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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, growing criticism of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, and our drive to get Francis on NPR’s Marketplace.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

More Reasons Why Conservatives Should Take Occupy Wall Street Seriously
A few random thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, flash mobs, and 9/11
Spending on housing and vehicles
Business groups blast Cain’s 9-9-9 plan as job killer
Cain’s Sales Tax Would Hurt Consumer Spending ’For Some Years’
Let’s Start All Over Again
David Frum bids farewell to Marketplace
Email NPR and tell them you want our very own Francis Cianfrocca to replace David Frum on Marketplace
Sign up for Ben’s daily email: The Transom

Follow Brad on Twitter
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Follow Francis on Twitter

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A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review.  Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and he concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, in which he takes on these environmental shibboleths in a more concerted fashion.  On American Public Radio’s Marketplace program yesterday, host Kai Ryssdal discussed the new book with Brand.  Asked what prompted him to write the book, Brand said that,

“My fellow environmentalists have been wrong about a couple of issues and were getting in the way of important things we should be doing, both with biotechnology and with nuclear technology, and in terms of how we think about cities, and in terms of how I know we’re going to think about geoengineering–that is, direct intervention in the climate.”

 

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