Download The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World AudioBook Free
From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493 - an incisive family portrait of the two little-known 20th-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically compared views shaped our ideas about the surroundings, laying the groundwork for how people in the 21st century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In 40 years, Earth's society will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world might it be? Those answering these questions generally get caught in two deeply divided categories - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann message or calls them in this well balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new e book. The Prophets, he talks about, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who presumed that in using more than our planet must give, our success will lead us to mess up. Cut back again! was his mantra. Often everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in place, wrangled the earth in service to your species to produce modern high-yield vegetation that then preserved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only by doing so can everyone get! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to evaluate the four great troubles humanity faces - food, drinking water, energy, weather change - grounding each in historical framework and weighing your options for the future. With our civilization at risk, the author's insightful examination can be an essential addition to the immediate conversation about how exactly our kids will fare on an extremely crowded Earth.
