Whole Earth Discipline

by Stewart Brand

  By 2005, it was estimated that 2.5 million hectares were under “unofficial” Bt cotton, twice the acreage as under the ones that had been sown from Monsanto’s packets. . . . A veritable cottage industry had sprung up, a state described as “anarcho-capitalism,” whereby small-scale breeders were crossing reliable local varieties with the caterpillar-proof Bt plant. The world’s first GM landraces had arrived. . . .

  Shiva’s “Operation Cremate Monsanto” had spectacularly failed, its anti-GM stance borrowed from Western intellectuals had made no headway with Indian farmers, who showed they were not passive recipients of either technology or propoganda, but could take an active role in shaping their lives. What they did is also perhaps more genuinely subversive of multinational capitalism than anything GM’s opponents have ever managed.

  “Synbio” crossed the threshold into “synlife” with the announcement in May 2010 that Craig Venter’s team had successfully booted up a living, replicating cell with a genome totally created by means of chemistry and computers. The team’s paper in Science noted, “If the methods described here can be generalized, design, synthesis, assembly, and transplantation of synthetic chromosomes will no longer be a barrier to the progress of synthetic biology.”

  Decades ago I suspect that environmentalists would have risen up in outrage and alarm against technology like Venter’s, but I have found them surprisingly noncommittal about synthetic biology, even while they continue to complain about transgenic crops. While the uproar about nuclear power persists (though it is fading into a more primary focus on coal plants), I bet that fusion will be largely welcomed by Greens, if it comes to pass. Legacy resistance against old new tech continues, but new new tech appears not to arouse the fears and activism of old.

  I should add an excellent online source for environmental news: Environment 360—“Opinion, Analysis, Reporting & Debate”—run by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

  There was significant geoengineering news. A step toward asteroid control was taken by the Obama administration. While canceling a return to the moon by NASA, the president proposed that the next deep-space human mission should be to an asteroid, which could occur by about 2025. His science adviser John Holdren remarked that developing the ability to nudge asteroids “would demonstrate once and for all that we’re smarter than the dinosaurs and can therefore avoid what they didn’t.”

  Two good books on geoengineering finally arrived: How to Cool the Planet (2010) by Jeff Goodell and Hack the Planet (2010) by Eli Kintisch. Both writers talked to most of the early players: Ken Caldeira, Lowell Wood, John Latham, Stephen Salter, Russ George, David Keith, James Lovelock, and David Victor. One new scheme has been put forward by Harvard’s Russell Seitz to brighten parts of the ocean by aerating the water with microbubbles.

  Geoengineers gathered in cautionary mode at the Asilomar Conference Center in California, echoing the recombinant DNA gathering there back in 1975. Environmental organizations were invited, and so was I. The conference adopted terminology from an influential report by the Royal Society, noting that geoengineering comes in two major forms—solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The view emerged that carbon dioxide projects would necessarily be slow and in most cases benign and therefore in less need of global regulation, but the opposite is true of efforts to manage sunlight with stratospheric sulfur dust or brightened clouds. The three days of discussion basically reaffirmed the “Oxford Principles” first proposed in a 2009 memorandum to the British Parliament by Steve Raynor from Oxford University:• Geoengineering regulated as a public good

  • Public participation in geoengineering decision-making

  • Disclosure of geoengineering research and open publication of results

  • Independent assessment of impacts

  • Governance before deployment

  In other words, one way to geoengineer wrong would be for a private company to start injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere without disclosing research plans or research results, without outside monitoring of effects, and without permission of a public governance body.

  At the same time that the hardcover edition of this book was making its way in the world, a film called Earth Days, on the origins of the contemporary environmental movement, was released in theaters and on TV. I’m in it, along with others from this book such as Paul Ehrlich and Rusty Schweickart. The movie is really carried by Earth Day founder Denis Hayes and energy maven Hunter Lovins (Amory’s former wife), but director Robert Stone gave me the concluding statement. What I said over a photograph of the Earth there will perhaps serve here as well:We’re engaging in a set of activities which go way beyond the individual life span, way beyond children, grandchildren, way beyond parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, to the whole frame of at least civilizational life. Once you get comfortable with that, then you start to go further out still, to three and a half billion years of life on Earth, and maybe we’ll do another three and a half billion years. That’s kind of interesting to try to hold in your mind. And once you’ve held it in your mind, what do you do on Monday?

  RECOMMENDED READING

  SCIENCE

  Science (weekly magazine), Bruce Alberts, editor in chief.

  Nature (weekly magazine), Philip Campbell, editor in chief.

