Whole Earth Discipline_An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand

  Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity (2008), Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, editors.

  An exploration, with dazzling graphics, of one of the most essential ecosystem services.

  Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas (2008), Sylvia Earle and Linda Glover.

  The best compendium of recent discoveries about the oceans and ocean life, presented with National Geographic panache. For humans this may be a “city planet,” but for life and climate it’s an ocean planet.

  INDIANS

  1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005), Charles C. Mann.

  What really happened on our continent is totally different from what we learned in school.

  Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources (2005), M. Kat Anderson.

  I wish every region in the world could have so complete an account of how the first human inhabitants engineered the ecosystem.

  Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places (2007), Peter Nabokov.

  The land is alive with ancient attention and reverence, and that continuity is worth maintaining.

  RESTORATION

  Bringing Back the Bush: The Bradley Method of Bush Regeneration (2002), Joan Bradley. (Most easily purchased online from CSIRO Publishing.)

  Patience, vigilance, subtlety, craft, and success characterize the Bradley sisters’ approach to defeating alien-invasive plants. The book is specific to Australia, but its techniques apply everywhere.

  Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration (2003), Eric Higgs.

  Higgs is the first to offer a compelling general theory of restoration, leading to intelligent policy and practices.

  Green Phoenix: Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica (2003), William Allen.

  Preservation in the real world is always a richly tangled tale. Here is one of the great stories, with charismatic, eloquent Daniel Janzen in the middle of it.

  Where the Land Is Greener: Case Studies and Analysis of Soil and Water Conservation Initiatives Worldwide (2007), Hanspeter Liniger, editor.

  There are so many ingenious ways to bring life and productivity back to degraded land. Collecting them all in one book is a tremendous public service.

  Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators (2008), William Stolzenburg.

  A well-written and persuasive presentation of essential-predator theory.

  Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World (1998), Chris Bright.

  This is the best survey I’ve seen on the impacts of alien-invasive species and what to do about them.

  The World Without Us (2007), Alan Weisman.

  Exceptionally thorough field research distinguishes this account of what life gets up to as soon as humans step away. It is a fascinating read.

  GEOENGINEERING

  How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate (2010), Jeff Goodell.

  Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope—or Worst Nightmare—for Averting Climate Catastrophe (2010), Eli Kintisch.

  The books overlap; I slightly favor Goodell’s as the more thorough. Both authors spent time with most of the major early geoengineers—Ken Caldeira, Lowell Wood, John Latham, Stephen Salter, Russ George, David Keith, James Lovelock, David Victor—and share their view that real-world research on the various schemes must go forward soon and at scale, or half-baked geoengineering projects desperately deployed could wind up having worse effects than what they attempt to fix.

  Geoengineering research will tell us a great deal about how climate works. Up to now we have never been able to study climate dynamics with precisely measured deliberate perturbations of the system. Maybe the message will be: “Refrain!” More likely it will be something like: “A and B don’t work. C will lead to catastrophe. D shows promise; proceed carefully. Consider experimenting with E and F.” Only delicate gods get to abide.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Magazine editors cause books. In my case two new-on-the-job editors are to blame. Jason Pontin, who used to sweat with me in a mountain fitness program, was hired as editor of MIT’s Technology Review in 2004. Art Kleiner, a longtime Whole Earth editor, took over the editorship of Booz Allen Hamilton’s business quarterly, Strategy + Business, in 2005. New editors are supposed to bring new writers, so both invited me to submit something. For Pontin I wrote a brief polemic titled “Environmental Heresies.” Kleiner got a long-form article titled “City Planet.” The two pieces stirred up interest, which led to some secondary press, and that led to a book proposal and contract, and here we are.

  Literary agent John Brockman is another book causer. Every book I’ve worked on since 1972 has conduited through him. During that time he mustered the world’s finest collection of scientist-writers, engineered horizontal idea flow among them, nagged them toward publication, and enriched them. It’s a family business. John’s wife Katinka Matson and son Max Brockman were also in the thick of this project.

  Drafts of my chapters were vetted by Paul Slovak, John Brockman, Nils Gilman, Robert Fuller, Brian Eno, Kevin Kelly, Ryan Phelan, Alexander Rose, George Dyson, James Lovelock, Richard Rhodes, Gwyneth Cravens, Rip Anderson, Peter Schwartz, Daniel Janzen, Pamela Ronald, Raoul Adamchak, José Baer, Peter Raven, Rob Carlson, and Rusty Schweickart. I hired James Donnelly for a first round of copyediting, and freelancer Gary Stimeling did the second round. Editor Paul Slovak ran the show at the Viking Penguin end. Other credits there include: jacket design, Gregg Kulik; interior design, Ginger Legato; index, Cohen Carruth, Inc.; publicity, Sally Anne McCartin. For the UK-based Atlantic edition, Toby Mundy was editor, and others involved were editorial director Sarah Castleman, jacket designer Coralie Bickford-Smith, and publicist Frances Owen.

  Throughout Discipline I make a number of predictions for which I should be held accountable. They include forecasts about urbanization after the 2009 financial crisis, peak world population, Chernobyl National Park, GE poplars in China, the future opinions of Amory Lovins and Bjørn Lomborg, the engineered revival of the American chestnut, and GE biocontrol organisms for restoration. Formal, falsifiable versions of the predictions, complete with my detailed argument in each case, have been placed on a Web site called Long Bets: www.longbets.org. There you may vote on my forecasts, comment about them, and even bet money against me about them. As history proceeds, you can watch me be wrong, or maybe even right. Better still, post your own predictions for the judgment of history.

  —Stewart Brand

  April 2009

  INDEX

  Abahlali baseMjondolo

  “Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, An” (Schwartz and Randall)

  “Absence of Detectable Transgenes in Local Landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico” (Soberón et al.)

  Ackroyd, Peter

  Adamchak, Raoul

  Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE)

  aerosols

  AES

  Africa genetic engineering and wildlands restoration and

  Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation

  African Agricultural Technology Foundation (A ATF)

  African Biofortified Sorghum Project

  Agricultural Testament, An (Howard)

  agriculture climate change and

  contract farming and

  genetic engineering and

  Green Revolution and

  milpa field system and

  Native Americans and

  no-till form of

  slash and char in

  urbanization and

  Agriculture Department, U.S.

  Alexie, Sherman

  algae

  Algeny (Rifkin)

  alien invasives

  Allen, William

  Alley, Richard

  AllianceBernstein

  All Species Inventory

  Amazon rain forest


  Ambedkar, B. R.

  Ambio

  Amboseli National Park

  American Chestnut (Freinkel)

  American Chestnut Foundation

  America Needs Indians

  America’s Ancient Forests (Bonnicksen)

  Ames, Bruce

  Ammann, Klaus

  Anastas, Paul

  Anderson, Kat

  Anderson, Rip

  Andreae, Meinrat

  Angel, Roger

  Archer, David

  Arctic

  Arctic Marine Council

  Argentina

  Asia

  genetic engineering and

  Green Revolution and

  urbanization and

  see also specific countries

  Asian Development Bank

  Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules

  Association of Space Explorers

  asteroids

  Australia

  Ausubel, Jesse

  autocatalytic technologies

  automobiles

  background radiation

  bacteria

  gene transfer and

  human body and

  seawater and

  Baer, José

  Baer, Steve

  Bailey, Ronald

  Baker, Robert

  Baldwin, J.

  Bali

  Bangladesh

  Banyacya, Thomas

  Barcode of Life

  Baskin, Yvonne

  bats

  Bay Conservation and Development Commission

  bears

  beavers

  Bechman, Roland

  Beebe, Spencer

  Belarus

  Benedict XIV, Pope

  Benford, Gregory

  Benyus, Janine

  Berlin, Isaiah

  beta-carotene

  Betts, Richard

  Beyer, Peter

  Bezdek, Roger H.

  Bhopal, India

  Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

  BioBricks Foundation

  BioCassava Plus

  biochar

  biocontrol

  biodiversity

  Biodiversity Heritage Library

  biofuels

  biological warfare

  biomass

  biomimicry

  Biomimicry (Benyus)

  Biosphere Preserves

  biotechnology

  bioterrorism

  bison (buffalo)

  Blake, William

  Blessed Unrest (Hawken)

  Board of California Certified Organic Farmers

  Bobiec, Andrzej

  Bonnicksen, Thomas

  Borlaug, Norman

  Bormann, Herbert

  Bradley, Eileen

  Bradley, Joan

  Brave New War (Robb)

  Brazil

  genetic engineering and

  Brecht, Bertolt

  breeder reactors

  Brent, Roger

  Bringing Back the Bush (Bradley and Bradley)

  British Antarctic Survey

  Brockman, John

  Brower, David

  Brown, Gordon

  Brown, James

  Brown, Jerry

  Brown, Nancy

  Bt crops see also genetic engineering

  buildings

  Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S.

  Bureau of Land Management, U.S.

  Buried Book, The (Damrosch)

  Bush, George W.

