Amy Goodman talks with John Todd, founder of the New Alchemy Institute, Hunter Lovins, and Jaime Snyder, Bucky’s grandson. John has just been awarded a $100,000 Bucky Fuller Award for his plan to regreen stripmined Appalachia, which he talks about in this interview.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER: When I was born, humanity was 95 percent illiterate. Since I’ve been born, the population has doubled, and the total population is now 65 percent literate. That’s a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans themselves are literate, able to get the information, we’re in an entirely new relationship to universe. We’re at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do. It’s a matter now of humanity getting to the point where it’s now qualifying to make some of its own decisions in relation to its own information. That’s why we’ve come to a new moment of integrity.
AMY GOODMAN: Buckminster Fuller, just months before he died. Hunter Lovins, this whole discussion about nuclear power: oil and gas, too expensive, let’s go to nuclear power. Barack Obama and John McCain agree, perhaps, on that point, though not exactly clear where Obama wants to go with this. What are your thoughts about nuclear power and where Buckminster Fuller would stand?
HUNTER LOVINS: Actually, I think Bucky and I stand in about the same place. We both liked nuclear power, remotely sited 93 million miles away will do just fine, thank you. He was a big fan of using renewable energy. And we can meet all of our energy needs, first of all, by using energy very efficiently—that’s the cheapest thing to do—second, by getting the remaining supplies that we need from the already available cost-effective renewables. And in fact, this is what’s happening.
Nuclear power, the two units outside of Tampa now, are at $17 billion and rising. New nuclear plants will probably come on at something like $12 billion. Neither McCain nor Obama have done the numbers. We simply can’t afford it. If you want very pricy energy, nuclear is a good choice.
