Stewart Brand's Environmental Heresies

John Tierney writes about Stewart Brand in today's New York Times:

[H]e feels guilty that he and his fellow environmentalists created so much fear of nuclear power. Alternative energy and conservation are fine steps to reduce carbon emissions, he says, but now nuclear power is a proven technology working on a scale to make a serious difference.

“There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective,” he says. “Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don’t know where it is and you don’t know what it’s doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody’s atmosphere.”

Mr. Brand predicts that his heresies will become accepted in the next decade as the scientific minority in the environmental movement persuades the romantic majority. He still considers himself a member of both factions, just as in the days of the Merry Pranksters, but he’s been shifting toward the minority.

“My trend has been toward more rational and less romantic as the decades go by,” he says. “I keep seeing the harm done by religious romanticism, the terrible conservatism of romanticism, the ingrained pessimism of romanticism. It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind.”

Link: Stewart Brand - John Tierney - An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New ‘Heresies’ - New York Times.

(More at Tierney's blog, and see also Stewart Brand's May 2005 article from Technology Review: Environmental Heresies.)

I have lots of respect for Stewart Brand, but his simplistic division of environmentalists into "romantics" and "scientists" is grossly unfair.  It's quite possible to make valid, rational -- even scientific -- critiques of science and technology, and there are quite strong ones to be made with respect to GMOs and nuclear power.  Of course there are important economic and political considerations as well.

For examples of good, science-based assessments of GMOs and nuclear power I will cite one of my favorite scientists, David Suzuki: on transgenic crops, on nuclear power.

Comments

[James Aach]

For an alternate look at nuclear power from the inside, you might try the book "Rad Decision" available online at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com

"I'd like to see Rad Decision widely read." - Stewart Brand