The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

by Charles C. Mann

The quote in the sentences just before this one sound remarkably like Elizabeth Holmes.

What to do, in a world brimming with fossil fuels? In climate change, all choices involve leaps into the unknown. Claims that carbon capture cannot be economically viable or that renewables will always cost too much or use too much land generally amount to saying, I prefer the unknown risks associated with this course rather than the unknown risks associated with that course because the first leads to a future that I like better. At bottom, the choices stem from private images of the good life—a life in which people are tied to the land or free to roam the skies. Only individuals can choose. The important thing is that they have choices, and we are still at the stage where, however dimly, we can imagine that Lynn Margulis was wrong.

This is an exceptionally important paragraph. Perhaps the most important paragraph in the whole book. It provides a framework for understanding how we do or do not move forward. It provides a framework for understanding how we destroy ourselves or how we survive. It is an individual decision. But unless we move forward together, survival becomes less of an option. Or perhaps, less of a viable outcome. Moreover, the longer it takes to move forward together in a way that all can, however begrudgingly, accept, we may be sealing our own fate as a species.

The rejection of expertise led to an embrace of the irrational and ultimately to the Nazi takeover. This is a really great point.