Whole Earth Catalog Founder Goes Nuclear in MIT's Technology Review Magazine.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Stewart Brand, legendary 60s activist, environmentalist, godfather of hacker culture, and creator of The Whole Earth Catalog, today called the green movement's stance on nuclear energy a "heresy" and calls for a reversal.

In the May issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine (www.technologyreview.com), Brand calls for a reversal of direction in addressing the environmental movement's major concerns. The unwavering anti-Nuclear position is wrong and should change course immediately. Writing that reversals of this sort have occurred before, he cites wildfires, which went from universal menace to honored natural force and forestry tool.

Brand concludes the only realistic way to stave off global warming is to increase production efficiency and decarbonize energy production--to go nuclear. Kyoto accords and radical conservation add up to only a small fraction of the need. Though nuclear production has problems, the industry is mature with a half-century of experience and ever-improved engineering behind it. Early reactors can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors.

Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, The Well, and provocateur of LSD, and other San Francisco counterculture announces his latest about-face departure as co-founder of the Global Business Network, a futurist consultancy.

His essay, "Environmental Heresies," which goes live today on www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_earth.asp, also uses current evidence to debunk entrenched stances on overpopulation, urbanization, and genetically modified foods.