Wizards and Prophets, Ecomodernists and Environmentalists w/ Charles C. Mann

Just as the political spectrum is divided between left and right,
thinking on environmental problem solving is similarly split into
two rival camps exemplified by the archetypes of the Wizard and
the Prophet. Award winning science writer Charles Mann explores
these archetypes as personified by the father of the Green
Revolution, Norman Borlaug and the intellectual godfather of the
environmental movement, William Vogt.


Crudely put wizards are foremost humanists who eschew limits
believing that our growing population and appetites can be
accommodated by the wise application of decoupling technology.
Prophets are foremost environmentalists who believe that carrying
capacity is limited and that humans must remain within natural
energy flows or risk ecosystem and civilizational collapse.


Understanding the origins of one's opponents ideological beliefs
and values goes a long way to depersonalizing a sometimes ugly
debate and perhaps finding a small patch of common ground.


Prophets who have contributed some impressive advances in natural
resource stewardship such as water conservation must wrestle with
an ugly history of Malthusian ideas which at their worst have
justified horrific campaigns of coercive population control.
Despite the success of technofixes that fed billions and averted
famines wizards must temper their scientific rationalism with a
sociologic understanding of the dark sides of modernization such
as enclosures of the commons.