The wizard and the prophet
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet by Charles C. Mann, Pan Macmillan (2018) ISBN 1509884173 ISBN-10 9781509884179
I meant to read this book since I heard about it on kottke five years ago. I finally got around doing it and it was indeed worth it. Charles C. Mann looks at two archetypes the wizard, trying to take control of environment, using its resources to solve our problems, and the profet, trying to respect the environment and limiting our impact on it, and extending their thinking to the main problems awaiting a world with 10 billions humans. These are classified in four main categories: food (earth), freshwater (water), energy (fire), climate change and pollution (air).
The book is well researched and you will learn some new things, at least I did. The different approaches and the difficulty to switch from one to the other are good points, but what I found most interesting are other things. One is the danger of thinking about the extremas, the interesting things happen in the space in-between where the interesting trade-offs take place, where life takes place. The other was the unexpected problems of the neglected social implications of the solutions.
As hinted at the end given the power of modern technology few people can have large impact (both positive or negative), and vice versa many people can have a surprisingly small effect. This (as discussed) counters the simplistic argument of the surprisingly racist/conservative current of the ecological movement, that strongly limiting population is the only way to limit negative effects.
As said the few people can also have a positive effect. There is a larger discussion on what is really positive, but for the sake of this discussion let’s ignore it. Having few people perform a large change is basically what lies at the core of what is called the “hard path” approach to fix problems. Few people means that few motivated people can implement it, and there is a bigger likelihood of it being realized. The bad aspect is that centralization makes it more likely that it will be used to increase social disparities.
On the other hand the soft path requires more buy in and active work from many / the majority of the people, so it is harder to realize, but can often start in a more decentralized way. This forces a more a community approach, which might be more democratic, but might actually limit individual liberties, to favor the community.
These are the broad strokes, the solutions will always need and evaluation of the actual trade-offs, and to survive we will probably need multiple approaches, anyway I recommend the book.