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Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change.
Podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon today, I have
with me Charles see man, journalist and author of 1491,
1493 and The Wizard in the prophet.
He's also a correspondent for the Atlantic wired and science.
Thanks for being here. Charles it's my pleasure.
Your work comes up all the time and we recently did a Nori
patreon book club for The Wizard and the profit for the month of
April generated. A lot of discussion and debate,
I think this is a great book and a Great way to frame, I don't
know. Various schools of thought
within the environmental movement, why don't you give us
a nice little bass line here for what?
Exactly are these camps who are the avatars of each that you
feature in the book and how are you conceptualizing, the split
basically, I'm a journalist, as you said and I've been reporting
on environmental issues since the 1980s since the late 1980s
and talking to activists politicians and above all
researchers, And over time, I came to realize that the answer
today is getting to my questions fell into two broad camps, not
always, but generally, and I thought of them as Wizards in
profits and wizards, essentially are the people who want, you
know, what's disparagingly called the Techno fix their
argument is look. We have these technical
challenges from, you know, the things that we did that we want
to do and the the growth of our economies.
And so, what we need to do is switch on the Science and
Technology machine and essentially produce our way out
of our dilemmas, the profits on the other hand say, that's
completely wrong. That's exactly the wrong
directions, doing more of, what's gotten us into trouble in
the past. And what we need to do is to
conserve and radically cut back and reduce the the human
footprint. And a while ago, it suddenly
dawned on me that these two approaches were kind of the
opposite from each other and that many of the Conflicts, I
saw both within the environmental movement and
between the environmental movement and Society were
expressions of the conflict between Wizards and Prophets.
And I thought, geez, I'd really like to read something about
that and then I didn't so I decided that well okay, I'll try
and do it since nobody else is. You know, I think you do a very
good job of being fair to both of these camps because they each
have a part of the puzzle. And depending on the issue or
the various application with inside of environmental concerns
You might find yourself leaning to one way or the other.
And I think you do a very good job of Steel Manning for The
Listener opposite of straw Manning.
So I think you treat both of these schools of thought, maybe
even more fairly than you had to in order to write this book.
Thank you very much. Now, I think it's important.
And the reason is that relatively soon, my research, it
suddenly dawned on me that these differences were not just kind
of pragmatic differences about, you know, how do you do this,
but they express values. And their values that everybody
shares in one proportion or another.
And we just give different weights to them.
So, typically, profits value community in the idea that we're
all part of Nature and that we are embedded in this much much
larger system and which we should play are assigned role.
And the Wizards on the contrary are much more about individual
liberty and freedom, which is, you know, the idea of maximizing
human potential and people living in the The best possible
way that they can, and we all, like, both of these things in
different amounts, it just that they come into conflict and
where you end up, which side of that conflict determines a lot
about whether your appealed to, by the Wizards of the prophets
and the book you use a very interesting framing device.
This is I thought your book described as a joint biography
or some such. And so you have these two
avatars of these two ways of being and thinking, who are
they? And what are broadly Their life
arcs. Well, as I said, I've been a
journalist for a long time and over the years, I realized I've
often heard this name. Norman, Borlaug.
And people who I later, came to think of his Wizards, would say,
I want to do for X. What?
Borlaug did for wheat? And who Norman Borlaug was?
He's the main figure in What's called the Green Revolution,
which is the mix of high yielding hybrid seeds,
high-intensity fertilizer and hi Volume irrigation that created
within called the Green Revolution, which doubled
tripled or even quadrupled Global grain yields in the 1960s
70s and 80s and had a huge impact on our lives.
And one way of putting it is that as far back as few
historians can go, the majority of humankind has faced hunger at
some point or other in the in the year.
You know, when I graduated from high school, you know the UN was
food and agricultural organization.
Estimated that between 40 and 60 percent of the world's
population was malnourished. Now, those same people are
estimating that, it's on the order of eight to ten percent.
So you see this enormous and dramatic decline that the Green
Revolution had a lot to do with. And so people saw that and they
took a very powerful lesson from it which is that you, you know,
switch on the science machine and you can have this dramatic
impact on life and they hope that they can do the same in
whatever field that there's in. So that's the reason.
In for looking at Borlaug, it's this sort of prototypical wizard
at about the same time, I realized it when I talk to
especially older environmentalists I heard this
name, I would hear this name occasionally that I had,
certainly never heard in some public discourse.
And I was a guy named William vote and essentially he put
together the ideas behind the modern environmental movement,
he wrote the first modern world going to hell book.
If you know what I mean, that was back in 1948 was called the
road to survival and if you read people like Jared, Mentor people
Paul Ehrlich or you know, Bill McKibben to some extent Naomi
Klein. All these kinds of people, their
ideas directly traced back to Bill and William vote.
And then I was fascinated to realize that they both got their
ideas, which diametrically opposed to each other at the
same time from in the same place, which is rural Central
Mexico in the mid-1940s. Yeah, I bet the journalist in
your love, that you found that nice little connection there.
R. Oh absolutely.
He's like wait a minute. There's a way you could actually
tell this story if the two people got their ideas at the
same place and time. Matt had this immediate
collision and never never spoke to each other again.
Well yeah, I do do like that nice intersection there.
I'm trying to think you just gave a great list of various
other people who may qualify as profits that are currently
operating might be some of the great Wizards.
