The Greens have lost their touch. I don't know any Green party in Europe with a clear political agenda for how to prevent soon 7 billion people from consuming the globe to death, or a plan to execute such agenda for that matter.

I'm a member of the Finnish Green party since 1995, subscribing to Vihreä Lanka newspaper and getting disappointed evey friday when I open the paper. Nice articles about environmental nappies and local food recipes, but no political debate, and rarely views on science, technology or economy.

Today was a day I'm happy I've subscribed to Vihreä Lanka for the past 15 years. There was a book review on Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Discipline - An Ecopragmatic Manifesto" .



The book itself seems to be full of slogans and easy "truths", but at least it is addressing the issue: How to utilize science and technology in our efforts to save the world. A few of Brand's claims with my comments following each:

- environmental footprint of nuclear power and waste is minimal compared to oil and coal (true, but why even compare these two without looking at renewable energy sources)
- investing in research for renewable energy sources is taking too much resources because they cannot produce enough energy for the growing metropolisies (nonsense, we should invest in the technology that is most sustainable in the long run)
- nuclear waste should be stored in a way that it can be used in "microreactor utilizing Thorium" in the future (I dont't know about these microreactors, but sounds like this technology is still in too early phase to be relying on its future, and starting to store nuke waste "just in case")
- most important task is to outprice coil from the energy market (yes!)
- gene manipulated plants are not a health risk to humans (even if this is true, when spreading into the nature, gene manipulated plants will change biodiversity. Haven't we messed with Earth enough already)
- "back to nature" thinking is romantic nonsense, people's environmental footprint is smallest in big cities (probably so)
- raising food, wood, cattle and fish should be located in areas where it makes most sense (good idea, with pollution-free vessels transportation will not be a problem)

Brand introduces a new environmental movement, post-Greens a.k.a "The Turquoise". The Turquoise see and utilize potential of science and technology. Although I don't agree with most of his specific arguments, it is about time someone says the Emperor doesn't have any clothes: Green movement is not capable of driving global environmental change.