Two opposing views on how to tackle the energy transition

Summary - Humankind stands at a crossroads to shape tomorrow's world. Increasing population and affluence subsequently increases overall demand, be it in the form of food, water or energy. In the book “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Duelling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World” two scientists present two different paths to escape a humanitarian crisis. In this article the different paths are described and compared, so that readers can recognize them and place the paths in today's context and political decisions.

Introduction

In his book: “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World”, Charles Mann describes two different perspectives on how to deal with the upcoming challenges humankind faces. Mann splits the challenges - mainly shortages - into three elements: Food, Freshwater and Energy (actually four but these elements got the best coverage). If humankind wants to survive, it has to resolve these issues, the Wizard and the Prophet agree on that point. But what happens when people with different views strive towards the same end goal? Exactly, they claim their own ideas as the solution instead of cooperating and finding common ground.

In his book, Charles Mann describes the perspectives of Wizards (who see technology as the solution) and Prophets (who believe in behavioural change). The book is divided into chapters on each of the central issues, consistently presenting the opposite views per problem area. Both these different perspectives pursue the same goal - to ensure a feasible future for humankind - but their methods to achieve this goal vary. Mr. Sustainability offers a summary and its own perspective on these views.

The Founders

Norman Borlaug - Wizard

On one side of the spectrum is Norman Borlaug, who has become the emblem of what has been termed “techno-optimism” or “cornucopianism” — the view that science and technology, properly applied, can help us produce our way out of our predicament. Exemplifying this idea, Borlaug was the primary figure in the research that in the 1960s created the “Green Revolution,” the combination of high-yielding crop varieties and agronomic techniques that raised grain harvests around the world. 

William Vogt - Prophet

William Vogt is seen as the founder of the Prophets. He laid out the basic ideas for the modern environmental movement. In particular, he founded “apocalyptic environmentalism”—the belief that unless humankind drastically reduces consumption, its growing numbers and appetite will overwhelm the planet’s ecosystems. In best-selling books and powerful speeches, Vogt argued that affluence is not our greatest achievement but our biggest problem. Our prosperity is temporary, he said, because it is based on taking more from Earth than it can give. If we continue, the unavoidable result will be devastation on a global scale, perhaps including our own extinction.

 The Problem Areas

 Food

Both Borlaug and Vogt viewed themselves as environmentalists with a solution for the upcoming planetary crisis. Borlaug saw technological advancement as the solution for the planetary crisis. For example, by using the advanced methods of the Green Revolution to increase per-acre yields, he argued, farmers would not have to plant as many acres for the same yield. Researchers call this the Borlaug hypothesis.

Vogt’s views were the opposite. The solution, he said, is to get smaller. Rather than grow more grain to produce more meat, humankind should, as his followers say, “Eat lower on the food chain.” If people ate less beef and pork, valuable farmland would not have to be devoted to cattle and pig feed. The burden on Earth’s ecosystems would be lighter.

Wizards view “cutting back” as unfair to the poor, as it is easy to say for Western countries to cut back when they have long enjoyed the benefits of (a lot of) food. Moreover, many poor countries don’t have the choice to cut back, as they currently lack sufficient amounts of food. Prophets argue that the Wizards’ ever-growing emphasis on human resourcefulness is scientifically ignorant and driven by greed.

 Freshwater

The access to freshwater is crucial for human survival. There are two ways to ensure sustainable access: one is increasing the supply and the other is reducing the usage. Increasing the supply is described as the “hard path” and changing habits as the “soft path”.

To demonstrate the hard path, the case study of Israel is used. In the 1960s, the Israelis were confronted with a problem, namely the access to freshwater in the large parts of the country. The question? How can we get more water? The answer: increasing supply. In typically Wizardly style, Israel began with a centralized, top down planning of more dams and reservoirs. The best example is the National Water Carrier project. Example: the National Water Carrier made in Israel. The project provided drinking and irrigation water to many people in the country. However, it also sucked water from rivers and lakes, degrading ecosystems and made water tables sink.

In contrast, the soft path asks a different question: why use water to do this at all? The answer: we can make better use of existing supplies and changing habits. The soft path is a decentralized and bottom up approach. The book demonstrates this with an example of lawns in the United States. Lawns require much water. Instead of using more efficient sprinklers, lawns are replaced with plants that require much less water. The fundamental thought of the soft path is based on the “Three R’s”, which are often referred to in circular ideology:

1. Reduce

2. Reuse

3. Recycle

 Energy

The Wizards see nature instrumentally, as a toolset freely available to use. The Prophets believe that each ecosystem has an inner integrity and it should be preserved, even if it constrains human actions. Wizards and Prophets disagree about energy in the same way as they do on food and water. Wizards are in favour of increasing supply, Prophets want to adhere to the Three R’s.

Wizards

Wizards support big, high tech, centralized power plants based on concentrated energy sources like coal, oil, natural gas and uranium. At the same time, Wizards also commonly do not believe that increasing coal is the best suitable option. They do believe that substituting coal by uranium is. Nuclear, in their view, is “reliable”, “cheaper” and “safer”. The following objective criteria are stated to support the Wizards’ argument for nuclear.

• Reliability - As measured by the capacity factor. Simply put, what fraction of the time is the plant actually producing electricity at its maximum rate? For coal the capacity factor is <60%, nuclear is 90% and solar panels are rated <30%. Once the nuclear plant is running, it is reliable and the downtime derives mainly from maintenance.

