Where Enviromentalists Go Wrong
Stewart Brand, ardent environmentalist and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, predicts changes in common environmental wisdom on four hot issues:
Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
Predicting a shift in opinion in these areas is just a polite way of saying that the current thinking on them is wrong. And he’s right. The current mainstream enviromental stance has got it wrong on all four issues, especially the GMO food and nuclear power.
Interestingly, he doesn’t say why he thinks the consensus will shift on these issues. He just thinks the rational environmentalists will eventually convince the romantic environmentalists. In the long run, I think he’s right– people will eventually realize that we can achieve the great benefits of GMO food and nuclear power in (relative) safety. There’s just too much to gain. Predicting it will happen in the next 10 years, though, is probably overly ambitious.
February 28th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I loves me some Nuclear Power.
February 28th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Interestingly, he doesn’t say why he thinks the consensus will shift on these issues.
To put words into his mouth: “Because I think they’ll eventually figure out what I did.”
Which IMO, is a bad way to try and predict people’s behavior. It also leaves out the quasi-religious component of the “Greens” today, which is a rather fatal failing. With that, his predicition to my mind is silly. (Even though I agree with him personally.) I’ve just been arguing with the people he’s saying are going to change their mind in a huge paradigm shift, completely changing their entire worldview, for too long to think they’re willing to change anywhere near that much.
February 28th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
40 Years ago in the South people couldn’t fathom the possibility of a white and a black person getting married, sitting at a lunch counter together, or attending the same class; in light of that, I don’t think it’s impossible to imagine environmentalists embracing GMO food or Nuclear power.
February 28th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I think leadership will change their opinions more than anything. If someone like Barack were to be elected, and to support things like Nuclear power, you would see more “greens” open up to the possibility. So long as it’s just people like George W. advocating it, you’re right, they will not change their minds.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Don’t get me wrong. I consider myself an environmntalist in the sense that I believe it’s important to take into account the human impact on the natural world and natural resources. I’m down with conservation and preservation efforts.
Where I break with most environmentalists is that I don’t romanticize nature too much. The woods is a good place to hang out, and I want my air and water clean, but not as an end in itself. I want those things because they produce benefits for me.
Anyway, I do think mainstream environmentalists will come around eventually, but it’s a pretty big shift and a lot of leaders are going to need replacing. I just don’t see that happening on a short timetable of less than 10 years.
February 28th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Of course it will, it’s a fad is all. It’s been deeply embedded in the younger generations by the Left, but latest reports on the Gen-Y’s who were also brought up with the whole vapid “Self Esteem” movment/tripe indicates that they are the most narcissistic generation yet – and that means egotistical Me-Firstism will overcome the external fad of eco-whackiness.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
FYI: Stewart Brand has also been kind enough to endorse my entertaining look at nuclear power for the lay person – the novel “Rad Decision“. Available online at no cost to readers or in paperback.
http://RadDecision.blogspot.com
“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” – Stewart Brand
February 28th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Perhaps its just the environmentalists that I hang with, but most of us are down with urbanization. Its sprawl thats the bigger concern.
As to nuclear power, its got a lot of advantages to other forms but some disadvantages too.
As to GMO, I think that there are some beneficial things like adding nutrients, but I also think that GMO for the sake of changing the colour and texture is really not necessary. GMOs can also be avoided by using crop rotation and the like. The GMOs that don’t reproduce so that Monsanto can make money every year are just wrong frankly.
I totally didn’t get his point about population growth.
February 28th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
That’s an excellent article. The predictions don’t seem particularly bold. Wailing about overpopulation has been in sharp decline for at least a decade and may already have suffered the fate Brand predicts, and the environmental benefits of population density seem fairly widely accepted already.
I’ve been getting in arguments with fellow enviros over nuclear power for years now, and I expect that battle will continue for years more. Once people realize how much safer pebble-fuel reactors are, things will calm down a bit. There are new nuke plants on the drawing board for the first time in at least a decade, and it will be interesting to follow the permitting process. I know nuclear waste is long-lived, but having it contained seems like a big advantage over other wastes that we dispose of simply by dilution into our air and water.
With both nuke power and GMOs there is a major Luddite component to the resistance. GMOs will probably find acceptance, but I have to agree with Manish. Monsanto’s sterile seeds are deeply offensive and a really bad move for an emerging technology trying to win public favor. Likewise, suing farmers whose crops seem to have been naturally pollinated by adjacent engineered crops is grossly offensive. If GMO corporations end up in a decades-long PR war, it’s their own damn fault.
I suppose the predictions don’t seem bold to me because I’m more scientist than romantic, though I know I’m a romantic too because I have the same sort of reaction to a blown-off hilltop or a culverted creek that fundamentalists have to aborted fetuses. Topography is sacred.
March 1st, 2007 at 12:05 am
WTF, persimmon? I couldn’t get either you or tgirsch to touch on any of the nuclear power talking points from the Global Warming Skeptics thread, and now you are all for them? Pebble bed reactors? Nuclear power in everyone’s backyard? Reprocessed fuel instead of figuring out how to keep plutonum buried and safe from bad people for thousands of years in someone else’s back yard?
Were you bitten by a radioactive clue over the weekend or something?
March 1st, 2007 at 2:23 am
Were you bitten by a radioactive clue over the weekend or something?
It seems like it was years ago. Perhaps the poison is stronger than I suspected.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:46 pm
On population growth, I still think a valid concern exists. The impact hasn’t been as bad as it otherwise might have been, because much of the growth exists in population-dense areas. But as fresh water becomes a less-readily-available resource, it’s going to be a bigger problem.
On urbanization, I agree with Manish. Urbanization without sprawl is a good thing, environmentally speaking. It’s the sprawl that’s the problem.
The GMO issue is more complex. I probably fall squarely between the enviros and corporate interests on that one. We need to proceed with caution there, but I wouldn’t rule it out completely. I do have other concerns with it that have nothing to do with the environment, however. Namely, the aggressive patent enforcement issues.
On nuclear, I think we’ve still got quite a ways to go on the waste issue. I’m not wholly opposed to it, especially if it can be demonstrated to be cleaner than fossil fuels in the aggregate. (As a side note, one of the biggest reasons it hasn’t caught on isn’t so much people’s opposition to it, although that’s a factor, too — it’s cost. The startup costs for a new nuclear plant are quite high compared to more conventional sources. For-profit energy companies can make a lot more money with a coal-fired plant, even one with tons of cleaning enhancements.)
March 1st, 2007 at 7:53 pm
SM:
Begging your pardon, but I distinctly remember stating in that other thread that if the waste issues could be worked out, nuclear could be a viable option. I don’t see how that qualifies as me “not touching” the issue.
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
I don’t agree. Religions die hard. Eco-Religion isn’t going anywhere. After winning his Oscar Al Gore is the Green Pope. This will be a significant political entity. As long as this new Religion looks to England and France for answers you can expect more expensive energy and less energy independence. This country has no viable energy policy. Bush’s greatest failure next to the border and the management of the war. We will look back on these days as the days of cheap energy.
The new nukes are good. But will they sell in Berkley?