My quick fragmented notes from Stewart Brand talking at the RSA (who should be posting the audio/video on their site soon, and there’s another version of the talk viewable here):
Rethinking green.
Climate change changes everything.
He majored in ecology in the 1950s – when no-one was thinking about it.
“It’s all gardening”
Positive feedback and invisible thresholds in the environment.
MORE SCIENCE NEEDED – in data and in models.
Nature doesn’t kill you. People fighting for resources do.
There are some hidden negative feedbacks too, and we need to understand those.
e.g. E.hux algae.
Whole earth problems need whole earth solutions.
Predictable climate is a natural infrastructure.
City population: 3% in 1800, 14% in 1900, 61% by 2030.
1.3m new people a week in cities.
Moving away from subsistence agriculture -> land improves, cash crops.
Not cities as we imagine/live in – squatter cities – currently 1bn people. Another 1bn expected.
(see the video clip at 11:00 on fora.tv)
Creating own homes, jobs, infrastructure. Informal economy relates to the formal economy. The economics of collaboration.
Not people crushed by poverty – working hard to get out of poverty. They are green – that green as they’re that poor.
And we shouldn’t try to stop them getting out of poverty.
book – The Places We Live by Jonas Bendiksen
Next 30 years – new cities of young people in the global South, old cities of old people in the global North. Where will the action be?
*****
Baseload electricity – mainly coal and gas. Some hydro, some nuclear.
the choice now is – coal or nuclear.
CO2 waste is invisible and huge.
Wind – footprint issues. 1GW = 250 square miles of wind farms. + pylons and infrastructure. And only if it’s windy all the time (normally 20% of potential compared to nuclear 90% of potential)
1GW = 50 square miles of solar farms.
Chernobyl still haunts us.
But it’s now the biggest wildlife refuge. The problem there now is economic, not radiation.
One in 10 American homes gets energy from turning Russian nuclear warheads into electricity (Megatons to Megawatts)
Governments have an enormous role, in nuclear, in geoengineering, and in keeping coal expensive.
small, modular reactors – 35MW
2010- availability of Russian barge-mounted reactor, water cooled, for newly un-iced sea and shipping lanes.
Nuclear batteries – 10-50 MW.
Small, sealed, transportable, modular.
New fuels – thorium (better for India, as more prevalent there than uranium)
*****
Genetically engineered food
Biotech is the most powerful technology today.
book – Doubly Green Revolution by Gordon Conway
book – Tomorrow’s Table by Pamela Ronald
book – Mendel in the Kitchen by Nina Fedoroff
40% of crops lost to weeds or pests.
Tropical farming is different, needs these crops to work.
Also: enriched foods, biofortified.
book – Starved for Science by Robert Paarlberg
GE pig with extra omega-3 fatty acids – as good as fish.
GE rice with cholera vaccine.
*****
Geoengineering
Mitigation has no hope of succeeding.
Geoengineering is surprisingly cheap.
Free – Mount Pinatubo eruption – 20m tons SO2. Cooled planet by 0.5 degree.
1 Pinatubo a year = 3 degree long-term cooling.
But – acidified oceans.
30 blimp supported hoses, pumping out 3m tons of SO2 costs $300m a year.
John Latham – brightening ocean clouds – a huge yacht-like inkjet printer.
But these are just hobbies, with no Government funding or backing.
Biochar – sequestering carbon by pyrolising plant waste.
We are terraforming Earth anyway. Created the anthropocene.
We are gods and have to get good at it.
*****
various answers from Q&A
Devils’ advocate: do I stop recycling, if it will all be taken care of.
Practicing and taking part at a small scale. Ned to do large scale too, but it’s all hands on deck.
Why are environmentalists so suspicious of science and economics?
THere was a flip – green used to be a conservative issue.
Environmentalists need to move on from strictly leftist ideology. De-ideologise environmentalism. Pragmatism.
Where does innovation come from?
In California, you’re expected to create things and run things. Active intellectuals.
Engineering comes from permission – social, political, economic.
You can judge the quality and longevity of a civilisation by its soil.
40% of ice-free land is agriculture. GE means less pesticides, chemicals. Synthetic biology and open source will prevent monocultures and large agra controlling.
Chris,
These are nice quicknotes…. I wonder if you’ve read the book by David Mackay Sustaniable Energy without the hot air. Its online too.
withouthotair
I haven’t, but it was another book that Brand mentioned – good to see it’s online.
contact
email:
chris is at anti-mega.com
Twitter:
@antimega
iChat/AIM:
antimega77
I can work for you too