  If science is the only news, either of these prestigious weeklies will keep you current. You may want both. Nature is based in London, Science in Washington, D.C. Both publish extensive original research papers, along with articles interpreting the news, essays, book reviews, and editorials. The competition between the two magazines keeps them sharp.

  New Scientist (weekly magazine), Roger Highfield, editor.

  Many magazines attempt to gauge the meaning and significance of the news coming from science, but none do it better than this weekly, also from London.

  Science Daily (online), Dan and Michele Hogan, editors.

  A measure of the accelerating pace of science is the usefulness of a daily update on breaking news. This free (ad-based) Web site covers all the current science press releases six times a day. It’s easy to tune your news feeds for just the subjects you’re interested in.

  SciDev.Net (online), David Dickson, director.

  Applications of new science and technology for the developing world are the focus of this remarkable site. No ads; it is supported by aid organizations. By arrangement with Science and Nature, links to full-length articles and papers in those publications can be followed without paying their subscription fee.

  Technology Review (bimonthly magazine), Jason Pontin, editor in chief.

  With its lively new Web site, this is now the best of many publications that track new technologies. Its editor and authors are comfortable voicing strong opinions.

  National Geographic (monthly magazine), Chris Johns, editor in chief.

  No other magazine has maintained such high quality for so long to such good effect. The world’s finest photographs and graphics are now being matched with excellent writing to present current science in a planetary context.

  CLIMATE

  The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back—and How We Can Still Save Humanity (2006), James Lovelock.

  The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (2009), James Lovelock.

  Of the many scientists studying climate change, Lovelock has the most comprehensive contemporary perspective, thanks to his decades of work on Gaia theory. These two books detail his analysis of how extreme the situation is becoming.

  Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007), Mark Lynas.

  Lynas succeeds where most others fail in making inescapably clear how increasingly inhospitable the world will be with each increase of global temperature from 1° to 6°C. The book is a cure for an incrementalist approach to climate change. You don’t think “We can handle a 2-degree rise” after you learn what that will mean.

  Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate (2005), Willi
am Ruddiman.

  If Ruddiman is right, climate is extraordinarily sensitive to human activity. That might be good news.

  Climate Debate Daily (online), Douglas Campbell and Denis Dutton, editors.

  There are scores of Web sites collecting science news, political news, blog commentaries, etc., related to climate. Some are alarmist, some are skeptical, some are neutral. This one is aggressively and fascinatingly neutral, presenting a rich brew of strong comments on every climate topic in a debatelike format. The hosts are philosophy professors.

  CITIES

  Shack/Slum Dwellers International (online)

  With SDI, the world’s urban poor have their own comprehensive Web site, linking the slum-improvement activities in thirty countries of the global south. Click around in it for a tour of amazing activities.

  Shantaram: A Novel (2005), Gregory David Roberts.

  This is the Les Misérables of the twenty-first century. Set in Mumbai’s slums and underworld, it is one of the great romances.

  The Places We Live (2008), Jonas Bendiksen.

  First-rate photojournalism. Like the renowned Farm Security Administration photographers of the American Depression years, Bendiksen went to the slums of Caracas, Nairobi, Mumbai, and Jakarta and brought back beautiful photographs from inside the shacks, along with first-person accounts by the shack dwellers.

  Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World (2004), Robert Neuwirth.

  Neuwirth demonstrates adventurous journalism at its best. When you’re curious or worried about something, go and live there. You’ll learn what to be really worried about and what to be inspired by.

  Squatter City (online); Stealth of Nations (online), Robert Neuwirth, blogger.

  Neuwirth is working on a book about the informal economy in slums and elsewhere. His two blogs keep you current on what he’s finding.

  Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth: State of World Population 2007, United Nations Population Fund.

  An upbeat, realistic survey of the current state of urbanization. It is a textbook for sensible urban policy.

  Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape (2005), Brian Hayes.

  We know more about the things on trees (leaves, twigs, bark) than about the things on telephone poles (primary and secondary electricity distribution lines, insulators, switches, fuses, transformers, street lights, cable TV feeders, phone cables, and the grounding lead). This glorious book cures ignorance on every infrastructural subject.

  POPULATION

  The Coming Population Crash: And Our Planet’s Surprising Future (2010), Fred Pearce.

  Packed with ground-truth reporting, this is now the best book on population. It reveals the eugenicist roots of most population policies and welcomes the migration churn and potentially benign aging that accompanies demographic implosion.

  NUCLEAR

  Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (2007), Gwyneth Cravens.

  Besides presenting a persuasive case for nuclear power, the book is an exemplary account of a Green coming to see the world the way an engineer does. It demonstrates why more should.

