Buzzword: Turq

What it means. Environmentalism comes in many shades of green, including the "light green" compost-and-hemp-canvas-bag crowd and " bright green" techno-minded folks. Turqs—from turquoise—add a new hue to the green spectrum, namely a blue sky open-mindedness that challenges what some consider the eco movement's tropes.

The term was coined by Steward Brand (shown), ironically one of the people behind some of those tropes. Brand's Turq philosophy embraces nuclear power, genetically engineered food, and other science-based tenets that might turn his back-to-the-land brethren blue in the face.

If you got on the bus in the '60s or are familiar with Brand through Tom Wolfe's trip through the era in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, you might associate the 71-year-old author more with Orange Sunshine, Purple Haze, and White Lightning than anything green. He was, after all, a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and a seminal figure in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene.

Among Brand's most lasting contributions to environmentalism is the " Whole Earth Catalog," which he launched in 1968. By putting the first picture from space of Earth on the cover of the catalog, Brand, in his own words, "gave the sense that Earth's an island, surrounded by a lot of inhospitable space." Two years later, the mission to protect the planet launched with the first-ever Earth Day.

Why the buzz? Brand's Turq—unveiled in his latest book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto—is a reaction to the feeling that the green movement has gone soft in the paunch. Indeed, with last week's 40th anniversary of Earth Day, you could say that the U.S. environmental movement has entered middle age.

"Technological progress, not nostalgia or asceticism, is the only reliable way for greens' visions of 'sustainability' to be sustained," wrote The New York Times' John Tierney in " For Earth Day, 7 New Rules to Live By," summarizing the Turq-ish manifesto.

When it comes to Brand's 21st-century Turq, you could modify the Pranksters' motto, from "never trust a Prankster" to "never count on a Prankster to stop pushing the boundaries." That's right in line with the name of the psychedelicized school bus in which the Pranksters marauded around the country more than four decades ago: Furthur (aka Further).

—Daniel DiClerico & Steven H. Saltzman