Stewart Brand is a rare breed of environmentalist: in his own words, “an ecologist by training, a futurist by profession, and a hacker (lazy engineer) at heart.” In the 60s, Brand campaigned against nuclear power and staged a “Hunger Show” to dramatize the global famine predicted by his mentor, Paul Ehrlich, but he also began printing a decidedly pro-technology handbook for saving the planet. Whole Earth Catalog, first published in 1968, was premised on the notion that given the right information, tools, and awareness, people could—and would—create a more sustainable world. It was, many have said, the beginning of environmentalism.
Since that time, Brand’s own views on core “green issues,” from atomic energy to genetic engineering, have shifted under the weight of scientific evidence. Rather than quietly backpedal, Brand has now issued a bold challenge to the very movement he helped create: Can you forsake ideology for the good of the planet? Whole Earth Discipline contains every reason why they should: 300 pages of data, anecdotes, and arguments that illustrate, in withering detail, the scale of ecological problems we face today, and the utter inability of faith-based environmentalism alone to fix them. Seed editor Maywa Montenegro recently caught up with the 70-year-old Brand, ahead of a multi-city book tour.
Seed: It’s been 40 years since the first edition of Whole Earth Catalog. Why publish the sequel now?
Stewart Brand: There was actually no periodicity. In fact, I kind of hate the “40 years later” stuff that’s going on. But what did happen is the realization that I’d accumulated a set of contrarian views on some important environmental issues—specifically, cities, nuclear energy, genetic engineering, and geoengineering—and that it added up to a story worth telling.
That led me to the larger strategy of trying to move the environmental movement from a romantic identification with nature toward a more scientific basis. And moving on from that, toward an engineering approach to solving environmental problems.
Seed: Do you think environmentalists will be receptive?
SB: There are two main elements that are changing things. One is the younger generation, which is pretty comfortable with technology and doesn’t regard it as inherently evil. So something like synthetic biology or genetic engineering looks like something they can figure out and put to use. And when it comes to nuclear engineering, they don’t remember the Cold War or Chernobyl. The other element is climate change. It was taken seriously early and often by environmentalists, and they’re now living with the consequences of having been right about it. They paid attention to climatologists, to the scientists, to the IPCC, so they are more comfortable with a scientific approach on other issues.
Seed: You’ve said that environmentalists have some “radical news” coming with urbanization, specifically in the developing world.
SB: Well, the good news is that people in cities in the developing world are having fewer children than they did when they were out in the bush. As they move from the bush, the bush is coming back. And they don’t have, by and large, the kind of concerns that we have in the global north about genetic engineering and nuclear power.
Their dire need for grid electricity is pushing them right now to build vast quantities of coal-fired plants. But they are increasingly aware that this is a problem: Many developing countries are energetically pursuing nuclear power, which is the only immediate, one-for-one substitute.
Seed: Isn’t nuclear power prohibitively expensive for most developing countries?
SB: My guess is that the developing world is going to be a major market for microreactors, for the new generation of small nuclear reactors. These offer grid electricity generated close to hand and pretty inexpensively. The smaller ones, the 35–150 megawatt ones, are the right size for a town of a certain scale. You can start with one, and as the town grows, or as people go up the energy ladder, you just add another and connect them all in sequence. Over time you get the benefits of a large reactor without having to build the whole thing from scratch. That kind of thing will be very attractive in developing economies.
On most environmental issues, a lot is going to be played out in the developing world because that’s where the major needs and crises are. Also, that’s where there is the ability to radically rethink things. We’ve seen this with cell phones. Wait ‘til those folks get a hold of synthetic biology.
Seed: In the run-up to the Copenhagen summit in December, there’s been increased debate over whether climate change is a regulation problem or an innovation problem. How do you see it?
SB: It’s not an either/or question. We need science to understand the climate dynamics much better. We’ve got better data and better models than we used to, but when the predictions of the models fail, they fail in important and scary ways. They did not predict the melting of the Arctic ice; they’re not particularly helpful in the melting of the sub-Arctic tundra. There may be an important negative feedback dynamic going on above the continents, where ever more woody plant growth is apparently fixing extra carbon. Just as important is understanding the oceans, particularly the microbes in the ocean and what they’re doing. At what temperature does the ocean stratify and go relatively dead? We’re short on good-enough data.
Then on the engineering level, direct intervention—geoengineering—is going to be necessary sooner than most people think or expect. Research there is absolutely essential because to make a mistake on the planetary scale is not something you want to do. Money and effort going into the 10 or 12 geoengineering schemes we have so far, plus developing new ones, is of the essence.
At the same time, government involvement is crucial because governments decide infrastructure what the price of various energy forms is going to be. The American, European, Chinese, and Indian governments need to make coal expensive. If they don’t, coal will be burned until we all cook.
Seed: Can you tell me about your vision of the Greens and the Turquoises?
SB: I question whether “green” or “environmentalist” will be a big enough tent to contain a growing variety of disunity within the modern environmental community. People who are fiercely against nuclear have very little good to say to someone who is otherwise totally green but likes nuclear.
So one approach is to say, okay, there are different flavors of green—the traditional “Greens” and this other thing. I wanted a name for them, so I just called them “Turquoises,” mixing green and blue. There’s enough work to keep both of them busy with more projects than they can possibly handle. Traditional Greens are already good at things like preserving, protecting, and restoring natural systems. The Turquoise types may be the ones who find new ways to push these projects in cities. Here I think they can collaborate completely, or almost completely.
When it comes to engineering technology, however, I’m not so sure. There’s a fundamental difference between Greens who automatically distrust technology and Turquoises who automatically look at a technology as a potential tool. Something like synthetic biology comes along, and the Greens say, “Just a damn minute,” while the Turquoises say, “Oh boy, this is interesting. I know what to do with this stuff.” Greens are typically worriers, while the younger Turquoises are more interested in opportunity, so they grab things and say, “Let’s try it out and we’ll worry later.” It’s the worry first versus worry later dichotomy.
Seed: Where do you fit along this spectrum?
SB: I’ve been a tech-loving Green from day one. Whole Earth Catalog was a technology-accepting green publication. We were pushing what was called “appropriate technology”—solar, wind, and other things that at the time were viewed askance. Everybody in the environmental movement, for example, hated cars. Then Amory Lovins came along and said, actually we can make cars more efficient, which would change the energy picture in a huge way. Amory describes himself as a techno-twit. I’m just a somewhat older and more experienced techno-twit.
Seed: As a techno-twit, you’ve got some interesting plans for this book.
SB: Yes—I’m doing an online annotated version. It will go live at the same time that the book publishes in October. Basically, the sections of every chapter that are footnoted will be immersed in the research material with lots of live links and photos, diagrams, charts, and so on. So anyone who wants to see my sources can go straight there and draw their own conclusions.
And I’ll try to keep updating the book. I’ve already got some additional levels of understanding from people like George Church and Larry Brilliant. I’ll just add that to the online version.
Seed: You point out that Gaia will persist whether or not humans do. But are you optimistic about the future of people?
SB: I agree with Lovelock, who in 1938 said something terrible is coming and we’re still figuring out what it is and what we’re going to do about it. So, no, I’m not sanguine. If most of the things that I point at in the book are pursued full on, we’d have a pretty good chance, but I’m not sure that it’s going to play out. It’s not bad people. There’s just a lot of momentum that we’ve built up going in directions that are now understood to be harmful and are getting more so as time goes by. You can’t turn a big ship on a dime.
Source: http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/a_manifesto_for_the_planet/
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