Environmental heresies

The September 8th issue of the Economist has their quarterly review of technology - including a few articles on nuclear power.

What's most interesting is their profile of Stewart Brand. He's the guy who wrote in the 60s, "The Whole Earth Catalogue", one of first environmental handbooks for everyday living.

Well, now he's had a change of heart on several issues. Here are his three main heresies:

1. Genetic engineering is good and necessary. Brand now sees "great promise in using genetic science to feed the world, and perhaps prevent future wars, by making crops that are far more disease-resistance, drought-tolerant, and produce higher yields."

2. Urbanization is good for the environment. "Cities are good for the planet, he argues, because they are engines of wealth creation, and greater prosperity makes promoting greenery easier."

3. Nuclear power is the way forward. Brand thinks that global warming is the biggest environmental challenge (I disagree) and that leads him to support nuclear power. "Rather than asking how spent nuclear rods can be kept safe for 10,000 to 100,000 years, he says, we should worry about keeping it safe for only 100 years. Because nuclear waste still contains an enormous amount of energy, future generations may be able to harness it as an energy source through tomorrow's better technologies."

I've argued many times in this blog that a belief in human-induced global warming will lead us to nuclear power. I predict that more and more environmentalists will soon be like Mr. Brand - and will push us into a nuclear future.