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The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

#168: Dec. - March 2020 (Non-Fiction)
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The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

Please use this thread to discuss the above chapter.
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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In his intro, Mann said he borrowed the structure for the third part of the book from Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. The mythical four elements are each the subject of a chapter. The "Earth" chapter is about food that comes out of the soil. Mann narrows the Wizard/Prophet debate over resources, begun in chapters 2 and 3, to a debate over how to feed a still-rapidly expanding population. Wizards have now gone far beyond Norman Borlaug in their capabilities to engineer plants for greater productivity. They currently are trying to alter the way rice plants photosynthesize water and CO2. As is well-known, Vogtians object to genetically modifying plants, not entirely rationally, Mann says, pointing to much less concern over genetically modified e coli and baker's yeast used in medicine. When it comes to common foods, produced by large corporations, however, the perception is different. Prophets have little faith that corporations will prioritize public safety over profits. GMO foods have been banned in several countries, and in the U.S., where they are allowed, the GMO-free label appeals to many consumers for whom "natural" and "organic" also confer reassurance.

Mann continues to portray the Wizard/Prophet conflict as philosophical or spiritual as much as scientific. There was a book long ago called The Soul of Soil, a title that sums up some Prophets' view of soil, imbued with spiritual essence, or pneuma. Less mystically, others emphasize the complex community of microbes, fungi, and animals that needs to be nurtured in order for the soil to produce good food. Prophets accuse wizards of lacking reverence for soil and an understanding that it is not simply a medium for roots and needs more to function well besides the addition of chemical fertilizer and water.

Well and good to have such affection for soil, say the Wizards, but if the choice is between hunger and a chance at real life, what system is the practical one? Organic agriculture is more expensive due to more labor needed, so its constituency is those of us with disposable income and less true need.

Mann is evenhanded, giving each side its due. This is how he sums up with soaring language the achievement of mass production of fertilizer through the Haber-Bosch process, :
The magnitude of the change wrought by artificially fixed nitrogen is hard to grasp. Think of the deaths from hunger that have been averted, the opportunities granted to people who would otherwise not have had a chance to thrive, the great works of art and science created by those who would have had to devote their lives to wringing sustenance from the earth. Particle accelerators in Japan, Switzerland, and Illinois; One Hundred Years of Solitude and Things Fall Apart; vaccines, computers, and antibiotics; the Sidney Opera House and Stephen Holl's Chapel of St. Ignatius--how many are owed, indirectly, to Haber and Bosch? How many would exist if this Wizardly triumph had not produced the nitrogen that filled their creators' childhood plates? (172)
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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Chapter Four: Food
The Rockefeller Foundation, funders of Borlaug’s work to increase agricultural yields, became worried by Vogt’s idea that increased population would hasten the day of reckoning. Warren Weaver, a Rockefeller mathematician who discovered key themes in complexity theory and information theory, provided the wizard creed: humans only need usable energy, and total planetary energy is enough for the USA to support a human population of eighty billion.

I love it!! All we need is better organisation, and our planet could easily support far more than ten times the current population on a fraction of the land mass. Weaver worried that would make things too crowded, but I disagree. Building floating cities a hundred stories high on the world ocean could easily fit that many people with abundant space, while giving the continents back to nature for re-wilding. The point here is that the real physical carrying capacity of our planet is vastly higher than is commonly imagined.

So how do we tap all that energy? Recall that the sun pumps out ten billion times as much energy as hits the earth, with our planet equivalent to a lentil on a sphere of radius ten metres. The world ocean has energy in tide, current, wave, wind, geothermal, ocean thermal and solar that we can use, noting that our messing with the climate is adding the equivalent of four Hiroshima atom bombs of energy to the planet system per second.

A key is to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis, which uses barely one millionth of the available solar energy falling on the leaf. Weaver suggested improving the food potential of the sea. My idea on this is that industrial algae farms on about one percent of the world ocean would be enough to convert all the dangerous carbon that humans have dumped in the air into useful commodities.

It may be possible to achieve such results with only minimal genetic engineering. I wrote a paper on algae production ten years ago with some Chinese scientists who advocated turning off the quorum sensing gene, to enable algae to multiply well beyond its natural ‘quorum’ limit. I have some sympathy for Mann’s comment that prophets view such ideas as an ecologically foolish mania, since safety must be paramount. The underlying problem is that private corporations are not to be trusted, so the need is to implement such concepts in ways that build in ethical controls.
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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Robert Tulip wrote:Chapter Four: Food
The Rockefeller Foundation, funders of Borlaug’s work to increase agricultural yields, became worried by Vogt’s idea that increased population would hasten the day of reckoning. Warren Weaver, a Rockefeller mathematician who discovered key themes in complexity theory and information theory, provided the wizard creed: humans only need usable energy, and total planetary energy is enough for the USA to support a human population of eighty billion.