I guess, the first person that comes to mind is also an alumnus
of this podcast, which is Ted nordhaus of the Breakthrough
Institute. Do you think that's fair than
who might, who might be in his company?
Sure, I mean there's lots of those kinds of people and they
you know Hans rosling, the guy wrote faithfulness would We'd be
another just the ausa Bell, lots of people with the resources for
the future and these, you know, one of your guests Mez ramez
naam, a good friend of mine would certainly count this one.
He's told me himself, I mean, you can you can find them all
over there. The people who are, you know,
boosting the idea of huge solar installations, all those huge
wind installations, people who want to do next Generation
nukes. The people who are arguing, I
think Emma Maris recently. Argued in wired, that GMOs are
necessary to save nature, so that kind of average is a
Wizard's approach. And by the way, just by naming
them are not trying to sort of single them out, or criticizing
them, just saying, there are exemplars of a kind of tendency
that's been around in the environmental movement since the
very beginning, Norman Borlaug. The guy who described as an
agricultural scientist, also saw himself as an environmentalist
because he believed that intensifying production and
having this, you know, much more quote, unquote, scientific Of
Agriculture would lead to increased yields and fewer
demands on nature. So, you wouldn't have hungry
people going out into the forests and Meadows and just
sort of stripping them Bear. Yeah, absolutely.
It's my intention not to name and shame these people either
because I think it's very useful in learning to split ideas into
their various camps. Like, I like that.
There's a wizard in a profit group and that helps me really
wrap my head around this and a clear way.
And if, if one of them, clearly was right about 100% of
everything, there were no longer be at the Kata me and this
partition between them, one of them would have just concretely
one once and for all. And I think that means that each
of them have something to say here.
But that being said, when you do create a nice partition in,
there's two options or two, broad schools of thought with an
issue group, that's the sort of begging out to be disrupted and
to be complicated. So what are some of the
complexities that that might face such a divided like this?
Well, first, I should say that what I'm talking about is a kind
of mental model, you know, for how to sort things.
And there's a famous expression that all models are wrong, but
some are useful. So the first thing to stipulate
is that there's tons of exceptions and caveat sand and
so forth. And this model then the question
is, is it a useful way to break things down?
And I think it is. And one of the things that would
I think that I would be complexities that say, take Ted
nordhaus at At the Breakthrough Institute.
I think Ted would be appalled if any of this were to be taken as
somehow that his belief in technological, solutions were
taken to be a lack of Love of Nature, and a lack of respect
for the natural world. And, similarly, I think the
prophets who were saying in favor of organic farming, and
this kind thing embedding themselves in a community are
very upset Get that being taken for anti-science.
You know, there's a guy just down the road, I live in a small
town in Massachusetts and just down the road from me is a small
organic farm and they regard themselves as highly scientific.
Because they see themselves as embedded into, you know, the
ecosystems around them and they have gone to considerable
trouble to understand how these work.
So, one way to put it would be that, they both Express
different parts of a love of Nature and different parts of
Anna, love of science. Okay, I think that's useful one
of the various other axes, that seems like, it might map on to
wizards and Prophets is to what degree do you believe in
economies of scale versus decentralization?
Yes, well there, there that, that's exactly the Wizards
typically. Not always look to centralized
Solutions and economies of scale the prophets regard, those is
brittle and tend to look for decentralized networks.
And there's a whole division about whether they are Craddock
or not. Okay.
Yeah. I guess I could definitely think
of a counter examples to especially with something like
the potential of blockchain to be radically decentralizing an
important kind of way. So a lot of people who are
extremely wizardly about blockchains also are some of the
most strong Advocates I know of against centralized institutions
so that isn't true. This doesn't break the model
just maybe later. Yeah.
No. But you could for example, take
solar power when the serve two models of solar power and one
Gigantic installations, you know, the the you hear this sort
of calculation, you cover x amount of the Arizona desert in
solar panels and that would be enough to power the entire
country. And the idea is that, you know,
on some level, you should actually do that.
We should have these huge places in the desert and then they
would leave the rest for and then pipe it around the country.
And, you know, leave the restaurant for nature and the
prophets tend to viscerally react against that because they
see this as creating a kind of a sacrifice Zone.
What they like the idea is of these immense networks of
neighborhood solar, you know, lots and lots of rooftop, and
small scale installations all networked together, passing
power back and forth. And they see that as under much
more local control Much More decentralized, Much More
resilient in case of disaster. And so you get, you know, and
identical technology, the the PV panel thought of into remarkably
different ways. Do you think?
Okay? So another axis I'd like to
apply op on top of this and see if it Maps at all.
Do you see it fitting along partisan lines or even just
political philosophy lines or is it more complicated than that?
What's a little bit? You know, it is certainly the
case that, you know that at various times, for instance,
there is as we speak. There is a relatively recently,
a Michael Moore produced a documentary that was planted
humans. I saw this.
It was everyone's been yelling about it, so a little scared
again. Well, My opinion is not
particularly good. Let's put it that way.
But one of the things that it does is it calls various
environmentalists who have embraced larger scale solutions
to which are typically Wizards. It calls from corporate sellouts
and the implication is the, you know, they're sort of playing
into the hands of the right and the capital F, and this kind of
thing. So, there's a kind of gloss,
political glossy can put on it, but I think at its bottom, it
isn't really like that. The so much because there are
plenty of people on both sides who, like the different values.
