Green Politics

Abstract

Between 1968 and 1972, Stewart Brand, a biologist and designer, published the Whole Earth Catalog as a source of information for how to live independently of industrial society and open what he called “new realms of personal power” Brand set out to give every reader tools “to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment ” The tools he had in mind tended to require little energy to use or capital to build and included camping equipment, homebuilt airplanes, Indian sweat lodges, kick-wheel pottery tables, and birch-bark baby cribs. Following the philosopher and engineer R. Buckminster Fuller, Brant defined a tool as any technology that left natural systems intact and did not create waste. The Catalog also gave detailed information on how to purchase government land. It enjoyed a following among those who sought to remove themselves from mainstream society to discover alternative ways of living.