  NEI Nuclear Notes (online), Mark Flanagan and David Bradish, lead bloggers.

  Nuclear advocacy at its best. Open-minded, even-handed, and alert, the Nuclear Energy Institute bloggers give context to nuclear news in a way that mainstream media don’t.

  Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes (online), Dan Yurman, blogger.

  Daily detailed reports on consequential nuclear news.

  GENETIC ENGINEERING

  Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food (2008), Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak.

  Organic farming marries genetic engineering and lives happily ever after. The book has a real-life texture missing in most works about GE or organic.

  The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-first Century (1999), Gordon Conway.

  Experience tells. Conway has seen it all and knows exactly how GE fits into simultaneously feeding the world and protecting the environment.

  Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa (2008), Robert Paarlberg.

  Anatomy of an ongoing Green-sponsored atrocity in Africa.

  Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist’s View of Genetically Modified Foods (2006), Nina Fedoroff.

  Geneticist Federoff gives a much fuller background for how GE works with food crops than I could.

  CropBiotech Update (online).

  The successes of GE throughout the world, along with entanglements it meets, are chronicled on a daily basis here.

  New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet (2007), Board on Life Sciences.

  The oldest and by far the most profuse form of life is finally being studied properly, and we learn we’ve been living all this time on “the planet of the bacteria.”

  ENVIRONMENTALISM

  Conservation (quarterly), Kathryn Kohm, editor.

  Good editors challenge their readers. Kohm publishes heresies and innovations as well as the workaday discoveries in conservation biology. The result is an environmental publication filled with real news.

  High Country News (biweekly), Jonathan Thompson, editor.

  This tabloid specializes in Green reporting with a genuinely neutral point of view so that ranchers, loggers, hunters, businesspeople, and bureaucrats feel included rather than demonized. The region served is the American West.

  Sierra (bimonthly), Bob Sipchen, editor in chief.

  A full-feature environmentalist magazine, this publication from the Sierra Club focuses on practical matters rather than on the contentless inspirational woo-woo typical of Green periodicals such as Orion.

  Earth Island Journal (quarterly), Jason Mark, editor.

  For a thoroughly partisan Green publication, this one has impressive journalistic reach.

  OnEarth (quarterly), Douglas Barasch, editor in chief.

  Like its parent, the Natural Resources Defense Council, OnEarth is sober, careful, wide ranging, and not allergic to business or government in its Green advocacy.

  GreenFacts (online), Jacques Wirtgen, general manager.

  Based in Brussels, GreenFacts “provide summaries of scientific consensus reports on environment and health issues” in English, French, Spanish, and German. Its funding comes from nonprofits and governments as well as from private companies. The summaries are thorough, admirably designed for the Web, and linked to original sources. If you’re researching any Green subject, this is the first place to check.

  Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (2003), Steven LeBlanc with Katherine Register.

  There is a lot more to LeBlanc’s book than what I’ve summarized. Nature is best understood if you include the harsh parts and the same is true of humanity.

  The Idea of Decline in Western History (1997), Arthur Herman.

  Romanticism has left a trail of bodies, many of them suicides, ever since Rousseau. It is a cult of heroic despair that ill serves the environmental movement.

  Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (2007), Paul Hawken.

  This is the closest we have to a Whole Earth Catalog of environmental and social justice organizations. I would love to see its online expression, WiserEarth.org, become truly comprehensive.

  Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (2007), Andrew Kirk.

  Some of the origins of the book you’re holding can be traced in Kirk’s study of the Green influence of the original Whole Earth Catalog.

  Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth (2008), Robert Poole.

  Don’t take my word that the first Earth photographs were a boon for environmentalists. Poole chronicles the whole original event and the worldwide inspiration that resulted.

  ECOLOGY

  The Future of Life (2002), Edward O. Wilson.

  Naturalist (1994), Edward O. Wilson. />
  Wilson’s memoir, Naturalist, details one of the most productive lives in science and The Future of Life lays out the road map of needs and techniques for conservation biology worldwide.

  The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring (2007), Richard Preston.

  I wanted to include in Discipline a paean to the intrepid lives of field biologists, but I couldn’t fit it in. This book will do as a prime sample. In the tops of the tallest trees in the world a whole ecosystem was discovered by acrobatic biologists. New Yorker writer Preston learned the death-defying skills to join them there.

  Lament for an Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery (1998), Michael Harris.

  What happens when you try to protect the fishermen rather than the fish.

  Degrees of Disaster: Prince William Sound: How Nature Reels and Rebounds (1996), Jeff Wheelwright.

  Deliciously inconvenient ground truth at the site of one of the great ecological-political arguments.

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