And so, typically Wizards are the ones who argue that
technology will let everybody pack and together into these
super dense cities where knowledge and can be centralized
in and accumulated and passed on better leaving the rest of the
world for nature. And then the profits are
typically are like small town type people.
You know who like the idea of these smaller scale communities
and regard, these kind of mega cities that are embraced by
people like Ted at the Breakthrough Institute as you
know, kind of cesspools of corruption and inequality and
you'll find people, you know, on the right and left on both sides
of that debate. Absolutely you can.
And when I think about this too, especially within the prophet
Camp, I can think of many conservatives.
I know thinkers. I like who prefer much smaller.
Are much more local. And I also know, a lot of people
who are more in the permaculture, small farms
movement that very well might end up Neighbors in agreed on
that. One thing, even though their
lives may look very different. Yes.
Yeah. And so, one of the, I mean, not
really something. I thought of when I first
started, one of the things I was pleased to see, is that it
occurred to me that if I looked at things from this Viewpoint, I
might get a little past kind of a partisan divide right now that
has devolved into Often a kind of scorp making it isn't really
particularly useful. Yeah, I suppose when you say
something like that it reminds me of.
I think I got this from the Daniel Johnson, I Grist, but
that b over nuclear power are more symbolic of just a values,
divide more than actually, the science of whether or not
nuclear is good or not. Is that you kind of hinting at?
Yes. And the thing that I would
slightly amend what you said, is often at their just about values
and what you prefer, and that sent FID rather than about
science. And that said to dismiss the
values, But I actually think the values are really, really
important, and that the discussion would be much more
useful if it was actually about the values rather than the sort
of pretend argument about the science.
Yeah, so there's like a proxy war.
That's the way Downstream that work fighting.
But you want to go back and be like, what kind of role do you
actually want to create? You think we should be talking
on that level? Yeah, I mean, the reason that
people, you know, that I know of at least don't like, nuclear
power at bottom is not because of this or that.
Radiation counter this or that, you know, environmental
footprint. It's because they see this as
this giant facility that's tinkering with things that
people just should have a lot more.
Humility about got it. Yeah, I think that's a very fair
point and that's not a bad idea. That's not a bad argument to me.
I mean, you know, the, the idea that, you know, we need to think
about our or place in the order of creation and respected.
That's not a terrible argument. But people are afraid to make
these And spiritual or religious or moral or whatever, ethical
whatever word you want to use type of arguments.
And so instead, they Dragged In These proxies, as you pointed
out where they say, oh, it's unsafe for something.
When at bottom, even if somehow it was proven to be safe, they
just don't want to go down that path and very, similar logic
applies to GMOs. Charles, I remember that I
wanted to do this and I'm glad I recalled it, but I think I found
the basically, the perfect summation of the Prophet way of
thinking. At its most extreme and also if
it's very neatly in here and I don't know if you know this, but
have you read the Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft?
Well, that sentence did not ended up.
Like, I expected to, yes, I read it but a long time ago.
All right, check this out, I love this paragraph, it's
beautiful, and a bit terrifying. The most merciful thing in the
world. I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents we live on a planet.
The island of ignorance, in the midst of black Seas of infinity,
and it was not meant that we should Voyage far the Sciences.
Each straining in its own Direction.
Have hitherto harmed us little, but someday the piecing together
of dissociated knowledge will open up, such terrifying vistas
of reality and of our frightful position.
They're in that we shall either. Go mad from the Revelation or
flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new
Dark Age. What do you think of that?
That's pretty close this. Pretty close vintage HP
Lovecraft super overwritten but onto something.
Well yeah that's absolutely there.
There's an ornate nests there that is out of fashion.
You could say these days among many other things that he
thought. Yeah.
No he what I've read that when I
was 17 or 18, and it's certainly in general left an impression
but obviously I didn't remember that paragraph.
Terrific. Thanks for sharing it.
Yeah, no. Awesome.
Sorry to just basically, add a non-diegetic insert there, just
for my own edification. Well, okay, I guess.
One thing I wanted us to get to is when I think about schools of
thought or paradigms, I like to think of them kaleidoscopic Ali.
I like being able to do I like be able to flip through them and
say, okay, if I think about a problem this way, it illuminates
this thing, but it also has its own blind spot in this way,
right? And I think one of the signs of
intelligence that I look for which because I value this, I'm
sorry. Pacing myself it's like that
aside. I think that the more those that
you can hold oftentimes the better off you are and being
able to understand problems. So if we're able to treat the
wizard in the prophet paradigms like kaleidoscopic Lee, treat
them kaleidoscopic Lee? What do you think they are
showing us and what do you think they are obscuring.
The thing. So you're saying that you know a
point of view is I guess I would think of it this way is like a
spotlight, it calf intense light but also Dark Shadows.
Yes, exactly. And in this particular case I
would say that one of the things that Wizards often do is make a
kind of pragmatic case that this is the way to go because these
features of the prophets worldview are counterproductive
or don't make any sense or will make things worse.
And so you see all the times for calculations like, if all
farming were organic we would produce much less much more land
and it would be an environmental disaster.
