Jerry Brown, governor of California for two separate stints from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019, was the first major political figure in the U.S. to thematize ecological issues in the public discourse. Stewart Brand, a counterculture mentor to Apple’s Steve Jobs and other early high-tech innovators, was similarly a forerunner to today’s environmental consciousness through his publications, The Whole Earth Catalogue and Co-Evolution Quarterly. In Noema this week, they reflect on the origins of their influential concepts in the 1970s — “planetary realism” and “whole Earth thinking” — and how they themselves and the world have changed over the intervening years. For Brown, the idea of “planetary realism” arose during one of his early campaigns for the American presidency when he sought to be both visionary and down-to-earth. For Brand, the challenge was how to plant a holistic image in people’s minds of the interdependence of humans with each other and nature. Thus “whole Earth thinking” was illustrated on the cover of his first catalogue by the now iconic photo of the entire Earth from outer space, which was only taken by astronauts in 1972.