The demand for their products is so great that Haber-Bosch plants today consume 1 percent of all the energy on earth, and the largest factories produce so much ammonia that is has to be transported in pipelines [...]. This huge, almost invisible industry is feeding the world. Without these plants, somewhere between two billion and three billion people - about 40 percent of the world's population - would starve to death. [...] Half the nitrogen in your blood, your skin and hair, your proteins and DNA, is synthetic.- Hager, Thomas (2008). The Alchemy of Air: a Jewish genius, a doomed tycoon, and the scientific discovery that fed the world but fueled the rise of Hitler. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
We are artificial beings living on an artificial planet. Every so often I'll read something that widens my view of our world and contributes to my understanding of why things are and how things came to be. Something that jars my mindset in such a way that I feel the world shift slightly and resettle. A strangers words acknowledging and confirming that hunch or that whisper of a feeling which had previously rattled about my brain. Bugging me like a mosquito.
This short, sweet, and easy read was just such a thing.
