According to “Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism,” by Andrew G. Kirk, the mind-blowing photo of our planet was a catalyst for the ecology movement. The Whole Earth Catalog itself became the voice of a new kind of environmental advocacy that, rather than shunning science as nature’s enemy, embraced it as the key that could unlock the door to personal freedom and create a post-scarcity social utopia. Advances like pictures from space, personal computers, geodesic domes and even nuclear power were all part of what became known as the “appropriate technology movement,” for which the Whole Earth Catalog was both a resource and a summary. No tree-hugging Luddite or apocalyptic doomsayer, Brand, Kirk writes, had an optimistic outlook shaped by “a love of good tools, thoughtful technology, scientific inquiry and a Western libertarian skepticism of the government’s ability to take the lead in these areas.” Brand wrote of his own publication, “This is a book of tools for saving the world at the only scale it can be done, one hand at a time.”

Full Story: International Herald Tribune.

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