I love it!! All we need is better organisation, and our planet could easily support far more than ten times the current population on a fraction of the land mass. Weaver worried that would make things too crowded, but I disagree. Building floating cities a hundred stories high on the world ocean could easily fit that many people with abundant space, while giving the continents back to nature for re-wilding. The point here is that the real physical carrying capacity of our planet is vastly higher than is commonly imagined.
Oh boy, I thought you'd go for that 80 billion population idea, Robert :) But don't forget, this chapter is about food, and Weaver was less sanguine when it came to feeding these 80 billion (just in the U.S. alone). I must ask, though, why anyone would find a world population of 500 billion something to plan for, rather than to head off, even assuming the world could sustain it? Is there a quasi-religious belief behind this willingness to contemplate such a future? Is the human destiny to expand to the very limits of its endowments something sacred? Why would you want to consign humans to artificial landscapes on the high seas in sky scrapers? It sounds dreadful, and that is far from an unimportant feeling. There seems to be an urge behind wizardry that is not entirely connected to the need for it, as though wizards are under the spell of of their magical ability to surpass nature.

We appear recently to have reduced our worries over the adequacy of our food supply. Famines are said to have mainly political causes. Whether or not current production is adequate, Mann reports that experts believe that production will need to increase by as much as 100% by 2050 to feed expanding populations. Since further exploitation of resources to produce this food will inevitably degrade the environment or simply not be available, wizards look to genetic modification to escape that bind. Then, perhaps, the impact of growing much more food will be no greater than it is now, due to improvements in the efficiency of photosynthesis (one thrust of research). Global warming throws a monkey wrench, however, into the dreams of wizards.

Mann also cites the data on the burden that raising farm animals places on the planet. To feed them vegetable matter and later slaughter them for meat is wasteful of calories, because the plants can instead be eaten by humans. There then is only one waste stream of these nutrients rather than two when animals expel waste throughout their lives. Vegetarian diets allow more people to be fed. Vegetarianism also means reductions in greenhouse gases.
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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DWill wrote:Oh boy, I thought you'd go for that 80 billion population idea, Robert :)
I don’t think numbers anywhere near that are likely in the short term, but the point is that our assumption that the earth is now already too crowded may be completely wrong. Many countries with high population density (eg Holland, South Korea and Taiwan with over 500 people per square mile) have high living standards and quality of life.

If all the earth had that density the population would be nearly 100 billion. If everyone lived in cities with the density of Tokyo, 100 billion people would fit on about 3% of the planet surface. New York is nearly twice as crowded.

Such population would generate culture as the primary economic activity, while material needs can readily be met from high carbon technology while regulating the atmosphere to keep the climate stable.
DWill wrote: But don't forget, this chapter is about food, and Weaver was less sanguine when it came to feeding these 80 billion (just in the U.S. alone).
High intensity algae farms on 5% of the world ocean, generating abundant biomass, can easily feed that number of people with a high quality diet.
DWill wrote:I must ask, though, why anyone would find a world population of 500 billion something to plan for, rather than to head off, even assuming the world could sustain it?
I think fifty billion is a good target for world population, enabling human flourishing at levels of complexity that we cannot imagine today.
DWill wrote:Is there a quasi-religious belief behind this willingness to contemplate such a future?
Religion is fundamental to human identity, serving psychologically to produce group cohesion and direction and ethics. The optimism that technology can generate further step changes in world productivity has to be grounded in the primary Christian values of faith, hope and love.
DWill wrote:Is the human destiny to expand to the very limits of its endowments something sacred?
I don’t think that pushing the ‘very limits’ is a good idea. Systems break when they push the limits. But nor do I think a world population of fifty billion necessarily runs up against that boundary. Imagine if New York was set free from its continental shackles and enabled to float every year around the North Atlantic gyre. Same with all the big cities. That could drastically cut the pressure humans put on earth systems while also enabling a big population increase.
DWill wrote:Why would you want to consign humans to artificial landscapes on the high seas in sky scrapers?
People already love the ‘artificial landscapes’ of cities. Designer cities can make transport and communication super easy, delivering high levels of freedom and creativity.
DWill wrote: It sounds dreadful, and that is far from an unimportant feeling.
Sure, just like cars seemed 'dreadful' in the horse and buggy age.
DWill wrote:There seems to be an urge behind wizardry that is not entirely connected to the need for it, as though wizards are under the spell of their magical ability to surpass nature.
My view is that the challenge is to live in harmony with nature, not to ‘surpass’ it. The best way to become natural is to embrace the complex spirituality of high technology, seeing wealth as the source of freedom and stability, finding ways to create wealth that repair and restore the planet and its biodiversity.
DWill wrote: We appear recently to have reduced our worries over the adequacy of our food supply. Famines are said to have mainly political causes. Whether or not current production is adequate, Mann reports that experts believe that production will need to increase by as much as 100% by 2050 to feed expanding populations. Since further exploitation of resources to produce this food will inevitably degrade the environment or simply not be available, wizards look to genetic modification to escape that bind. Then, perhaps, the impact of growing much more food will be no greater than it is now, due to improvements in the efficiency of photosynthesis (one thrust of research). Global warming throws a monkey wrench, however, into the dreams of wizards.
Your claim of inevitable degradation is not true. The world ocean contains 1.2 billion cubic kilometres of water, all of which has abundant nutrients that we have scarcely begun to tap. Mining the phosphate and nitrate and carbon from the world ocean can easily feed the world while also enabling restoration of degraded environments and protection of the climate.
DWill wrote:Mann also cites the data on the burden that raising farm animals places on the planet. To feed them vegetable matter and later slaughter them for meat is wasteful of calories, because the plants can instead be eaten by humans. There then is only one waste stream of these nutrients rather than two when animals expel waste throughout their lives. Vegetarian diets allow more people to be fed. Vegetarianism also means reductions in greenhouse gases.
People like eating meat. This popular myth about a plant diet as better for the environment is superficial and wrong, grounded in a simplistic idea that cutting economic activity is the only way to cut impact. More activity can have less impact if it is well designed.

