Whole earth discipline
An icon of the environmental movement outlines a provocative approach for reclaiming our planetAccording to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization—half the world's population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury—is altering humanity's land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world's dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some longheld opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth's resources.Whole Earth Discipline shatters a number of myths and presents counterintuitive observations on why cities are actually greener than countryside, how nuclear power is the future of energy, and why genetic engineering is the key to crop and land management.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
16mentions
10people
2010–2023years
63% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Stewart Brand in his book "Whole Earth Discipline" — a book I've mentioned countless times here — talks about his role in the early environmentalist movement, and from that vantage point discusses how good intentions lead to a lot of unfortunate outcomes — coal power replacing nuclear in Europe being a good example.
A lot of these people have their hearts in the right place but it's a good reminder that we often hang onto ideas despite information — and circumstance — evolving around us. Lobbying against wind farms to protect birds that will likely be wiped out eventually by fossil fuel emissions is a good example of this.
I'm hoping at this point we can all put politics aside, as well as our preconceived notions of how we see the world, and actually start to make progress on this issue of climate that will define our generation. It's not an easy challenge at all — and it's likely we've gotten to a point where adaptation is our remaining hope; but it's not a lost cause and we have many tools in our belt to try and make a meaningful change in course.
- Stewart Brand has an interesting take on this in Whole Earth Discipline (which is quite a read) - this is energy we don't know how to use yet. In 100 years, we'll be digging this stuff right up again, because there's energy in there. I'm not typically as utopian - techno or otherwise - as Brand, but I agree with him here - the nuclear industry is less than a century old, and we've already got a pretty good idea how to get enough energy from this fuel to not have a 100k year problem to begin with. Kicking the can down the road a couple decades might actually be the right thing to do here.
- I read Stewart Brand's 'Whole Earth Discipline' about five years ago, and came away pretty convinced by his pro-nuclear arguments. The price situation has definitely changed dramatically in the last few years, with solar dropping remarkably. So some of it may be worth revisiting.
But that said, something else has happened in the last five years that has made me a bit ... cautious about being decisive on nuclear. And that is general global instability. E.g., things sure feel like they've come off the rails recently and things I used to take for granted: that competent people would generally be in charge, has been challenged.
So to me, the biggest risk with nuclear isn't the technology itself. In isolation I see it as a great solution to one of the key challenges of climate change. To me, the biggest risk is political stability. It's a technology that requires constant competence.
All that said – I aim to be open-minded. If the new breed of reactors can safely shutdown under neglect, if they can't be weaponized if society breaks down – awesome. I'd love to hear more about it.
- Most Earthlings live in cities.
Cities are way more efficient than spread-out rural towns and villages[1], but we still mostly rely on rural land for food, so they continue to exist. Because rural needs and daily experiences are very different from the average city-dweller, so too are their political beliefs.
The less we need to depend on rural land for food, the more people move into cities, the more efficient everything becomes.
[1] I'd recommend reading the chapter on Dense Cities from Whole Earth Discipline - totally changed my perspective on cities.
- At risk of being redundant (I've mentioned this book a few times), I highly recommend Stewart Brand's "The Whole Earth Discipline". [1]
Brand, for those unfamiliar, was a key player in the personal computer revolution of the 1970's. He created the "Whole Earth Catalog", which inspired many of the internet's pioneers, and was a hero of Steve Jobs. He later helped create "The Well" -- the first big online community, and was present at countless other cultural moments like the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, and the forming of the Green movement.
The Whole Earth Discipline chronicles his early participation in the environmental movement, and how he's diverged from that movement over the years.
It's presented as a pragmatic guide for addressing climate change and explores things like urbanization, genetic modification of food, and nuclear power -- and how these things need to be reconsidered by environmentalists.
1: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6411373-whole-earth-disci...
- If you're interested, Stuart Brand released a book in 2009 that he calls an "eco-pragmatist manifesto". ( http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Earth-Discipline-Ecopragmatist-M...) the thrust of it is that it's too late to save the earth from humanity; its time to focus on saving humanity from the earth. He comes out in favor of cities, nuclear power, and GM foods in great detail, with enough footnotes to keep you busy for weeks. Interesting and entertaining read... And loaded with tidbits you can throw at your less savvy friends at dinner parties.