I'm sure you've read things like that and I want to say to them
there. What's missing here and missing
from many these things, is that the current type of farming, we
have is a social Arrangement. It's been carefully, put
together in some places and haphazardly in others, but it
depends. An entire body of Institutions
and laws and practices and so forth that have largely been
created since the 1940s and 1950s, there's nothing
inevitable about that. So one of the exercises I did is
I went to Northwest Illinois, and I met this guy who is kind
of a model profit farmer and his neighbor is a kind of a model
wizard farmer and I got them to write down all the subsidies of
various types that They were eligible for and essentially the
wizard farmer, you know, produce an entire page of different
programs that were devoted to helping his kind of farm go and
the prophet type of farmer had nothing there.
He didn't exist as far as the state local and federal
governments existed, and The Wizard farmer cheerfully
confessed. That without all these, you
know, federal and state and local initiatives that he was
embedded in his farm would collapse.
So it's very, very difficult. Old to make that kind of
comparison. Because theyre, the exist in
such different worlds, and often the Wizards kind of forget about
the sort of social legal, historical, cultural etcetera,
aspects of this. The prophets.
Meanwhile are often quite strong, the sort of potential
risks. These things are much less good
in my view at understanding. The kind of nitty-gritty social
changes that would be Required to achieve their Vision.
Again, to talk about the same. The fundamental difference as
far as I could see between the organic farm and the farm, there
was next to it. The, which was, you know, it was
all GMOs, which is, you know, with, with corn and soy, was not
what they're growing not, but the different labor or month,
there were in it. The smaller scale, much more
complicated Farm needed. Many, many more workers there.
The one was 1,200 acres and it had two workers.
Two million dollars worth of equipment and the other one, had
a thousand different crops and was recreating natural.
Ecosystems an amazing place, but it had 30 different workers.
And so, the need to pay those workers.
Meant that his prices were very high that you couldn't charge
cheap for this. And the reason for that is that
there's a bazillion subsidies for agricultural equipment, but
there's a zero subsidies for Farm labor.
And, you know, the fundamental difference between them was
social. And I typically think that
people who Are very embracing in these don't see how contingent
their successes would be on these social historical and
cultural Arrangements. That's an interesting angle.
I hadn't thought about it in that way.
Yeah, when I get done, I do think about profits, they're
sort of aesthetic, ideal strikes me very much like the Shire and
they would like to recreate that.
Yeah, and the thing is that the Shire, presumably had a whole
bunch of Institutions that don't know what Tolkien was thinking,
of, presumably, or similar to the ones that existed in the
English Countryside in the 1920s.
But there's a, there's hundreds of years of history that
underlay. The fact that the English
Countryside worked in the 1920s. I think it's very easy for both
sides to dismiss the others. As you know, not being likely to
exist for pragmatic reasons. When the real reasons are have
to do with institutions, there's no particular reason that we
couldn't if we wanted to subsidize Farm labor.
For example, we subsidize labor all the time for example
recently Amazon you know last year I think it was wanted to
create its secondary headquarters and states and
cities competed. For and they offered Amazon
millions of dollars and what they were essentially doing with
subsidizing, the labor of Amazon workers some New York offered,
you know, several billion dollars in return would get
50,000 jobs, that's subsidizing labor.
And we do that all the time for labor that we've considered to
be valuable. It's just the reason that we
don't do it for agricultural laborers, we don't consider it
to be valuable, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.
And if you subsidize the hiring of Neighbor.
The prices from these kind of small scale Farms would drop
dramatically and much. Poor people could afford the
produce from them, that's a fascinating Point.
What do you call this? When there's just a tendency of
the human mind of you whatever is around us that we are
acculturated into to be natural. Quote unquote.
What is the name for this way of seeing that is clearly?
Blinding us to how constructed our reality actually is.
Yeah, I don't know what it is. I guess there's a possibly is
related to what the Orion is called presentism, which is
judging by the past, by the standards of the of the present
and something, you should you should avoid but it is.
There's this idea that these things that are around us are
quote unquote natural and but in fact they've often been
constructed. That doesn't mean they're bad,
but it does mean that they can be changed if we want to.
So, no, I'm not advocating that we should subsidize Farm labor.
That that's not the point of the argument.
The point of the argument is that people who are saying That
this or that is inherently less unproductive or inherently less
affordable are missing the point that there's reasons underneath
that they do to have nothing to do with some imagined
agricultural productivity. Sure, I've seen arguments like
that all over the place. Perhaps most famously against
Norman Borlaug is Vandana Shiva as work saying, like, like if
you take and all the ecological costs in the subsidies, is this
actually feeding the world is this actually cheaper and Sir,
probably not. Yeah, and I would take her
calculations like all these calculations with a grain of
salt because it's very difficult to imagine, you know what, the
actual cost would be in some completely different social
arrangement. Don't know, sir.
I think that's perfectly fair. I'm not sure.
I don't have the chops necessary to evaluate these complete
competing, highly technical claims either.
So I read these things go. Hmm, seems plausible and I just
think you should be skeptical of them.
You know what, you know to take now, to take this sort of
undone. I Shiva argument about an
industrial agriculture which is essentially saying is that
there's environmental costs and environmental costs are so high
that they wipe out all the gains.
