The answer to this kind of claim is in the book "The Wizard and the Prophet", which was reviewed on ACX/SSC here [1].
To summarise the review: there are two approaches to solving humanity's big problems, from food production (mostly solved) to climate change. The Prophet approach is to go around saying "we must live within our means!" and "technology bad!", and the Wizard approach is to seek techological solutions. And as the reviewer writes:
> Though Mann insists from the start that the book is not meant to advocate for or condemn either side, it was initially difficult for me to read it as anything but two-and-three-quarters cheers for Wizardry.
It turns out that Prophets tend to be misanthropes at best, and racists at worst. William Vogt, Mann's archetypal Prophet, founded (according to Mann) much of modern-day environmentalism but also (according to the review, which I personally trust) called people in India "backward populations" who "breed with the irresponsibility of codfish". Says the reviewer:
> _Which_ people deserved to live in harmony with nature in the ensuing pastoral utopia and which would be relegated to the dustbin of history was not an exercise they left to the reader.
(Meanwhile Norman Borlaug, the Wizard, was busy producing a Green Revolution that ended up raising rice yields in India from 2 to 6 tons/hectare and lowered rice costs from $550 to $200 a ton, according to the Wiki page.)
To summarise the review: there are two approaches to solving humanity's big problems, from food production (mostly solved) to climate change. The Prophet approach is to go around saying "we must live within our means!" and "technology bad!", and the Wizard approach is to seek techological solutions. And as the reviewer writes:
> Though Mann insists from the start that the book is not meant to advocate for or condemn either side, it was initially difficult for me to read it as anything but two-and-three-quarters cheers for Wizardry.
It turns out that Prophets tend to be misanthropes at best, and racists at worst. William Vogt, Mann's archetypal Prophet, founded (according to Mann) much of modern-day environmentalism but also (according to the review, which I personally trust) called people in India "backward populations" who "breed with the irresponsibility of codfish". Says the reviewer:
> _Which_ people deserved to live in harmony with nature in the ensuing pastoral utopia and which would be relegated to the dustbin of history was not an exercise they left to the reader.
(Meanwhile Norman Borlaug, the Wizard, was busy producing a Green Revolution that ended up raising rice yields in India from 2 to 6 tons/hectare and lowered rice costs from $550 to $200 a ton, according to the Wiki page.)
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-w...