  “Butterflies and Plants” (Raven and Ehrlich)

  Byers, Eben

  C4 rice

  Caldeira, Ken

  California

  biodiversity and

  genetic engineering and

  pre-Columbian agriculture in

  California Invasive Plant Council

  California Native Plant Society

  California Water Atlas

  Calthorpe, Peter

  Canada

  fisheries of

  nuclear power and

  cancer

  cap-and-trade markets

  carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)

  algae and

  carbon dioxide

  carbon sinks

  carbon taxes

  Carlson, Rob

  Carson, Rachel

  Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000)

  Caruso, Denise

  Cascio, Jamais

  cattle

  cellphones

  cellulose

  Center for Biosafety, South African

  Challenge of Slums, The (UN-HABITAT)

  Chapela, Ignacio

  charcoal

  Charles, Prince of Wales

  chemical mutagenesis

  Chernobyl disaster (1986)

  Chesser, Ronald

  children, disease and

  China

  genetic engineering and

  green engineering and

  Green Revolution and

  nuclear power and

  urbanization and

  Chinese Academy of Forestry

  Chipchase, Jan

  Chu, Steven

  Church, George

  cities

  agriculture and

  ecological footprint of

  economic growth and

  infrastructure of

  innovation and

  New Urbanism and

  population growth and

  slums and, see slums

  warfare and

  see also urbanization

  Citizendium

  clathrates

  Clean Air Act (1970)

  Clean and Safe Energy Coalition

  Clean Water Act (1972)

  climate change

  agriculture and

  algae and

  biodiversity and

  forests and, see forests

  genetic engineering and

  nuclear power and

  population growth and

  satellite monitoring of

  Climate Crash (Cox)

  Climatic Change

  Closing Circle, The (Commoner)

  coal

  coccolithophores

  Cochran, Gregory

  coevolution

  CoEvolution Quarterly

  cogeneration

  Cohen, Joel

  Collapse (Diamond)

  combined heat and power (CHP)

  Commoner, Barry

  Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australian

  community-supported agriculture

  confirmation bias

  Congress, U.S.

  nuclear power and

  Conservation

  Conservation Foundation

  Conservation Pledge

  Constant Battles (LeBlanc and Register)

  Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

  contract farming

  Conway, Gordon

  Cook, Jim

  corn

  Costa Rica

  Cotter, Janet

  cotton

  Counterculture Green (Kirk)

  Cousteau, Jacques Yves

  Cox, John

  Cox, Peter

  Cravens, Gwyneth

  Crook, Clive

  Crop Residue Oceanic Permanent Sequestration (CROPS)

  Crutzen, Paul

  Cultures of Habitat (Nabhan)

  cyclones

  Damrosch, David

  Darwin, Charles

  Data-Intensive Scalable Computer systems

  Davis, Mike

  DDT

  Decline of the West (Spengler)

  Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR)

  Degrees of Disaster (Wheelwright)

  Delmer, Deborah

  Delta & Pine Land Company

  Denning, Scott

  desalination

  deserts

  de Soto, Hernando

  Dhaka, Bangladesh

  diabetes

  Diamond, Jared

  Dicamba
/>   direct seeding

  Discover

  Discovery of Global Warming (Weart)

  diseases

  DMZ Forum

  DNA

  synthesizing of

  Doctorow, Cory

  dogs

  Donlan, Josh

  Doubly Green Revolution, The (Conway)

  Douglas, Mary

  Dow AgroSciences

  Drange, Helge

  drought

  Duany, Andrés

  Dubock, Adrian

  Ducks Unlimited

  DuPont-Pioneer

  Dyson, Freeman

  Earle, Sylvia

  Earth in the Balance (Gore)

  Earth Day

  Earth First!

  Earth Liberation Front

  Earthrise (Poole)

  E. coli

  ecological inheritance

  Ecologist

  Economist

  Eco-pragmatism (Farber)

  ecosystem engineering see also geoengineering

  ecosystem services

  ecotechnology

  Ecotrust

  Ehrlich, Paul

  Eighth Day of Creation, The (Judson)

  electric power

  nuclear power and

  elephants

  Elmqvist, Thomas

  EMBO Reports

  Empty Cradle, The (Longman)

  “Encyclopedia of Life, The” (Wilson)

  endangered and threatened species

  Ending the Energy Stalemate (Ehrlich)

  End of Nature, The (McKibben)

  endosymbiotic theory

  Endy, Drew

  Energy Policy Act (2005)

  environment, carrying capacity of

  environmental movement

  engineers and

  Nazism and

  politics and

  pragmatism and

  quality of judgment and

  romanticism and

  science and

  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S.

  Essay on the Principle of Population, An (Malthus)

  ETC Group

  Europe

  genetic engineering and

  urbanization in

  see also specific countries

  European Space Agency

  European Union (EU)

  eutrophication

  evolution

  Expert Political Judgment (Tetlock)

  “Extreme Genetic Engineering” (Thomas)

  Exxon Valdez

  Fagan, Brian

  famines

  Farber, Daniel

  Farmers of Forty Centuries (King)