The challenge is to address our problems on industrial scale. Crossing the oceanic frontier will enable us to make trillions of tonnes of biochar from marine carbon, which will then be added to agricultural and forest soils to vastly lift their productivity, while also freeing up space for wild animals.
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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I'll try to reply more fully in few days, after returning home. Here I'll just mention the appropriateness of visionary solutions to immediate problems. Compare what leaders are advocating as responses to GW to your advocacy. There isn't even a thin strand between the two that could someday be a bridge, leading me to say again that after some planetary catastrophe, perhaps humankind could sail the seas forever. But I don't see any non-forced way that this could ever happen.

My other comment is that the Prophets' ethic may not be fully sustainable in the face of our species ' drive to dominate. But at least an ethic is there. I frankly have difficulty seeing one at all in the wizardly extremes you're promoting. The lesson we shouldn't need to learn at this point is that a trail of unforseen consequences always follows in the wake of grand ambitions to reengineer nature. Our science will improve in regard to predicting consequences, and as it does, we'll be less and less likely to go boldly where some Wizards would lead us.
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DWill wrote:after some planetary catastrophe, perhaps humankind could sail the seas forever. But I don't see any non-forced way that this could ever happen.
Of course there is a "non-forced way that this could ever happen." People move to where they can make a living. You can't force them to stay put when the opportunities beckon.

The bridge between my vision of a sustainable planetary future and the current mess emerges from the practical question of how to stabilise the climate. We have to recognise that emission reduction is marginal to regulating the atmospheric carbon level, which will primarily rely on converting carbon into useful commodities. Only the world ocean has the area, energy and resources to deliver that global agenda, primarily through industrial algae production.

Managing an oceanic scale of operation will create the technological ability for people to live in floating cities, which will create an attractive and desirable quality of life. Without such a pressure valve the current global drift toward autocratic coercion will lead to collapse and conflict.

The real potential is for the produced material abundance from an ocean civilization to generate increased freedom, enabling steady cultural evolution towards higher levels of social and human capital in a new ocean world, just as the American frontier generated boundless optimism of a new world in earlier times.
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:Oh boy, I thought you'd go for that 80 billion population idea, Robert :)
I don’t think numbers anywhere near that are likely in the short term, but the point is that our assumption that the earth is now already too crowded may be completely wrong. Many countries with high population density (eg Holland, South Korea and Taiwan with over 500 people per square mile) have high living standards and quality of life.
The problem with this concept of carrying capacity, as I see it, is that it appears to spur us to believe that since our total numbers are expanding, we haven't yet reached capacity. The obvious flaws in that attitude are basically two: that a significant portion of our population has a miserable quality of life (with environmental reasons not being the only ones), and that while many regions do well in quality of life measures, this may not be sustainable given pressures placed on resources. Because there is serious doubt about the future of water supplies in California, the current wealth of that state does not mean that all sorts of room exists in the capacity of the land to support even the numbers there now. It could be, rather, that the area is poised on the precipice, ready to slide off. Many other civilizations have gone from boom to bust, not even understanding what they were doing to bring about collapse.

Before we start thinking that extra billions should be welcome, we need to prove that we can provide decent lives to everyone in the near term, in a sustainable way. Sustainability is the greatest challenge.
If all the earth had that density the population would be nearly 100 billion. If everyone lived in cities with the density of Tokyo, 100 billion people would fit on about 3% of the planet surface. New York is nearly twice as crowded.

