Wizards and Prophets Face Off to Save the Planet
[vc_row][vc_column][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”For nearly two decades, Charles C. Mann has been troubled by a realization that struck him just after his daughter was born. He was walking outside the hospital on a freezing New England night when the thought stopped him mid stride: By the time she reached his age, there would be 10 billion people living on the planet. How the hell would that work?” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:25″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Mann makes his living as a science writer and is best known for his bestselling histories of America around 1492. Ever since the night of his daughter’s birth, Mann has asked the scientists he interviewed if he could buy them a cup of coffee afterward in order to ask them his nagging question: What are we going to do as population rises?”][tm_spacer size=”lg:63″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/12″][tm_image image=”875″][tm_spacer size=”sm:30″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”9/12″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Use psychological pricing methods.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”The responses he got fell into two broad categories depending on the person. The ones who thought technology would save us he dubbed “wizards.” Those who thought we were screwed unless we controlled population growth he called “prophets.””][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:35″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”After years of these interviews, woolgathering, and worldwide travel, Mann turned it all into his latest book, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet. We recently talked with Mann about the types of solutions preferred by wizards and prophets, and why he thinks this division means that no one ever changes their mind about nuclear power, renewable energy, or genetically modified food.”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:52″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=” Well, I coined them as a sort of shorthand. A philosopher friend of mine said that there was a very clear way to describe these groups, one of them is a Schumpeterian–technophiliac–meliorist (laughs). But that didn’t seem all that clear to me, so I call them wizards, as in techno-wizards.”][tm_spacer size=”xs:30;lg:68″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner offset=”vc_col-md-6″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Demonstrate the differences” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Wizards basically believe that science and technology, properly applied, can let us produce our way out of our dilemmas. Prophets believe that there are natural limits, and we transgress these limits at our peril.”][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Offer a money-back guarantee” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”Their recommendations are kind of the opposite of each other. One is saying, “Be smart, make more, and that way everyone can win.” The other is saying, “Hunker down, conserve, obey the rules, otherwise everyone is going to lose.””][tm_spacer size=”sm:30;lg:68″][tm_heading tag=”h5″ custom_google_font=”” font_weight=”600″ text=”Test your offer and price, and be creative.” line_height=”1.4″][tm_spacer size=”lg:23″][tm_heading tag=”div” custom_google_font=”” text=”For wizards the answer is basically to stick with the same system we have now but with cleaner energy. Ideally with nuclear power because it has the smallest footprint of any low-carbon source, but you could also have giant concentrated solar plants and that sort of thing.”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner offset=”vc_col-md-6″][tm_spacer size=”sm:40″][tm_image full_wide=”1″ image=”876″][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
