seem practicable if it did. The idea of the circular economy has certainly been present in the debate since at least 2010 with the launch of the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, however, so certainly predates the publication of the book (2019). So why is it not addressed?
For one thing, Mann does not claim that the book is exhaustive
Far from it in fact:
What this book is not: a detailed survey of our environmental dilemmas. May parts of the world I skip over completely; many issues I do not discuss. The subjects are too big and complicated to fit in a single book – at least, not a book that I can imagine anyone reading. Instead I am describing two ways of thinking, two views of possible futures. (10)
I would also argue that, to an extent, framing these futures through two individuals does inevitably impose certain restraints on what you can cover, particularly when the biographical/storytelling element is so key to laying out the ideas. This is not to say, incidentally, that Mann does not place Vogt’s and Borlaug’s stories in their context. The book is incredibly nuanced and well-researched, and combines an encyclopaedic command of the contextual details with a real eye for illustrative anecdotes that keep the reader moving through the text at a real clip. You really do feel that you are watching a masterful story-weaver at work, pulling all the different strands of the cast of characters’ lives into a single compelling narrative.
According to the front cover, the Wall Street Journal described this booked as “indispensable”, and I can only agree, despite my previous criticism. Because the key thrust of the book is entirely correct: We have an important choice in front of us, or rather on top of and all around us. Where should the (for some reason) limited resources available for fixing the environmental damage we have done be focused? On innovations that might save us from the worst impacts of our actions? On new technology to reduce the damage we are doing? On measures to reduce our consumption?[3] And why can’t we do both? Mann answers this better than I could:
Moreover, the ship is too large to turn quickly. If the Wizardly route is chosen, genetically modified crops cannot be bred and tested overnight. Similarly, carbon-sequestration techniques and nuclear plants cannot be deployed instantly. Prophet-style methods – planting huge numbers of trees to suck carbon dioxide from the air, for instance, or decoupling the world’s food supply from industrial agriculture – would take equally long to pay off. Because backtracking is not easy, the decision to go one way or the other is hard to change. (8)
There’s certainly no shortage of Wizard-style research projects crying out for funding, nor of start-ups working on novel technologies that they claim could revolutionise the planet by next week (whilst also making a hefty profit). The most compelling of these cases – to my mind, at least – are the ones that demonstrate a really clear understanding that their innovations are only part of a much larger picture and that have a clear long-term perspective. Conversely, Prophets must ensure that they have a clear understanding of how to get from the present moment to the long-term futures that they dream of. True progress comes, I think, from combining the Wizard energy and optimism about technology tempered by the Prophet’s wise and judicious application of that technology. Even better if both perspectives are distilled into one person!
So would I recommend the book?
Absolutely. If nothing else, it’s an enormously compelling tale of a less dramatic, but no less vital, side of 21st century history, and you will at the very least take away a nuanced and detailed understanding of that century’s key ideas about the future we are now living in. More importantly though, the book provides that rarest of things – a framework for thinking about a truly complex issue. Despite the counter-arguments (or perhaps nuancing examples?) I gave earlier, the actual fundamental core way of thinking that the book lays out is rock solid, and a powerful too for thinking about the future of the planet, both in an wider context and in terms of our individual choices.
—-
[1] As an aside: one thing I do love about this book is that the focus is not just on reducing carbon and GHG emissions. It starts with what was considered the biggest problem when the two scientists began their careers: how to feed a world with an exploding population, all demanding the right to attain the levels of prosperity enjoyed in the West. CO2 is only the focus of one chapter (“Air”), though it is, of course, bound up with the chapter on energy (“Fire”). I can’t say how deliberate this choice was, but it was incredibly refreshing, and moreover incredibly timely as we continue to wrangle with the ‘just’ part of the ‘just transition’.
[2] E.g. creating platforms to monitor and manage material flows, designing products for recyclability
[3] And what would this even look like? As much as I do align more with the Prophet way of thinking, I acknowledge the problem that it often doesn’t offer much of a solution beyond ‘just stop doing that’, whatever ‘that’ may be (Buying fossil-fuel-powered cars? Eating meat for every meal? Having children?). Where do you commit resources in this case? Better shared transport? Campaigning to ban meat production? Education programs? Mann explains really well that the Prophet way of thinking has more of a spiritual element to it, and though I don’t recall him using this exact word, this entails a sort of ‘mysticism’ that can make deriving concrete actions tricky. It involves a focus on systems and cycles that makes it hard to know where an intervention should start. The advantage of Wizard thinking is that it has clearly defined problems to which solutions need to be developed, with the disadvantage that the impact on the wider systems can sometimes be neglected.
Takeaways for sustainability communicators
Stories are powerful tools of communication, but they should illustrate your argument, not define it.
Wizards: Your ideas may be revolutionary, but they need to be framed in the longer term.
Prophets: Don’t let your visions of the future outweigh the importance of positive short-term action.