Whole Earth Discipline

Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who treats problems as matters of design, argues that three transformations are reshaping Earth: climate change, urbanization and biotechnology. Published in 2009, his ecopragmatist case asks fellow environmentalists to drop long-held positions on four issues. Brand holds that cities are green, that nuclear power is green, that genetic engineering is green, and that geoengineering is probably necessary. Chapters cover grid electricity and nuclear energy, genetic engineering, large-scale geoengineering and the restoration of natural infrastructure, and he concludes with a call for humans to learn planet craft. Critics including Amory Lovins and Greenpeace's Jim Riccio disputed his case for nuclear power, and Brand keeps an online version with live links to his sources and an afterword.

Steven Pinker included it in his Guardian list of books to make readers optimists, and Patrick Collison lists it on his bookshelf.