• Costs - The construction of a nuclear power plant is costly, producing the electricity is cheap.

• Safety - As measured by the amount of deaths in the whole energy chain. That is, from exploring the resource to power generation and waste treatment and disposal. Apart from building hydroelectric dams, nuclear power source has the least deaths of all power sources, especially less than coal.

To be clear, Wizards don’t reject renewable energy but they do not see solar and wind playing a significant role in the decades to come, especially paying attention to the negative factors such as renewables being unreliable, intermittent, storage being costly and having a very large footprint. If Wizards want to build renewable energy sources, they want to build big solar fields or offshore wind parks.

Prophets

Where Wizards see technology - including developments in wind, solar, CCS etc. - as the solution for problems such as climate change, Prophets see technological developments only as a means or a part of the solution. They argue that human behavior must change to not reach the limits of the earth’s resources. They believe endlessly increasing supply is not the answer, primarily based on the Jevons Paradox.

Mr Jevons stated that improvements in efficiency would reduce the cost of energy. Lower costs subsequently encourages people to use more, draining the energy reserve faster. In contrast, Prophets direct their focus to behavioural change and place their hopes in small-scale, distributed, low impact and household-level facilities that harness diffuse forms of energy, like solar power, wind and geothermal heat.

In terms of nuclear energy, they perceive it as being too expensive to be considered a reasonable option, mostly referring to the nuclear power plants in Georgia soaring to $21 billion before being finished. Prophets acknowledge that the electricity is cheap when the plant is operating, however the Return on Investment (ROI) is insufficient due to extremely high investment costs. Moreover, leaving nuclear waste for future generations to handle is a moral dilemma.

Prophet Example

Wizard Example

Discussion

There you have it, two roadmaps for the future.

For me, the Prophet's solution seems to be the more sustainable and therefore viable option to follow. However, I must also be aware of my own bubble in which I live. If people die of starvation, can you deny Wizardesque solutions? One must be aware however that such reasons are also utilized by big polluting corporations who refuse to change their business-as-usual.

Perhaps the obvious thing to say here is to find the best practices of both roadmaps.

Borlaug presents an opportunity to escape poverty. After that Vogt and the Prophets should takeover. Ever more supply is not the answer, as Jevons Paradox shows. Once a route is chosen, it is difficult to deviate from that route. The resulting inertia is caused by two things, namely human emotion and the timespan of the projects. The aspect of human emotion is brilliantly illustrated by Yuval Noah Harrari, who calls the unwillingness of politicians to change the ‘Our Boys Didn’t Die in Vain’ syndrome. It bears similarities to the sunken cost fallacy and goes as follows.

The more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the stronger the story becomes and the more we want to believe the story to be true. This is because we desperately want to give meaning to the sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused. This paradoxical expression is derived from war experiences where politicians could not get themselves to go to the parents, wives and children of millions of dead soldiers, and tell them: ‘Sorry, there has been a mistake. We hope you don’t take it too hard, but your son died in vain, and so did your nephew.’ Alternatively they say: ‘Your son and nephew were heroes! They died for a noble cause.’

The same principle applies to water, food and energy policies, where perceived non-resolute behavior can be fatal for one's political career. On top of this, building nuclear power plants, planting huge numbers of trees and decoupling the world’s food supply are both time consuming projects. Therefore, the decision to choose a path is impossible to make for politicians in a democratic system, who do not have the luxury to present 40-year plans.

Politicians constantly face tough ‘Wizard vs. Prophet decisions’ in many areas. Have a look at the petrochemical industry in the Netherlands for example. The Dutch government is willing to spend 2 billion euros in subsidies for a carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant in the Port of Rotterdam. CCS is a Wizard solution, whereas Prophets argue that CCS only maintains the business as usual instead of changing the process which harms the planet. What is wrong, and what is right?

Another tool that shows great promise is a carbon emission tax. The tax follows the “polluter pays” principle. However, implementing such a measure without thinking it through also provides additional problems, such as the Green Paradox. There are more paradoxes surrounding this topic, but Hans Werner Sinn described the Green Paradox as an unintended consequence of climate policies. Climate policies such as CO2 taxation, which aim to reduce CO2 emissions, can result in the opposite effect. Emissions increase, at least for a certain period of time. In anticipation of climate policy, oil companies and petrol companies sharply increase production. the fear of not being able to sell your products in a few years may lead to unprecedented oil production, which will drastically increase emissions in the short term. In other words, action must be taken globally to ensure that rules are followed everywhere.

Are you a Wizard or a Prophet?

Next time big projects in the energy transition are announced by companies - or by you - think of the path you take. Is it a Wizard or Prophet solution? Is this the path you want to follow? Opposing a certain view or making a bald statement could lead to outcomes you perhaps did not foresee. To quote Herman Russchenberg, professor and director of the climate institute of TU Delft:

“You can only say no to research on geo-engineering if you say a resounding yes to climate change mitigation.”

References & Other Stories

Charles C. Man - Wizards vs. Prophets

Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens

De Standaard - Een klimaatballonnetje laat je niet zomaar op

Studium Generale - Waarom het klimaatprobleem zo moeilijk is voor ons

Mr. Sustainability - Direct Air Carbon Capture Technology