And you can say well there's entire literature of economics
about how to do those kinds of external costs are called
externalities you know the first textbook on externalities is
written back in 1918. And so there is a whole lot of
things that you could do that would dramatically reduce it.
For instance, there's all kinds of reasons right now, the
farmers way over use fertilizer. And because it's cheap, and it's
cheap because it's been if subsidized in all kinds of
different ways, if it was less cheap, Possibly people might
look at using it more sparingly or using it in ways that are
less likely to cause washout into rivers and streams or might
be formulated different or, you know, and you can lift a whole
variety of things. There's nothing inherent about
the way that we do fertilizer right now which is one of the
main coffee, right? Because it goes, the fertilizer
goes into their streams and goes into the rivers and ends up in
the ocean causes. You know, fertilizer in the
ocean is still fertilizer causes the Immense Blooms of algae and
other aquatic plants. They drop down to they die.
They drop down to the bottom bacteria.
Eat them. The bacteria multiply in such a
frenzy. They suck all the oxygen and you
get these dead spots. There's a one in the Gulf of
Mexico that's about the size of New Jersey.
There's one in the Bay of Bengal.
It's three times bigger than that and that's a huge
environmental cost. So I'm done a Shiva is totally
right about drawing our attention to that because when
we, you know, eater or wonder bread or whatever, we're not
thinking about the fact that producing that Wonder Bread.
Add to this gigantic dead spot in the Gulf of Mexico.
She's dead right about that but there's nothing inherent about
using fertilizer, that automatically gets you there.
Okay. Yeah, this is great and nuanced
and thank you for bringing it here.
Charles, I am going to reveal my bias here and then maybe you can
tell me what I'm missing which is that Nori as a whole, I'd
like the company's prime minister around.
The idea that technology can help us, solve environmental
crises, notably climate and help us wrap our heads around that
helped us, get to a healthy level of PPM.
Get that carbon down to a safe stable level that we can build
expectations around based upon what human life has come to
expect and depend upon. Then I was watching planet of
the humans, too. As I had to because everyone was
yelling and saying not to watch this movie.
So, of course, I had to watch it immediately and because that's
just the way that the brain works.
And there's a line in there, that always bothers me, which is
paraphrasing here that the same way of thinking that got us into
this problem. Cannot get us out of it and it
was applied to embrace technology but it was posing as
rhetorical fashion. That was, can we use the same
technology that got us into this problem to get us out and meet
at Holmes? Yes, yes, we absolutely have to
because we can't just walk away from this.
Like there's already a certain amount of warming that's locked
in. We have to start pulling carbon
dioxide out of the atmosphere. We can't just Retreat and then
go to hobbiton and do our like liver a little permaculture
live. That's a great thing to do, but
we also need, like, large-scale technology to make that sort of
profits lifestyle even possible. At this point, what am I
missing? So, first, I'm not gonna argue
with you. What's wrong about the argument,
you know the same technology, it's not the same technology,
you know, the kind of things that you're talking about,
Carbon eating and photovoltaic panels and windmills and, you
know, power lines that don't waste 50% of their power and
resistance and all that. That's not the technology they
got is into the problem. The technology they got us into
the problem is coal-fired power plants and we're dramatically
reducing their number. So to me, it's like you're
saying, like, you're allergic to apples, so, therefore, you
shouldn't be eating oranges, you know, it's it's a nonsensical
statement. So, So that part I'm not going
to disagree with you. What I would argue is both sides
involved that this living in hobbiton, in a modern sense
involves all kinds of technology and it's just different kinds of
Technology right now. You know, if you put solar
panels and all the roofs and in those little ones in the
backyards and you made them much more efficient and you develop
methods of localized storage, you know which are the sort of
idea that Elon Musk talks about when you say the, you would Or
in his batteries I just don't think we know how much that
could do you know right now the most efficient solar panels are
on the order of I think about 48 percent is the incident
radiation coming in right now. They're very, very expensive
because we don't choose to subsidize them.
You know, there are lots and lots of things in our society
that we choose to subsidize. If we wanted to, we could choose
to subsidize that we could kick up a lot more on the research
into how to switch power back and forth.
We could kick out. We could subsidize To this end,
you know, we could get a lot of the way towards hobbiton, if we
wanted to, it would be difficult.
But all paths are going to be difficult.
Doing the other kind of path, you know, where we construct
large scale, centralized installations, and somehow send
the power all around, like, you know, that square mile and they
in the Sonoran Desert. That's also extremely difficult.
So I just feel that we just don't know.
And one of the things that I, if you don't mind me, I'm going to
give this a little bit of a tangent is okay, if I go on it,
please do. Okay, I feel that the role of
ignorance is insufficiently appreciated.
There are lots of things. We simply don't know whether we
can do, and that means, we don't know that it's now possible, or
they don't know if there is possible and all we can really
say is that we could actually go quite a bit of the ways towards
hobbiton, if we wanted to do that.
Or we could go quite a bit in the opposite direction if we
wanted to do that. And we don't really know because
we can't predict the future. What?
The fundamental So consequences would be.
And so, I tend to get upset or annoyed when I hear people
saying the great confidence this or that is not possible because
I think the answer is, we just simply don't know, and it all
comes back to that gigantic Lovecraft quote, that I forced
into this episode. Yeah.
