Sad book, sad Sir

10 Billion by Stephen Emmott. What a sad book.

It is a weird book. Little text, interesting graphics. That’s for the form.

For the contents, it’s even weirder. It seemed to me like written by a sick mind.

It cannot be written by a sick mind. Stephen Emmott has a very respectable job at Microsoft. He is chief scientist, and head of computational science. Nothing less. But does such a title prevents from a being weird. Apparently not.

Weird is not the exact term. I would use soulless, heartless, humanity less.

Emmott considers the world as a machine that must run smoothly, without a glitch.

Unfortunately, and that’s my humble point of view, the world is not a machine. It is a beautiful mess made of chances, fortune and misfortune. And the beauty of the world is not to be like a postcard but to be build on errors and a myriad of human weaknesses.

This book lets me think it is written by an immature child and not by a mature scientist. Or, we are back to this topic, a scientist who did not reach the meta level of understanding that the chaos is divine.

This book is not totally useless and this is why I feature it in my blog.

We learn a lot of about "virtual water". The total water that is needed to produce a product or service. It is like the TCO of water. We need 3000 liters of virtual water to produce a hamburger, 9000 liters to produce a chicken, 27000 liters of water for 1kg of chocolate, 2700 liters for a tablet of chocolate, 100 liters for 1 cup of coffee, and 4 liters of water to produce... 1 liter of water in a plastic bottle.

Not everyone is sensible to this and it is an eye opener as long as we trust the sources (which are not all well references).

What I like the most is about cars. Buying a cheap car (i.e. a Dacia Duster) is not saving the planet. It is impossible to reasonably produce a car at a Dacia's price. Your car is subsidized. But who is your kind sponsor? Mother Nature and future generations... ouch.

There is no hope in this book. There is no beauty of the struggling people who fight for their existence. There is no tolerance for people’s ignorance. People are stupid and guilty.

What a lack of humanity

Whatever the future of the world, the beauty of this world is to be imperfect made of weak people who try to thrive and survive.

Once I closed this book I immediately checked pictures from my photographer friend Reza who seems to me the total opposite of the sad sir who wrote 10 Billion.

Note: Black man picture from Reza