Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand is a pioneer of information technology, the publisher of the counterculture manual The Whole Earth Catalog, and, according to an article for Southeast Farm Press in the US, "one of the poster children for the environmental movement".

He has become a champion of nuclear power and genetic engineering. He has argued for the acceptance of genetically engineered crops in organic food production.

According to a New York Times article, he now "sees genetic engineering as a tool for environmental protection: crops designed to grow on less land with less pesticide; new microbes that protect ecosystems against invasive species, produce new fuels and maybe sequester carbon."

What Stewart Brand got wrong

On November 4 2010 Channel 4 TV in the UK broadcast a polemic which attacked the green movement. Billed as a documentary and fronted by Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand, the programme, called What the Green Movement Got Wrong, blamed environmentalists for obstructing solutions to the energy crisis by opposing nuclear power, and for causing hunger and malnutrition in the third world by opposing genetically modified (GM) crops.

The programme wrongly claimed that the environmental movement got the insecticide DDT banned internationally, leading to millions of third world deaths from malaria. It got this claim from Stewart Brand's book, Whole Earth Discipline. In fact, there has never been a global ban on DDT for disease control purposes. But some governments did stop using DDT because mosquitoes became resistant. The programme makers claimed to have meticulously researched the programme over six months. But science blogger Tim Lambert pointed out, it doesn't take six months of research to find that this is wrong but more like six seconds.

In the programme, Brand challenged the environmental movement as follows: "I would like to see an environmental movement that's comfortable noticing when it's wrong and announcing when it's wrong."

The journalist George Monbiot challenged Brand to notice and announce that he's wrong about DDT, adding, "So far it hasn't happened."

After the programme, Greenpeace published the following biography of Brand, making clear his links with the nuclear and biotech industry that were not mentioned in the Channel 4 programme:

Stewart Brand has links to both the nuclear and biotech industry through the Global Business Network. Brand is a co-founder of Global Business Network. Among the 192 clients named on its website (www.gbn.com), more than a dozen corporations and governmental agencies are involved in the production or promotion of nuclear energy: General Electric, Bechtel, Duke Power, Siemens-Westinghouse, Fluor, Electric Power Research Institute, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, Électricité de France, Iberdrola, Vattenfall, Sydkraft (now E.ON Sweden) and Sandia National Labratories. Some of these, including GE, Bechtel, Duke Power and Westinghouse, are receiving government subsidies to develop the next generation of nuclear power plants. DuPont - a company that sells genetically engineered seed and chemicals - is also listed as a client.

Monbiot commented on the Channel 4 programme, "Brand's approach, which the [Channel 4] film is based on, is not so much a new form of environmentalism as a new form of corporate consultancy: he appears to be seeking to shape the environmental debate to suit the businesses he works for."

Career

In 1977-79, Brand was a "special advisor" in the administration of California Governor Jerry Brown. In 1984, Brand and Larry Brilliant founded The WELL ("Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link"), a "bulletin board which is something like an internet chatroom".

In 1986, Brand was a visiting scientist at the Media Laboratory at MIT. Soon after, he took up the role of private-conference organizer for such corporations as Royal Dutch Shell, Volvo, and AT&T. In 1988, he became a co-founder of the Global Business Network consultancy, which explores globalisation and business strategy. Brand has sat on the board of the Santa Fe Institute (founded 1984), an organization devoted to "fostering a multidisciplinary scientific research community pursuing frontier science."

Biography

• Born: December 14 1938, Rockford, Illinois.
• Education: 1954-56, Phillips Exeter Academy; Stanford University.
• Married: 1966 Lois Jennings (marr. diss '72). Ryan Phelan 1983- . One son, Noah Johnson.
• Career: 1960-62, US Army officer; '62-68 Created multi-media performances; '77-79; adviser to Jerry Brown; '88- co-founder and board member Global Business Network; '89 - Member board of trustees, Santa Fe Institute; '95 - co-founder, then president, The Long Now Foundation; 2000 co-Founder, All Species project. Publications: 1968-72, Founded, edited, and published Whole Earth Catalogue; '74 Two Cybernetic Frontiers; '87 The Media Lab; '94 How Buildings Learn; '99 The Clock Of The Long Now.

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