For those who eagerly awaited its periodic appearance, it was more
than a publication: it was a way of life. The Whole Earth Catalog
billed itself as "Access to Tools," and it grew from a Bay Area
blip to a national phenomenon catering to hippies,
do-it-yourselfers, and anyone interested in self-sufficiency
independent of mainstream America.
In recovering the history of the Catalog's unique brand of
environmentalism, Andrew Kirk recounts how San Francisco's Stewart
Brand and his counterculture cohorts in the Point Foundation
promoted a philosophy of pragmatic environmentalism that celebrated
technological achievement, human ingenuity, and sustainable living.
By piecing together the social, cultural, material, environmental,
and technological history of that philosophy's incarnation in the
Catalog, Kirk reveals the driving forces behind it, tells the story
of the appropriate technology movement it espoused, and assesses
its fate.
This book takes a fresh look at the many individuals and
organizations who worked in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to
construct this philosophy of pragmatic environmentalism. At a time
when many of these ideas were seen as heretical to a predominantly
wilderness-based movement, Whole Earth became a critical forum for
environmental alternatives and a model for how complicated
ecological ideas could be presented in a hopeful and even humorous
way. It also enabled later environmental advocates like Al Gore to
explain our current "inconvenient truth," and the actions of
Brand's Point Foundation demonstrated that the epistemology of
Whole Earth could be put into action in meaningful ways that might
foster an environmental optimism distinctly different from the
jeremiads that became the stock in trade of American
environmentalism.
Kirk shows us that Whole Earth was more than a mere
counterculture fad. In an era of political protest, it suggested
that staying home and modifying your toilet or installing a solar
collector could make a more significant contribution than taking to
the streets to shout down establishment misdeeds. Given its visible
legacy in the current views of Al Gore and others, the subtle
environmental heresies of Whole Earth continue to resonate today,
which makes Kirk's lucid and lively tale an extremely timely one as
well.
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