A guy wants to build a giant clock inside of a mountain. It sounds absurd but it isn't. He wants to make it a pilgrimage site. The clock will run for 10,000 years and will serve to remind people to live for the long-term. His organization is called The Long Now, and he, Stewart Brand, is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue, which is where environmentalists and hippies went for their information before the Internet.
Stewart Brand has since done an about-face on several issues that environmentalists frequently don't like: nuclear energy, slums, GM foods, and Geo-engineering, and he has written a book on these things called Whole Earth Discipline. I need to read this. He gave a lecture on some of the subject matter at TED Talks - which, by the way, is a most amazing collection of free, intelligent, and inspirational lectures.
Someday I will make the pilgrimage to that clock!
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3 comments:
Thanks for the heads up on the Ted talk! He was also on NPR's Forum show last week.
Sounds like a book I have to read. I saw this on Amazon: "Brand ...refreshingly suggests a shift in the environmentalists' dogmatic approach to combating climate change. Rejecting the inflexible message so common in the Green movement, he describes a process of reasonable debate and experimentation."
I wrestle mentally all the time about the science and logic and politics of climate change. I hear idiotic pontificating on the right, but I sometimes feel like there is equally idiotic pontificating from the left too. Humans (me included of course) have a powerful need to understand things, and too often we adopt the simple answers because, well, because most of us don't have the scientific background to understand the complex answers. (And I'll shut up after I say the heretical: Al Gore did us no favors with his book and movie. The world would have been such a better place if he had been given the presidency that he earned.) Enough! Back to shoveling!
@Matt: Funny, NPR was where I first heard of his new book. I'm only a few pages in. . . I bet you've finished it already!
@Pam: I hear you! Dogmatism and idiology irritate the crap out of me, even when it's coming from someone I agree with. I want to hear all the sides!
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