I think, I think humility is underappreciated all over the
place and we try to do that. Like, basically the number of
things that I hold with any degree of certainty, shrinks as
I Older, are you that way too? Yeah, I mean you know one of the
things that this also tells me though is that because he don't
appreciate under understand. You know we're very lousy at
predicting the future. We should maybe both sides
should be a little bit less dogmatic and we should
investigate what you can do with very, very small scale and
Nooks. For example, I don't think we
know the consequences, well enough to for anything.
Either side to similarly, we should look at what GMO Is can
do. We should also try to see how
much can we get with neighborhood.
Solar. You know, why not?
Why not really kick it up and run some serious demonstrations
of the best technique because that's neighborhood solar
technology. We can and see what we get.
I think that's a fine way to go. Think we need all the
experiments and all the best we can.
So right, you know, it wouldn't be so hard with neighborhoods.
You know. My wife is an architect and
designer, and she's very interested in sustainability.
And so she's been building these Small-scale near Net, Zero
Energy homes. There should be some way for her
to to programs you could apply to to convert them into totally
neighborhood locally, powered, rinse and see how that worked.
It seems fine to me II would say no gives to build a little
version of hobbiton now look at it.
Yeah. Charles one of the applications
of your idea is that we played with in the the Nori patreon
book club is Is to what degree does this?
Apply on to, how one lives one's personal life?
And I ended up seizing Upon A Passage.
I really like it's the most famous passage from Adam,
Smith's theory of moral sentiments.
It's called the poor man's son. Are you familiar with that?
But I read the book in college. So, so the answer is, I should
be more familiar with it than I actually am.
Yeah, I was might be worth revisiting this section.
It's definitely the most famous, and it's beautiful.
It starts with the poor man's son, whom heaven, and it's anger
has visited With ambition, think it's such a powerful opening but
I'm Smith sees ambition in this desire to get rich as a form of
a curse, granted the person and the process of trying to get
rich develops, many instruments and technological advances.
That makes our lives better. But this sort of burden of
ambition doesn't necessarily produce the most livable or
life. One could say, for instance, I
don't personally want to be Elon Musk.
I don't want to live in the same.
Same name. It's funny.
Grant will y'all? Yeah, I'm glad he's a father now
and that's great. Immigrants have better.
Coping is like six other kids Cheese Louise.
Oh and that's who I guess. Yeah, I guess I was just caught
my imagination but give that life seems is so demand.
Like, basically, I'm relatively Prophet asked, I don't expect to
be remembered very long, especially not people very far
removed from my own family, I'm relatively.
Okay, with that, I think the most important thing, most
people will do is raise children that are halfway decent.
It kind people, I think that's great and I have the same
Ambitions myself. Anything I get above that is
just sort of happenstance but I am so glad that there are Elon
musk's out there because it's a form of human sacrifice.
Ambition is the sort of like wizardly developing new things
that we need that. But I think they lay themselves
at the altar for the benefit of humanity by their own curse.
Of this ambition, is that halfway makes sense to you.
Yeah, you know, and I should I guess in fitting their theme
point out that on the opposite. Side, you know, Bill McKibben
has sort of wrecked his life to lead.
Three fifty.org, you know, I know I'm very slightly and I can
tell you, he does not enjoy being a blip public and
political figure, you know, it's not fun for him.
He's doing it because he believes it by the way that
documentary that we were talking about that was something that
really annoyed me about it. The idea that bill has a
corporate sellout, I've disagreed with him.
Plenty. Sometimes he's been so mad at
me. We haven't spoken.
But geez, the idea that he's not a figure of huge Integrity is
completely ridiculous. He's kind of sacrificed his life
in exactly the same way to try to create a political movement
for fighting climate change and I think that's an, you know,
again with the theme of social and political Arrangements.
That's absolutely necessary. No politicians going to stick
their neck out to do it unless there's a lot of constituents
who are behind it and he they have to show it and
organizations like three fifty.org or for that, that's
great. That's a great additional
example to from a totally different angle.
So yeah, I don't know that I would want to.
Change places with any of those people.
That sounds very stressful. Everyone scrutinizes.
Everything you do and to calls you a bad person, doesn't sound
dumb. You know, people call McKibben,
you know, you know, you've his ideas refer to the flu at all
die and this sort of thing, right?
It can't be pleasant. No, no.
Well, I guess one thing that's comforting and in the darkest of
ways is your relationship with Lynn morghulis.
That's one thing that we haven't even gotten here but what it is,
what by the way, what was that? Like And also does this Wizard
and profit Dynamic, even make sense in the face of her
insights, which, what even were then, you know?
So, that was part of the reason I included her because she's,
like, a Critic of the entire thing.
I wanted to incorporate the idea that there is perspectives from
which everything I'm talking about just as stupid and doesn't
isn't even worth considering. So her point of view is the
marcoses famous biologist, right?
Famous. Especially for her contributions
to understanding the microworld of in viruses and protests and
all these other different tiny creatures.
And from her point of view, which is pretty justifiable
there. What's important about life on
Earth there, 99% of the biomass 99% of the, you know, sort of
evolutionary creativity in terms of, you know, the genetic
variability, they're just amazing.
And so people are like this epiphenomena and the point of
view is there just a species like any other.
They're like protozoa, not two fundamentally different and
Argue that this is Darwin's key Insight.
