Whole Earth Discipline
 |
|
| Author | Stewart Brand |
|---|---|
| Original title | Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto |
| Publisher | Viking Penguin |
|
Publication date
|
2009 |
| ISBN | |
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto is the sixth book by Stewart Brand, published by Viking Penguin in 2009. He sees Earth and people propelled by three transformations: climate change (global warming), urbanization and biotechnology. Brand tackles "touchy issues" like nuclear power, genetic engineering and geoengineering, "fully aware that many of the environmentalist readers he hopes to reach will start out disagreeing with him".
Brand said in an interview with Seed magazine, "...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."
The author cites numerous other authors both in the recommended reading section and in live lectures. In particular, book influences are Constant Battles by Steven A. LeBlanc with Katherine Register,Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World by Robert Neuwirth, and James Lovelock, the author of The Revenge of Gaia and The Vanishing Face of Gaia.
In an interview with American Public Media, Brand said, "...in [Whole Earth Catalog] I focused on individual empowerment, and in [Whole Earth Discipline] the focus is on the aggregate effects of humans on things like climate. And some of these issues are of such scale that you got to have the governments doing things like making carbon expensive. Or making coal expensive to burn and putting all that carbon into the atmosphere. And individuals can't do that, individual communities can't do that. It takes national governments."
Speaking on "Rethinking Green", Brand provided a short version of his book:
The book challenges traditional environmentalist thinking around four major issues:
...
Wikipedia