I think Stewart Brand mentions a lot of good points. I thought it was interesting when Brand spoke about slums. Slums are some of the most green areas. People living in slums use minimal food and energy and they recycle everything. However, people don't choose to live in slums. People who live in slums are forced to because they are poor. In reality, these people wish to increase their food and energy, instead of continuing their green way of living. I thought this was interesting because we don't often picture the slums when we think of living green.
People currently use 16 terawatts of energy. To level off at 450 ppm, 13 terawatts would have to be replaced with green energy. Brand suggests that these energy sources would cover North America. Beautiful landscapes would have to be replaced with solar panels, wind turbines, and other sources of green energy. Brand proposes that we focus on using nuclear energy. I didn't realize that so many environmentalists supported nuclear energy. Brand discusses a study of people who were exposed to large amounts of radiation for several years due to Cobalt 60 in their housing materials. Of 10,000 people, only 7 died of cancer which is 3% of global cancer mortality. I thought this was very interesting because we always hear about how cancer causes radiation. It's unbelievable that such few people died from cancer from these houses in Taiwan. I think that the energy grid of the future will have an increasing proportion of energy coming from nuclear energy.
Another thing Brand mentions is genetically modified crops. While some people have a negative outlook on genetically modified crops, they have no negative effects. As Brand mentions, it will be essential that developing nations catch on to genetically modified crops. I think if companies which create genetically modified seeds, such as Monsanto, were not as concerned about the patent on their seeds, we would be able to significantly decrease hunger in developing nations.
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