Aired 11/08/09

STEWART BRAND's Whole Earth Catalog introduced millions to new ways of thinking and doing and probably contributed to the birth of environmentalism in the US. Confronting today's challenges to global civilization in his new book, Brand questions environmental positions against GMO foods, Geo-engineering, and nuclear power.

In 1968 a totally original cultural item appeared. It owed something to old time catalogs perhaps akin to the Farmers almanac. Its style was funkily low-fi while its content had one foot in a simpler past and the other in a high tech sci-fi future. It was called the Whole Earth Catalog and subtitled "Access to Tools."

STEWART BRAND was its founder, editor and publisher, and Brand has been at the founding of several other cultural entities, events, and movements. Today, in his '70s, STEWART BRAND is no less curious, no less purposeful, and no less forward looking. His new book, WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE: An EcoPragmatist Manifesto, confronts the challenges we face as a global civilization - population, urbanization, resource depletion, peak oil, and most profoundly climate change, by issuing challenges of his own to what has passed for years as environmental orthodoxy. Brand characterizes many in a movement he helped to create and inspire as being anti-science, and anti-intellectual in their opposition to GMO foods, Geo-engineering, and nuclear power.

Forty years ago, Brand could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "We are as gods, we might as well get good at it". Today in WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE, he says, "We are as gods and have to get good at it."

http://current.com/items/90416515_stewart-brand-proclaims-4-environmental-heresies.htm

http://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Recommended_Reading.html

 

 

Aired 11/01/09

ZACHARY KARABELL argues that the economies of China and the US have melded over the past 20 years, as billions of dollars flow east from the US for Chinese-made goods and return to this country from China in exchange for IOUs.

"This mega-economy is hiding in plain sight, unrecognized, unacknowledged, and unwanted by many millions whose lives are being reshaped by it." Karabell's not suggesting this is an unalloyed good thing, "but it's a fact. And it's better to deal with reality than live in a fantasy land."

ZACHARY KARABELL is President of River Twice Research, where he analyzes economic and political trends. He is also a senior advisor for Business for Social Responsibility, which develops sustainable business strategies. Previously, he was president of Fred Alger and Company; and portfolio manager of the award-winning China-U.S. Growth Fund, and launched the $30 million Spectra Green Fund, linking profit and sustainability.

Educated at Columbia, Oxford and Harvard, his previous books include A Visionary Nation: Four Centuries of American Dreams and What Lies Ahead, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election, and Peace Be Upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Coexistence.

http://www.rivertwice.com/

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=15081

 

Aired 10/20/09

In Lester Brown's new book, PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION, Brown lays out the symptoms, the diagnosis, and the cure. He estimates that we could solve all the world's greatest problems for $200 billion a year - less than half the US defense budget. 

PLAN B 4.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth's damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

 

Aired 10/13/09

JODIE EVANS is the co-founder the International Occupation Watch Center in Iraq, and of CODE PINK, with, among others, Medea Benjamin. Jodie's Baghdad Journals are at the center of the book, Twilight of Empire, and she is co-editor with Benjamin of Stop The Next War Now.

JODIE - "I am just returning from my 10-day trip to Afghanistan. As we left, a farm was bombed and eight members of a family were killed. Eight U.S. soldiers also lost their lives in an insurgent raid on their outpost. And today marks the 8th anniversary of the US Invasion of that war torn country.

We have spent a quarter of a trillion dollars in those 8 years and what have we got for all that time, money, and suffering? Most of the country is in worse condition, the Taliban have been growing in strength and number, the bordering countries are more unstable and death fills the air."

Watch Video: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2009/10/afghan-women-speak-out-dr-roshnak-wardak/

 

Aired 10/13/09

More than just a reflection on his life, Cornel West says his new memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud is "an intensified dance with mortality." Following West's diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer -- now in remission -- he decided to write about his life in a way that might touch other souls. West calls the memoir his "most unique, delicate and difficult book to write," requiring him to "examine the dark corners of [his] soul...It is a life-transforming experience to write about your life."

Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and has received more than 20 honorary degrees. He's produced 3 CDs of music and spoken word, offers commentary weekly on The Tavis Smiley Show, and is the author of several books, including Race Matters; Democracy Matters; Hope on a Tightrope; and his latest, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.