Such population would generate culture as the primary economic activity, while material needs can readily be met from high carbon technology while regulating the atmosphere to keep the climate stable.
It appears as a utopian vision in which satisfying material needs will suffice, material wants no longer getting in the way. That would indeed seem to be the only way that 100 billion could have even a slight chance of existing.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:Is there a quasi-religious belief behind this willingness to contemplate such a future?
Religion is fundamental to human identity, serving psychologically to produce group cohesion and direction and ethics. The optimism that technology can generate further step changes in world productivity has to be grounded in the primary Christian values of faith, hope and love.
The reason I inquired is that I was getting a sense of "destinarianism" from your vision of the future, especially regarding living on the sea. It seems a bit similar to the vision that advocates of extra-planetary travel have, that the destiny of humanity lies beyond our solar system. My own feeling is that "frontierism" needs to mature, to become uncoupled from the physical. There are frontiers to attain, yes, but these should have more to do with perfecting (if that is the word) our ability to get along and care for one another. I don't particularly care for the word "spiritual," but it'll do in this instance.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:Is the human destiny to expand to the very limits of its endowments something sacred?
I don’t think that pushing the ‘very limits’ is a good idea. Systems break when they push the limits. But nor do I think a world population of fifty billion necessarily runs up against that boundary. Imagine if New York was set free from its continental shackles and enabled to float every year around the North Atlantic gyre. Same with all the big cities. That could drastically cut the pressure humans put on earth systems while also enabling a big population increase.
What are these limits? How would we know when we've surpassed them? Are we surpassing many of them now? If we think we're okay, as far as limits go, because apocalypse hasn't happened, that is an extremely low bar to set. I think that our science is getting to the place where we can pinpoint areas of concern, the first step to effectively dealing with them. To this point, our habit as a species has been to plow ahead and deal with the consequences later. I'm optimistic that that will be changing. Environmental impact studies are decried as bureaucratic logjams that constrain development. But that is precisely the point, to constrain or at least to channel development.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote: It sounds dreadful, and that is far from an unimportant feeling.
Sure, just like cars seemed 'dreadful' in the horse and buggy age.

That is my reaction, sorry if it seemed rude. There was some initial resistance to the newfangled automobiles, but there is no comparison between their introduction and going off to live on a terra less firma.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:There seems to be an urge behind wizardry that is not entirely connected to the need for it, as though wizards are under the spell of their magical ability to surpass nature.
My view is that the challenge is to live in harmony with nature, not to ‘surpass’ it. The best way to become natural is to embrace the complex spirituality of high technology, seeing wealth as the source of freedom and stability, finding ways to create wealth that repair and restore the planet and its biodiversity.
This could be a partly Prophet-like goal, in that Prophets need to employ many advanced technologies in order for the democratic, distributed energy model to work. Mann doesn't seriously consider "back-to-nature" communal types as part of the Prophets' solution, as he should not. Why Prophets look askance at your vision is that material wealth is viewed as unlimited, and that powerful, monopolistic interests will be driving algae farming and geoengineering. It becomes clear that Prophets aren't opposed to Wizards based on anti-tech feelings, but on fears that Wizards want to be masters of the world.
Your claim of inevitable degradation is not true. The world ocean contains 1.2 billion cubic kilometres of water, all of which has abundant nutrients that we have scarcely begun to tap. Mining the phosphate and nitrate and carbon from the world ocean can easily feed the world while also enabling restoration of degraded environments and protection of the climate.
In other words, exploiting the oceans in ways we haven't yet thought of. I'm heartened by the ability of science to be able to predict the effects and feasibility of such wizardly ideas, and put up stop signs if need be. The problem may be that if the harms will be "merely" ecological," we still might not listen. Mining the ocean floor is surely one thing that should be stopped. Mining phosphate and carbon from the waters--who knows. Other means of food exploitation may also need to be ditched; we simply don't know yet.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:Mann also cites the data on the burden that raising farm animals places on the planet. To feed them vegetable matter and later slaughter them for meat is wasteful of calories, because the plants can instead be eaten by humans. There then is only one waste stream of these nutrients rather than two when animals expel waste throughout their lives. Vegetarian diets allow more people to be fed. Vegetarianism also means reductions in greenhouse gases.
People like eating meat. This popular myth about a plant diet as better for the environment is superficial and wrong, grounded in a simplistic idea that cutting economic activity is the only way to cut impact. More activity can have less impact if it is well designed.
The better efficiency of eating vegetable matter instead of feeding it to animals is a simple truth, one of the few we can rely on in this huge task of making our presence more benign. It isn't simplistic to assert that. I don't want people to lose their livelihoods, and with a slow transition to a predominantly plant-based diet, they won't have to. When meat becomes a niche, those of us who want it can still get it. It may cost us more.
The challenge is to address our problems on industrial scale. Crossing the oceanic frontier will enable us to make trillions of tonnes of biochar from marine carbon, which will then be added to agricultural and forest soils to vastly lift their productivity, while also freeing up space for wild animals.
This is one example of the need for scientific vetting. What will be the composition of this biochar? If it can be mined economically and used, what processing might it need? There are strict standards for the biochar that is currently used on a limited scale in gardens. It's a case of premature chicken-counting.
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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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DWill wrote:The problem with this concept of carrying capacity, as I see it, is that it appears to spur us to believe that since our total numbers are expanding, we haven't yet reached capacity. The obvious flaws in that attitude are basically two: that a significant portion of our population has a miserable quality of life (with environmental reasons not being the only ones), and that while many regions do well in quality of life measures, this may not be sustainable given pressures placed on resources.
I see the flaws a bit differently. The fact that human population is expanding does not directly indicate what the planetary carrying capacity may be. Vogt thinks it is already exceeded, while Borlaug thinks ingenuity can tap new resources to sustain growth. So capacity is really a function of our methods of social and economic organisation.

