Proclaiming Four Environmental ‘Heresies’

Stewart Brand, who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and ‘70s, has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geoengineering. This talk at the US State Department, a foretaste of his major new book, is sure to provoke widespread debate.

... Complete entry

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/30  at  02:07 AM

Brand is more than ten years older than me but his mind is at least 20 years younger.

I don't know if that is a good thing or not.

He shows us facts and he's an optimist.

He sees the ugly truth too and doesn't whitewash things: Solar and wind won't solve the carbon problem. Nuclear will.

But he doesn't mention the fact that nuclear fission fuel will also run out in about 100 years. As an optimist he would probably answer: Our descendants will build fusion reactors.

He is not afraid of bioengineering either: He's an optimist there too, probably because, as he implies, we have no other choice other than starvation and war, and pessimism is a fall back position to nowhere.

Brand is as creative as he's always been (he even has a quick solution for global warming) and we're lucky that this young old man is still around telling us the truth.

We need to listen to our (sometimes very young) Fathers before it's too late.

Name:

Email:

Location:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: