In conjunction with the UN-led Stockholm+50 conference on the environment recently, there have been a few articles reminiscing about the original conference 50 year earlier.
The 1972 UN conference had been set during the war in Vietnam, and a topic at the time had been US' military's use of the herbicide Agent Orange.
Stewart Brand had been there (with his top-hat on), as a leader of a large group of American hippies that had been flown in.
They were widely seen as a nuisance by the other activist groups at the time, there to discredit the environment movement with their behaviour and to direct attention away from the "ecocide" in Vietnam. In one incident, Stewart Brand himself forcefully removed a speaker from a podium for mentioning Vietnam, even.
I find it interesting that the article on Brand in The Nation mentions the CIA, because there had been several indications that Brand's and the hippies' Stockholm visit in 1972 would have been funded and organised by the CIA.
Stewart Brand had been there (with his top-hat on), as a leader of a large group of American hippies that had been flown in. They were widely seen as a nuisance by the other activist groups at the time, there to discredit the environment movement with their behaviour and to direct attention away from the "ecocide" in Vietnam. In one incident, Stewart Brand himself forcefully removed a speaker from a podium for mentioning Vietnam, even. I find it interesting that the article on Brand in The Nation mentions the CIA, because there had been several indications that Brand's and the hippies' Stockholm visit in 1972 would have been funded and organised by the CIA.
<https://stockholmplus50.se/1972-2/> (In Swedish)