Dave Becomes Even More Insufferable (Thanks Charles C. Mann!)

I just finished the new Charles C. Mann book The Wizard and the Prophet (including both appendices) and now I'm chock full of facts and leaking whole lot of half-assed opinions; the Wizard is represented by the so-called father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, and the Prophet is symbolized by conservationist and ecologist William Vogt . . . Prophets prophesy doom unless we "cut back! cut back!" and Prophets preach conserving wetlands and open spaces, reducing consumption, utilizing bottom up energy solutions, and basically halting constant economic growth and development, which comes at the cost of the earth's resources; Wizards are the "techno-optimists" and they are sure that we will think our way through all these problems, often with large scale projects-- whether they be to harness wind, sun, and tide, desalinate the oceans, or curb global warming by putting sulfur-dioxide in the air; there's also a lot about wheat in the book, Norman Borlaug painstakingly bred super-wheat in order to feed the starving masses (a fun fact, wheat is incredibly diverse genetically and thus there are infinite variations to breed, while humans are incredibly similar genetically-- chew on that, racists!-- and two humans who look nothing alike are more similar genetically than two chimpanzees from the same troop) and Mann describes this wheat breeding in great detail . . . I definitely skimmed this portion of the book-- it's more intense than the corn section of The Omnivore's Dilemma-- but I'm certain that if you select for extra rubisco, throw in a little Haber-Bosch, then you're feeding the billions . . . but a planet with ten billion humans will not resemble our current conception of earth (although we are rapidly approaching this future as far as biodiversity is concerned, see various posts on The Sixth Extinction) and the Prophets worry that super-wheat will simply exacerbate the population bomb . . . and there's a chance that both the Wizards and the Prophets are wrong and Lynn Margulis is right; Margulis, one of the most prominent researchers in the field of microorganisms, believes our planet is a Petri dish, and like most other species, we will breed and exceed-- we will use up all our resources until calamity strikes . . . there are a few indications that she could be wrong-- but nothing to write home about-- violence is at an all time low, in an exponential sense, and there have been some bottom-up successes in Burkina Faso that indicate that we could reforest the desert, creating a giant carbon sink, reinvigorated soil, and a more humid landscape . . . anyway, the conflict in the book, between the Wizard's desire to create technology "to soar beyond natural constraints" and the Prophets hope that we can learn to live in a "steady state" negotiation with our planet, is going to come to a head in our lifetime and Charles C. Mann does a fantastic job with an even-handed look on how things might change (I also highly recommend his two other noted books, 1491 and 1493, which describe the Americas before and after the Columbian exchange).