Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism

by Andrew G. Kirk

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Environment, Counter Culture, Nature

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2007

About the author

Andrew Kirk is an associate professor and director of the Public History Program at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and author of Collecting Nature: The American Environmental Movement and the Conservation Library.

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This well-researched well-written book explores the history of the Whole Earth catalog. It is a needed addition to the history of the environmental movement. The author is interested in the pragmatic take towards appropriate technology embraced by Brand (the hero of the book) and captured in the slogan "access to tools." That is, the author was drawn to the Whole Earth catalog and Steward Brand because something resonated politically for him in the pragmatism, the interest in appropriate technology, and a hybrid political philosophy he describes as "politically realistic, consumer-friendly environmentalism." This is a form of environmentalism "reconciled with the market economy" (see chapter, "Free Minds, Free Markets").

This is not the model of social change I embrace. I don't think developing the right tools and providing access to them through personal choice confronts the root problems of global inequity.

Although I have critiques of the philosophy the author endorses, I still think this book is absolutely worth reading if you are interested in social movements, environmentalism, whole earth, technologies, sustainable design, or the counterculture. You don't have to completely agree with something to learn from its conclusions and the evidence presented along the way.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

What might seem to be a small topic--the history of countercultural favorite The Whole Earth Catalog (which passed through about ten million different incarnations, always evolving)--is actually a much larger, more important investigation of the tension between technophobia and technophila as it played out in the fundamentally pragmatic wing of said counterculture devoted to Appropriate Technologies and "tools," defined broadly. WEC founder Stewart Brand plays the starring role, appropriately, and Kirk does a nice job bringing him and the crew around him to life. I've been immersed in books on Sixties environmentalism recently and all things considered, this is the best.

[Heidi McMaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate being assigned reading for school. Read this book as part of an Environmental Policy class in my Undergraduate. Although some of the material is dry, still very informative. I took some pieces away for a project. Not necessarily a book to read from front to back in one sitting but great educational material.

[Audrey Lim · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit dense in the sense that it reads like an academic paper; wouldn’t consider it in the category of a “light beach read” and not exactly written in a compelling manner. Hugely informational but also largely repetitive.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars is a little unkind to the quality of the research behind the book, but it grew dry for me and I struggled through the second half, so what can I do?

I do recommend this book to those, like myself, born after the late 60's-early 70's as an introduction to a side of American history that somehow wasn't in the schools that I attended -- a window to the attitudes of the time. I left this book with the feeling that the counterculture ideals that the characters (and they are) of the book embraced 3 and 4 decades ago, are entering the main stream of today.

[Jim Rossi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, iconoclastic book about a fascinating, iconclastic man named Stewart Brand who is, to most, one of the most under-the-radar important people of the 20th century. I must say upfront that I am a bit biased; Dr. Kirk was my Masters adviser at UNLV. He's a great teacher and an outside-the-box, non-polemical thinker. This book helped me with my own first book, "The Case of the Cleantech Con Artist: A True Vegas Tale."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does anyone ever wonder where some of our smartest, most well-rounded individuals come from?
How about the most progressive, productive, non-egotistical citizens? A certain region? A certain economical group? How about a certain movement?
Nay, read this and you will find answers to all those questions and to how some of the biggest trends that are still going today came from.

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on how a single publication bridged so many ideas.