In this chapter, the argument about carrying capacity is a simple function of system energy, but the obvious problem is that the governance systems and technology to tap that abundant available planetary energy require significant social evolution from our present global situation.
DWill wrote:Because there is serious doubt about the future of water supplies in California, the current wealth of that state does not mean that all sorts of room exists in the capacity of the land to support even the numbers there now. It could be, rather, that the area is poised on the precipice, ready to slide off. Many other civilizations have gone from boom to bust, not even understanding what they were doing to bring about collapse.
The wizard line today is that we can use science to understand what we are doing to bring about collapse, and can use technology to overcome that extinctive trajectory. The primary planetary arithmetic is that we are adding about fifty gigatons of carbon dioxide and equivalents to the air each year, and have to shift that around to physically remove that much each year, so the net volume of CO2 falls and we step back from the hothouse precipice.

You might recall I supported Terry Spragg, the California waterbag inventor who proposed towing water through the ocean from Washington state, but could never get anyone to engage. I thought the problem there was primarily political, both corruption and a failure of imagination, not anything economic or environmental or technological. The same psychological inertia is preventing serious public engagement on effective climate change strategies.
DWill wrote: Before we start thinking that extra billions should be welcome, we need to prove that we can provide decent lives to everyone in the near term, in a sustainable way. Sustainability is the greatest challenge.
I completely agree. Current methods are not sustainable and cannot continue, much less expand. A step-up in global population can only happen with a range of paradigm shifts in how we manage resources.
DWill wrote: It appears as a utopian vision in which satisfying material needs will suffice, material wants no longer getting in the way. That would indeed seem to be the only way that 100 billion could have even a slight chance of existing.
Considering the utopian vision against religious frameworks, part of the paradigm shift is to a universal “Be-Attitude”. The Biblical idea of ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’ enables joy to arise from spiritual identity and community rather than relying on the pleasure of material possessions.
DWill wrote:I was getting a sense of "destinarianism" from your vision of the future, especially regarding living on the sea. It seems a bit similar to the vision that advocates of extra-planetary travel have, that the destiny of humanity lies beyond our solar system. My own feeling is that "frontierism" needs to mature, to become uncoupled from the physical.
There is a big difference between imagining human destiny as involving a mass migration to the world ocean and imagining the migration as off the planet. Migration to the ocean would be physically possible as a way to sustain abundance, whereas moving to Mars is an impossible and costly fantasy and distraction.

We cannot “uncouple from the physical”, since the only real frontiers are those which are physically possible, even while clarifying their potential is akin to an act of transcendental imagination. An oceanic migration is both possible and necessary, unlike moving to outer space. Its starting point should be making life on the ocean desirable, while constructing systems that will enable human stewardship of the planet by regulating the parameters of earth systems to remain within stable boundaries.
DWill wrote: There are frontiers to attain, yes, but these should have more to do with perfecting (if that is the word) our ability to get along and care for one another. I don't particularly care for the word "spiritual," but it'll do in this instance.
That focus on building community shared identity is a really important point about a relational spirituality of love, as the necessary basis of authentic religion. My view is that this frontier goal of mutual care is encapsulated in the seven practical Christian virtues (Matt 25:31ff) - feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and prisoners, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers and treating the least as though they were Jesus Christ. The Bible says performing these works of mercy is the key to salvation. That appears to be an entirely scientific perspective.
DWill wrote: What are these limits? How would we know when we've surpassed them? Are we surpassing many of them now? If we think we're okay, as far as limits go, because apocalypse hasn't happened, that is an extremely low bar to set. I think that our science is getting to the place where we can pinpoint areas of concern, the first step to effectively dealing with them.
The 2018 Steffen et al article Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252 identifies key planetary tipping points that we are now crossing as part of our great acceleration. It is not okay by any means. Basic system reconfigurations are essential to enable a future earth system to provide universal abundance for a planetary civilization. The turkey feels okay until Thanksgiving, indicating that a trajectory toward apocalypse has to be identified and reversed before the doom becomes inevitable.
DWill wrote:To this point, our habit as a species has been to plow ahead and deal with the consequences later. I'm optimistic that that will be changing. Environmental impact studies are decried as bureaucratic logjams that constrain development. But that is precisely the point, to constrain or at least to channel development.
Yes, we have a dominant heedless materialism that fails to engage with consequences. The prophets have focused on systemic scientific prediction of impacts, providing the baseline to inform the need for wizard technology that can provide any hope of escape from the fate of collapse.
DWill wrote: There was some initial resistance to the newfangled automobiles, but there is no comparison between their introduction and going off to live on a terra less firma.
I believe it will be possible to construct ocean cities on such a large scale that they will be entirely stable, providing universal high quality of life. The scale of transformations in the last century with transport, communications, agriculture and finance to name a few produced upheavals that are comparable to what will be needed this century.
DWill wrote: Prophets need to employ many advanced technologies in order for the democratic, distributed energy model to work. Mann doesn't seriously consider "back-to-nature" communal types as part of the Prophets' solution, as he should not. Why Prophets look askance at your vision is that material wealth is viewed as unlimited, and that powerful, monopolistic interests will be driving algae farming and geoengineering. It becomes clear that Prophets aren't opposed to Wizards based on anti-tech feelings, but on fears that Wizards want to be masters of the world.
'Back to nature' is more a philosophy of simplicity than a practical scaleable solution. This point about mastery of the world underscores the essential need for a spiritual philosophy to be central to our planetary paradigm shift. A religious humility with a long-term vision of planetary repair is essential to overcome the catastrophic destruction that humanity has wreaked upon the world.

