Themes

Raw Notes

• Bourlag came to Mexico after WWII
• Set up the scene saying the world is reeling from the death and destruction of the Second World War, but bourlag is staring at plants. People will one day say that bourlags work was more consequential on human history than both world wars combined
• He was in Mexico then but he was rly experiencing the global issues we face today
• “Techno-optimism”
• Bourlag supported by the Rockefeller foundation, biggest charity
• We complete the Manhattan project in 3 years bc of an impending threat. Why can’t we have that attitude toward a much bigger threat!
• Malthus believed human populations grow at geometric rates (1,2,4,8,16) while all else grew at arithmetic increases (1,2,3,4,5)
• A lot of white supremacists of early 1900s were zealous conservationists too. They saw them as two parts of the same struggle - so environmentalism was rly at first a right wing struggle
• Bourlag actually grew his first dwarf wheat under lights in order to avoid damage by wheat rust
• “The whole world could be an iowa”
• 1% of the world's industrial energy is devoted to the haber-bosch process creating synthetic fertilizer
• That 1% doubled the amount of food the world can grow
• From 1960 to 2000, use of synthetic fertilizer increased 800%, half of that going to just 3 crops - wheat, rice, and corn
• Haber Bosch process responsible for diets of nearly 45% of the population
• 45% of the fertilizer used in the last 60 years wasn't consumed by plants - it was runoff -
• The runoff sits at the bottom of reservoirs, leading to rapid algae and plant growth, which drains the ocean of oxygen creating oxygen dead zones. In the gulf of Mexico in 2016 the dead zone was 17,000 square miles
• Albert Howard and his wife invented composting
• Victor Hugo in Les mis devoted 15 pages to talking about the Paris sewer system and how it should be used to fertilize farms.