Not much time today but here’s something to think about. Stewart Brand, who used to be a poster boy of environmentalism, now espouses a different kind of pragmatic environmentalism that supports nuclear power and genetically engineered food. Techonomy has a quick description of his beliefs:

According to Brand, environmentalism has a “legacy resistance” to nuclear power, and to transgenic crops or GMOs. In other words, the resistance isn’t really based on strong evidence of dangers, so much as an instinctive distrust of certain types of meddling with “nature.”

I agree with this wholeheartedly, the bottom line has to be positive outcomes, whether it be human or environmental health and not what makes us feel good inside (although “feeling good inside” has to also be factored into the outcome). But, as many of my blog posts can attest to, it’s often difficult to trust these large corporations to use these technologies responsibility. Particularly when I read something like this. Brain Goldman, the host of CBC’s White Coat Black Art, discusses a paper that found that 85% of the pharmacological studies funded by drug companies have positive results whereas only 50% of studies funded by government have positive results. Suspicious?

How can the average person expect to have the time to do the research to decide which corporations or industries we can trust and which we can’t? It’s impossible. It’s much easier to assume that anything that benefits a corporation is at the cost of the consumer. It might be a good rule of thumb, but some important technologies can slip through the cracks if people don’t realize that there are always exceptions.

Here’s Stewart’s Brand recent TED talk: