By Aaron M. Cohen
A maverick environmentalist advocates saving the planet via nuclear power, mass urbanization, genetically engineered food, and geoengineering.
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand. Viking. 2009. 316 pages. $25.95.
Futurist and ecologist Stewart Brand believes that the Green movement must move swiftly and decisively to embrace technological solutions to climate change — several of which many leading environmentalists have spent their careers campaigning against — including nuclear energy, genetic modification, mass urbanization, and geoengineering.
Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, and co-founder of The Long Now Foundation and The WELL, has never had any trepidation about seeking out controversial solutions or endorsing emerging technologies. As he sees it, climate change is the single largest threat looming over humanity. It comes down to a simple choice, he writes: “We finesse climate, or climate finesses us.”
The first item on the agenda is a carbon-free future. Brand argues that this is well within reach and that the technological know-how is already in place — all we need to do is get over our nuclear fears.
A 2002 tour of the notorious Yucca Mountain project led Brand to rethink his long-held opinions on nuclear energy. He began to balance potential benefits against potential drawbacks. In the process, he learned that the risk of cancer is much higher from fossil-fuel production and usage; that oil, natural gas, and hydrogen are much more explosive; that trace radiation technically isn’t bad for you; and that nuclear energy is historically associated with deproliferation efforts — not nuclear weapons programs.
Brand makes nuclear energy the leading component of his green energy plan and presents a strong case that it is economical and safe. (The arguments he presents against greater investment in wind and solar technology are far less persuasive, however). He also endorses the proposition, quickly gaining acceptance, that booming megacities are facilitating an increasingly beneficial arrangement between humans and the environment. “Urban density allows half of humanity to live on 2.8 percent of the land,” he writes. “Soon that will be 80 percent of humanity on 3 percent of the land. Consider just the infrastructure efficiencies.”
Brand goes on to declare urban slums, home to more than half of city dwellers, to be the new sustainable communities. Intentionally or not, “squatter cities are Green,” he says. For example, urban farming and rooftop agriculture have their roots in squatter cities, where such practices were born of necessity if not ideology. He argues that squatter cities must be improved and incorporated within larger urban structures.
With the energy crisis and overpopulation under control and everyone comfortably ensconced in megacities, the next question is how to feed everyone. Brand advocates what he sees as the next logical step in what has been an ongoing process ever since humans began domesticating crops thousands of years ago.
Like nuclear power, genetically modified crops have long been the bane of environmentalists, but Brand believes it’s time to rethink the issue. The benefits of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are myriad, he argues. Crops modified to grow without being tilled prevent carbon in the soil from being released in the atmosphere. So called Bt crops (engineered with a gene from the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium) reduce pesticide use. Other technologies reduce the amount of water or fertilizer needed to grow crops. Still others may help reduce methane emitted from the animals that consume them (including humans).
The main hindrance comes from the private sector in the form of corporate licensing practices and intellectual property law, which can prevent farmers in the developing world from taking full advantage of agricultural aid. Taking his cue from the open-source software movement that he’s been a strong advocate for over the years, Brand pushes for what he calls “open-source biotech,” which he believes is very much a possibility. If environmental scientists develop non-patent-protected seeds with ecology and international aid in mind, they may be able to contain food and water shortages, keeping them at more manageable, localized levels.
Saving what is arguably his most controversial proposition for last, Brand writes that large-scale geoengineering efforts are now imperative. Relying on systems dynamics, he shows that it’s too late to completely prevent or mitigate climate change even if humanity somehow miraculously reverses course at the last minute. More drastic measures must be considered. Finding ways to engineer the planet with a light touch is a tricky proposition, to say the least, and implementing such solutions even trickier, but Brand is cautiously optimistic that it can be done.
The moral of the story is that, in the face of imminent climate change, we must search for innovative high-tech solutions and embrace what Brand calls “the freedom to try things.” This thoroughly researched and highly readable book presents a compelling if controversial argument for how best to confront the challenges ahead.
About the Reviewer
Aaron M. Cohen is a staff editor for THE FUTURIST and World Future Review.