num_pages: 640
description: From the best-selling award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists Norman Borlaug and William Vogt whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.In forty years Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced authoritative nonpolemical new book. The Prophets he explains follow William Vogt a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug whose research in effect wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food water energy climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.
language: English
title: The Wizard and the Prophet
publisher: Books on Tape