You know, Darwin talked about Evolution.
But before you could talk about Evolution, you had to have the
idea that there is a single set of laws that applied to
everything. No exceptions.
You know, it's not like dogs have special rules, that apply
only to them. Evolution applies, to everything
including us. We're just part of nature.
Just another species among all the others.
And one of the other rules is that species, that are
inordinately successful don't live very long because they,
either wipe themselves out or they'd Drown in their own waste,
the exhaust, their own resources or all three.
So she saw that as happening to humans and the idea of both
Wizards and Prophets are arguing about ways to save us, if you
don't think that you can be saved because of the laws of
nature. Say, no, then, it's sort of
stupid. Do you have an argument between
them on the one hand? I like that.
She just out past the miss the prophets in the most serious of
ways. But also I find it kind of
comforting to feel like it takes the pressure off the Race a
little bit here like whenever you zoom out and think deep
time, it really calms me. She regarded me as a sort of a
Sentimental sap, you know, reading books about polar bears
in the like, right. And she thought that, you know,
we're completely deluded. If we thought that we were
special, she liked to say this. I mean, I didn't know her well,
but she would always, she knew me well enough to prick my
bubble whenever she could. She do you think we're special
somehow a different species from everybody?
Else how nice it must be to be you, you know, that kind of
thing. And if you look at it her way,
you can say, well, we're conducting.
This gigantic experiment now to find out if we're just a few,
she's like everything else or if we are actually capable of
changing in ways that no other species can, she would say as a
betting person, the odds that she would say, the odds are very
definitely, they were not special.
Nah, this is a favorite theme of the show to we get into the
Fermi Paradox and whether or not this is a great filter.
Other event and whether human beings will supersede this sort
of challenge. I hope so, the reason I do, what
I do is I hope we're able to do it but there is a chance that
Lynn is correct and we're just following the pace set by every
other creature that has been so successful that it's killed
things off, right? And I think though that if you
were around and we were talking now that even she would say that
if we were successful that really would mean we are special
That would be an astounding thing.
The totally would be if we really cool, right?
You know, if success is not given than to actually be
successful, will be just awesome.
Yeah, I think so. Well, Charles, we didn't even
get to talk to your other books and 1491 in 1493, which I have
read in the last year. I read both of them made a
really big impression to I like this focus on.
Well, one thing that's come up quite a lot inside of nori and
also in the book club, is this idea that Native Americans are
this sort of noble savage, this romantic idea of them as
interacting with this primeval force and not changing it.
And now, of course, we know and your work has documented the
degree to which humans have an indigenous people in particular
have shaped these environments. So I think that's a really cool
Insight. I'm wondering like bigger than
that. Is there some connection between
your work on indigenous peoples and the Columbian Exchange and
also Wizards and Prophets like what is the connection?
Well I thought of these two books, mentally, I mean I should
first say I'm kind of embarrassed to talk about this
and I was hoping you wouldn't bring it up because again he is
going to sound really pretentious and the reason is
going to sound pretentious is that it actually is pretentious.
I got to know what this is so I apologize in advance.
I thought of these books as a Trilogy or any bad bad that does
not necessarily bad. Oh yeah, right.
It's everybody wants to read a Trilogy in the the first one in
their past present and future, you know, sort of the past
represented by 1491 about the world that was created the
present, being the 1493, which is this, you know, ricocheting
of environmental consequences around the world and then the
future, which is, you know, how we're going to get out of the
situation that we're in, which is what's discussed in the
wizard in there. And the prophet.
But unlike normal, trilogies they don't say, one, two, and
three, and you can read them all in any order.
That's cool. So okay, I guess that makes
sense to me because you're saying that the world that we
live in from 1493 in the Columbian Exchange.
When you have various organisms Crossing giant barriers that had
never previously been superseded in a large way.
That's still the world. We're living in right now.
Right. Right.
And it's a world of globalization.
So one of the funny things is that, you know, there's these
various protests against globalization And I'm sort of
thinking man, you're locking the door and like 500 years.
After that particular horse has been stolen.
You know, we're living in a globalized world and the current
president, you know, trying to stop that just, you know, who
are you kidding? Fair enough.
And then so our choices for the future is whether we follow a
wizardly or Prophet asked kind of path or maybe some hybrid is
what is the chance that we have in front of us?
Oh yeah, we can decide. I mean, there's nothing because
these are all human regions. There's nothing that says that
you couldn't combine parts of the Wizards, and the prophets.
Uh, I'm sorry we're dealing with laws of physics.
You know, I can certainly invent scenarios more, you know,
greater or lesser possibility that would combine them.
But, you know, people seem to typically fall onto one end or
another of this particular Spectrum.
But it could be different. And, you know, I guess a little
bit in the background mind. I hoped that reading it all sort
of black-and-white my book would Spire the reader to think about
ways of escaping that particular Paradigm.
How are you feeling? You personally yourself Charles?
See man. Are you feeling more wizardly or
more like a profit? These days?
Oh boy. I guess the certainly, I'm
feeling both because you're seeing in the current crisis of
the coronavirus, the necessity for both science and community.
In the sense that we really need to come up with some If advances
and test them properly and rapidly disseminate them.