That is a vision that can emerge from a reformed Christian theology grounded in science. Language about wealth being unlimited can be addressed by new systems that generate sustained universal abundance with a technology of simplicity. In practical terms, to call potential ‘unlimited’ just means that the real limits appear to be much greater than our current level of activity. That is the case for energy, considering the real scale of energy pumped out by the sun, a billion times the amount that hits the earth.
DWill wrote: In other words, exploiting the oceans in ways we haven't yet thought of.
The ways to use the ocean that I am suggesting are ways that I have thought of, but which are so distant from current ways of thinking that they have no traction.
DWill wrote:I'm heartened by the ability of science to be able to predict the effects and feasibility of such wizardly ideas, and put up stop signs if need be.
Too often these stop signs are political and cultural rather than scientific and economic. New ideas should be evaluated on the basis of evidence and logic. Any other measure is morally corrupt, recognising that logic should embed safety precautions. As well, new ideas have to be assessed against necessary goals, justifying resource allocation to make them happen, as seen in context of war. The security peril of global warming means we should consider achieving net zero by 2030 as an imperative on the scale of defeating Hitler.
DWill wrote:The problem may be that if the harms will be "merely" ecological," we still might not listen.
That misses the point in my view, which is that industrial algae production can be squarely targeted at ecological repair and restoration.
DWill wrote: Mining the ocean floor is surely one thing that should be stopped.
I agree. Mining should be restricted only to locations and methods that do not cause ecological destruction.
DWill wrote: Mining phosphate and carbon from the waters--who knows.
Likely to enable significant enduring growth in planetary biomass, and protection of global biodiversity.
DWill wrote:Other means of food exploitation may also need to be ditched; we simply don't know yet.
The basic problem is linear systems that treat the environment as a dump. Food systems can only be sustained by a circular economy that reuses waste as asset.
DWill wrote: The better efficiency of eating vegetable matter instead of feeding it to animals is a simple truth, one of the few we can rely on in this huge task of making our presence more benign. It isn't simplistic to assert that.
True, but decisions about what people should eat are not just matters of efficiency. Many large areas of agricultural land have no more economic use than as pasture for animals. But the big issue is that stopping eating meat would have a miniscule, perhaps undetectable, effect on the temperature. Its real impact would be symbolic, in the change to spiritual identity.

We should consider all our climate related actions against the metric of radiative forcing, how much they affect the global warming potential of greenhouse gases. There are far better methods than decarbonisation. Using the technological wizardry of geoengineering offers real potential to stabilise the temperature, but this approach is sidelined by factors including the cultural focus on individual response such as this vegetarian distraction.
DWill wrote:I don't want people to lose their livelihoods, and with a slow transition to a predominantly plant-based diet, they won't have to. When meat becomes a niche, those of us who want it can still get it. It may cost us more.
The challenge is to address our problems on industrial scale. Crossing the oceanic frontier will enable us to make trillions of tonnes of biochar from marine carbon, which will then be added to agricultural and forest soils to vastly lift their productivity, while also freeing up space for wild animals.
This is one example of the need for scientific vetting. What will be the composition of this biochar? If it can be mined economically and used, what processing might it need? There are strict standards for the biochar that is currently used on a limited scale in gardens. It's a case of premature chicken-counting.
No, the suggestion of massive ramping up of productive ways to store carbon cannot be rightly dismissed as counting chickens before they hatch. The planetary task is a conversation at the scale of transcendental imagination, applying a finite and immanent recognition of how earth systems can be stabilised, repaired and restored through human ingenuity. That means identifying what is necessary, so the possible paths to achieve it can then be mapped and pursued.

Considering the planet as a whole means the primary necessary security task is to reduce the CO2 level back to the Holocene level of 280 ppm. Without that we face inevitable conflict and collapse of civilization. A range of technologies will contribute to this rather Herculean task, but investment in these efforts is largely stymied by failure of conversation, with inadequate strategic visions excluding the planetary perspective that should provide the foundation for assessing shared investment priorities.
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DWill

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Re: The Wizard and the Prophet (Ch. 4) Earth: Food

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Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:The problem with this concept of carrying capacity, as I see it, is that it appears to spur us to believe that since our total numbers are expanding, we haven't yet reached capacity. The obvious flaws in that attitude are basically two: that a significant portion of our population has a miserable quality of life (with environmental reasons not being the only ones), and that while many regions do well in quality of life measures, this may not be sustainable given pressures placed on resources.
I see the flaws a bit differently. The fact that human population is expanding does not directly indicate what the planetary carrying capacity may be. Vogt thinks it is already exceeded, while Borlaug thinks ingenuity can tap new resources to sustain growth. So capacity is really a function of our methods of social and economic organisation.

In this chapter, the argument about carrying capacity is a simple function of system energy, but the obvious problem is that the governance systems and technology to tap that abundant available planetary energy require significant social evolution from our present global situation.
In meaningful human terms, carrying capacity has to be viewed not in terms of how many people can be born--who really cares about that?--but in terms of the quality of life they can have. Since under current conditions we aren't doing well enough by our fellow humans, let's show first that we can do better--let's evolve socially--before looking forward to quadrupling our numbers. That sounds to me like advising slowing the car by stepping on the gas. I sense that you see opportunity, not obstacle, in having much greater numbers--something to do with greater complexity, perhaps?
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:Because there is serious doubt about the future of water supplies in California, the current wealth of that state does not mean that all sorts of room exists in the capacity of the land to support even the numbers there now. It could be, rather, that the area is poised on the precipice, ready to slide off. Many other civilizations have gone from boom to bust, not even understanding what they were doing to bring about collapse.
The wizard line today is that we can use science to understand what we are doing to bring about collapse, and can use technology to overcome that extinctive trajectory. The primary planetary arithmetic is that we are adding about fifty gigatons of carbon dioxide and equivalents to the air each year, and have to shift that around to physically remove that much each year, so the net volume of CO2 falls and we step back from the hothouse precipice.
Collapse has more dimensions than just that of the planet's rising temperature. Mann has done a service by reminding us of this. Your statement implies that science will find a way to bail us out again and again, so that we can do whatever we want. I'm a bit puzzled by your statements about spiritual or religious transformation, in relation to this attitude. There seem to be no changes in behavior that accompany such a revolution. Science will do it all, so why bother with doing anything different from business as usual in our daily lives?
You might recall I supported Terry Spragg, the California waterbag inventor who proposed towing water through the ocean from Washington state, but could never get anyone to engage. I thought the problem there was primarily political, both corruption and a failure of imagination, not anything economic or environmental or technological. The same psychological inertia is preventing serious public engagement on effective climate change strategies.
But will you allege such corruption or short-sightedness whenever the ruling goes against you? It seems facile to make such a charge without more than conviction to back it up. Couldn't the idea really have been not such a good one?
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote: Before we start thinking that extra billions should be welcome, we need to prove that we can provide decent lives to everyone in the near term, in a sustainable way. Sustainability is the greatest challenge.
I completely agree. Current methods are not sustainable and cannot continue, much less expand. A step-up in global population can only happen with a range of paradigm shifts in how we manage resources.
Now I come to this. It seems in the Bernie Sanders line to me. Bernie shrugs off pleas for the specifics of his plans with the promise of a political revolution, as though that's all we really need to know. You have "a range of paradigm shifts" as the bridge to a fantastic future. I've got too much Missouri in me.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote: It appears as a utopian vision in which satisfying material needs will suffice, material wants no longer getting in the way. That would indeed seem to be the only way that 100 billion could have even a slight chance of existing.
Considering the utopian vision against religious frameworks, part of the paradigm shift is to a universal “Be-Attitude”. The Biblical idea of ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’ enables joy to arise from spiritual identity and community rather than relying on the pleasure of material possessions.
And yet, at every turn you reject as insignificant changes on the individual level, such eating much less meat, traveling less, and consuming less in general. These are actions that would be the outward manifestations of inner change. I realize you do this in order to prevent us from thinking that such changes are enough to make a good dent in warming. But again, more than warming is at stake, and, we need to be frank about the situation with warming. Under no likely scenario will we escape the need for lifestyle change. Of course, you realize that on the prophet side a similar dynamic occurs: prophets believe that giving ground on climate engineering will suck the life out of their movement to effect change at the grass roots. Why get rid of the car if we can just bring our carbon back to earth?
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:I was getting a sense of "destinarianism" from your vision of the future, especially regarding living on the sea. It seems a bit similar to the vision that advocates of extra-planetary travel have, that the destiny of humanity lies beyond our solar system. My own feeling is that "frontierism" needs to mature, to become uncoupled from the physical.
There is a big difference between imagining human destiny as involving a mass migration to the world ocean and imagining the migration as off the planet. Migration to the ocean would be physically possible as a way to sustain abundance, whereas moving to Mars is an impossible and costly fantasy and distraction.
The problem on my end is simply the complete strangeness of the whole idea. You've lived with the idea for a while now, and maybe you're not in touch with how impossible this sounds to others. I'm unable to conceive of the rationale for it, which is why I had to speculate that you saw this ocean migration as part of human destiny, in the same way that others conceive of inhabiting other planets as destiny.
We cannot “uncouple from the physical”, since the only real frontiers are those which are physically possible, even while clarifying their potential is akin to an act of transcendental imagination. An oceanic migration is both possible and necessary, unlike moving to outer space. Its starting point should be making life on the ocean desirable, while constructing systems that will enable human stewardship of the planet by regulating the parameters of earth systems to remain within stable boundaries.
