Stewart Brand on Why the Country Sucks

Short but fascinating Power Q & A with the great environmental activist Stewart Brand, courtesy of the revamped Mother Jones:

MJ: What is your favorite personal energy-saving trick?

SB: I live in a tugboat with 450 square feet. And living in a city is bloody brilliant, especially in Manhattan, which has good public transit and punishes you for driving.

MJ: That's surprising, since the Whole Earth Catalog was so much about—

SB: Right! Back-to-the-land. I did the catalog so I could help [communes] without actually having to live on one. Partly that's due to the boredom of the remote countryside. You wind up in a very repetitive soap opera, and that's why everybody in the world is running to town as fast as they can.