And that's going to be very difficult to do without some
kinds of centralized controls. But then, while we're doing
that, we also need to have functioning communities in which
we all look out for each other. So, here's a case where which
both are needed and you see people sort of splitting into
this kind of funny thing where people are focusing, either on
the community measures or saying there's going to be, you know,
treatments and vaccines. And so we don't have to worry.
Yeah I suppose so and it appears that you know the wizard and the
prophet as a set of paradigms for understanding these
decisions goes far beyond just environmental ones.
It just seems like maybe this is much broader than that.
I think so that weenies are, you know, in you can find Echoes of
this, you know, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson's
famous arguments about whether the revenue management located
in the city or the country, right?
Sure. Yeah.
I could see him walk forces and full Terror versus Russo.
These are these are modern versions of philosophical
disputes have been going on for centuries.
Yeah, I love that. I think this is such a good way
to teach these Concepts into play with them.
And I think this is, if I was trying to bring someone into
like the environmental space, I think this is a very useful
rubric and also your ristic for testing how people like, what
their inbuilt assumptions and values, are I think it's a great
tool for doing so. So kudos for that.
Well, thank you. Yeah, my pleasure.
Well, Charles, if someone wanted to keep up with your work,
obviously, they should read your Masterpiece here, Trilogy, your
pretentious Trilogy, it's not that bad.
That wasn't that wasn't the most grandiose thing I've ever heard
on this show. I probably said, worse myself.
So don't be too hard on yourself, but how should someone
keep up with your work? Oh, I don't know.
I'm working on another book and when it comes out, you could buy
it. Hardcover.
People really, really help this guy out.
Yeah, exactly. I'm by my and apparently now
what they want you to do is bite all the first week so that it,
you know, Rockets up the, the bestseller list it there.
I was told by my publisher recently that I hadn't really
thought about it. But pre-orders, an Amazon, he
said our gold is that right? That's good to know.
Are you able to tell us tease us a little bit with what it might
be about? Yeah, it's a personal thing.
Thing for me related to stuff, I'd done before we personal my
rope 1491. It was originally supposed to
have another final chapter about the North American West.
That's where I grew up miss an area that has, you know,
obviously special personal meaning to me, the kind of out
the Deep history of the West. And when I outlined it, the
outline for the chapter was longer than all the other
chapters, you know, do the unwritten and I tried to cut it
down and just didn't work, so you ended up, cutting it out
completely and papering together.
And if you look very carefully at the end of 1491, you'll see
that it's, you can still see the sutures and the scars where I
sort of laughed together, an end.
And this been sticking in my mind and I finally thought, well
I'll see what I got. And last year, I wrote out a
link the outline and I realized wait this actually is a book of
its own and it's about trying to consider the West in terms of
its future as part of its ancient history.
You know, they're what we know about the West I mean without
going into too much prediction is that What's going to be
hotter and drier than it is today?
We know that it's going to be roughly 40 percent Hispanic and
you know, something like 8% Asian.
And we know that water issues are going to be really really
important. And we also know this is
probably the most quote-unquote controversy Jose, the 274
federally recognized tribes in the west are going to gain more
and more sovereignty and that's the trajectory they've been on
since the 1960s. And so in 2050 or something like
that, there will be essentially almost 300 small nations in the
West in this time of environmental conversion and
tremendous mixing. So the conventional history of
the West which involves you know, the frontier and people
coming in from the East and nature being tamed in the west
essentially disappearing. Just doesn't seem very relevant
to that and so it's a history of the what the West might be in
the future. I love it.
I want you back on the show to talk about it.
We can even time it so it helps with your publisher.
Oh gee, thanks. I'm from Arizona and have a lot
of affection for the Southwest spend, so much time out there.
I am very interested in this. I can't wait when I might this
come out. Well, I'm hoping it would be
next year. Sometime probably a year and a
half from now. Yeah, book publishing with their
long lead times. Well, this is actually good
though because if you think about it, what it means is it
forces you to try And imagine something and to write
something, you have some value you know the beyond the
immediate that's a good point. Yeah.
That makes me feel better about it.
I'm hoping you know that I wrote 1491 it was published in 2005
and it's kind of tickled to hear that you read it last year and
had some value to you. I thought wow you know it's
sticking around a little bit yeah that thing holds up as far
as I can tell, it's great and then you're also on Twitter, see
that? Yeah.
It's a, what is your handle their Charles?
See, man, that's right. Man.
Yeah, all of these links will be in the show notes.
If you'd like to buy Charles's books or follow him on Twitter.
It's our website to it's actually down and then always
download is taking of tinkering around, turn around with it, my
expiration, my website expired for, I don't know, an hour and
the domain snatcher got it up. So I have to deal with it, which
I will do, as soon as I finish this drink of the book.
Okay. Yeah, good.
Good luck. I'll keep my eyes peeled into.
This is It happens when, when you are just a person in your,
in your fighting algorithms. Yeah.
Oh wow. There's a man versus technology.
There you go. Yuri unsuccessfully versus
technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You lost. You got Sky netted.
Oops. Well, thanks for being here.
Charles I was a lot of fun. I learned a lot and thanks for
stimulating. My mind.
And also, the patron book group is grateful for giving us such
fruitful terrain for which to March over.
So thank you. Well, it's my pleasure.
That's the wrote the book in the hopes that would do.
And so thank you very much for the kind words, my pleasure.
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