I might be getting the message more clearly now, though I disagree with it. The mental revolution or paradigm shift you call for is identical to seeing that moving to the ocean is the only way forward for humanity. But I do agree that making it desirable would need to be the initial step. I do not see how anyone could be so persuaded, though.
That focus on building community shared identity is a really important point about a relational spirituality of love, as the necessary basis of authentic religion. My view is that this frontier goal of mutual care is encapsulated in the seven practical Christian virtues (Matt 25:31ff) - feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and prisoners, clothing the naked, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers and treating the least as though they were Jesus Christ. The Bible says performing these works of mercy is the key to salvation. That appears to be an entirely scientific perspective.
I can't see that perspective as being derived empirically at all, Robert.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:What are these limits? How would we know when we've surpassed them? Are we surpassing many of them now? If we think we're okay, as far as limits go, because apocalypse hasn't happened, that is an extremely low bar to set. I think that our science is getting to the place where we can pinpoint areas of concern, the first step to effectively dealing with them.
The 2018 Steffen et al article Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252 identifies key planetary tipping points that we are now crossing as part of our great acceleration. It is not okay by any means. Basic system reconfigurations are essential to enable a future earth system to provide universal abundance for a planetary civilization. The turkey feels okay until Thanksgiving, indicating that a trajectory toward apocalypse has to be identified and reversed before the doom becomes inevitable.
Perhaps there isn't a better encapsulation of the Wizard agenda than you've given above. Do not adjust human life to the world; adjust the world to human life.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:To this point, our habit as a species has been to plow ahead and deal with the consequences later. I'm optimistic that that will be changing. Environmental impact studies are decried as bureaucratic logjams that constrain development. But that is precisely the point, to constrain or at least to channel development.
Yes, we have a dominant heedless materialism that fails to engage with consequences. The prophets have focused on systemic scientific prediction of impacts, providing the baseline to inform the need for wizard technology that can provide any hope of escape from the fate of collapse.
Prophets predict impacts in order to select those that will be the least harmful. It's more a matter of optimizing continually than of avoiding collapse, as that standard sets the bar very low. But I agree that at a certain level, it's all wizardry, largely dependent on further technological gains. It's ambitions on the scale of "system reconfigurations" that reveal the difference between wizards and Prophets, not technology per se.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:Prophets need to employ many advanced technologies in order for the democratic, distributed energy model to work. Mann doesn't seriously consider "back-to-nature" communal types as part of the Prophets' solution, as he should not. Why Prophets look askance at your vision is that material wealth is viewed as unlimited, and that powerful, monopolistic interests will be driving algae farming and geoengineering. It becomes clear that Prophets aren't opposed to Wizards based on anti-tech feelings, but on fears that Wizards want to be masters of the world.
'Back to nature' is more a philosophy of simplicity than a practical scaleable solution. This point about mastery of the world underscores the essential need for a spiritual philosophy to be central to our planetary paradigm shift. A religious humility with a long-term vision of planetary repair is essential to overcome the catastrophic destruction that humanity has wreaked upon the world.
But Robert, humility is one thing I see lacking in some of the wizards' enterprises. Certainly proposing to readjust the planet's parameters bespeaks an overweening confidence and an unearned sense of mastery. We are but a single evolved creature fully enmeshed in the web of life, not equipped to unweave and weave it again. The very real possibility is ending up in an even worse place through our tampering.
DWill wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:The better efficiency of eating vegetable matter instead of feeding it to animals is a simple truth, one of the few we can rely on in this huge task of making our presence more benign. It isn't simplistic to assert that.
True, but decisions about what people should eat are not just matters of efficiency. Many large areas of agricultural land have no more economic use than as pasture for animals. But the big issue is that stopping eating meat would have a miniscule, perhaps undetectable, effect on the temperature. Its real impact would be symbolic, in the change to spiritual identity.
Meat-eating will probably decline slowly but steadily, without anyone being forced to give it up. I think the climate effects of raising animals, especially beef cattle, are greater than you're allowing, and in any case, the total environmental impact has to be considered. That leaving meat behind won't do any good is what you say about every action that applies to individuals. Individuals don't need to do anything or to change any of their ways, according to you. All of that is just distraction.
Robert Tulip wrote:We should consider all our climate related actions against the metric of radiative forcing, how much they affect the global warming potential of greenhouse gases. There are far better methods than decarbonisation. Using the technological wizardry of geoengineering offers real potential to stabilise the temperature, but this approach is sidelined by factors including the cultural focus on individual response such as this vegetarian distraction.
Another approach, one that has more potential really to be enacted, is carbon taxing. But that is also sidelined, sidelined by free-market zealots as well as by climate change deniers. Taxing carbon would incentivize producers to develop technology to remove carbon from emissions. A part of proceeds could be used to compensate and retrain fossil energy workers and aid whole communities whose economies were based on fossil fuels. Why talk about geoengineering before such a practical method has even been tried? You may reply, "It won't be enough," but let's do it first (here in the U.S.) so that we can finally get off the dime. Geoengineering remains a very dicey prospect that faces enormous resistance geopolitically, which makes advocating for it akin to contributing to delay.
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