Originally aired February 18th, 2010

The Energy Collective was pleased to host Stewart Brand, author of Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Stewart Brand is a long-time environmentalist Stewart Brand who created the 1960s and 1970s classic Whole Earth Catalog, believes that big cities, nuclear power and biotechnology are all green.

The conversation ranged for geoengineering to genetically modified crops to the viability of energy solutions like nuclear, "clean coal," and solar power.

Listen to the podcast:

A few of the audience-submitted questions were:

"What about the issue of water and nuclear? By that I mean that nuclear uses tremendous amounts of water - which is an issue in the West for instance?  is this too much of a strain on this natural resource?"

"Turkey Point 6 & 7 south of Miami will cost from $24 B to $ 35 B, about $5k to $8K per household; Wall Street will not finance nuclear. All of the government loans will be repaid on the backs of the consumer."

"how much recoverable uranium is left in the ground and how long it will last?"

"Part of that challenge is reluctance to make dirty energy (e.g. coal) too much more expensive, and lack of low-cost, reliable clean energy alternatives. Shouldn't we focus much more than we have to date on making clean energy cheap (through big innovation push)? Won't we need much greater RD&D investment to get affordable, safe modular reactors, low-cost solar, better batteries, and even geoenginerring options? Why then are we investing so little as a nation (just a few billion per year on energy R&D vs $30b for year, for comparison, for health R&D through NIH)?"