Outgrowing The Earth [Paperback]

Lester R. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2005

How human demands are outstripping the earth's capacities—and what we need to do about it.

Ever since 9/11, many have considered al Queda to be the leading threat to global security, but falling water tables in countries that contain more than half the world's people and rising temperatures worldwide pose a far more serious threat. Spreading water shortages and crop-withering heat waves are shrinking grain harvests in more and more countries, making it difficult for the world's farmers to feed 70 million more people each year. The risk is that tightening food supplies could drive up food prices, destabilizing governments in low-income grain-importing countries and disrupting global economic progress. Future security, Brown says, now depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and stabilizing population by filling the family planning gap and educating young people everywhere.

If Osama bin Laden and his colleagues succeed in diverting our attention from the real threats to our future security, they may reach their goals for reasons that even they have not imagined.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lester Brown advances our thinking on the food-security issues that the world will be wrestling with for years to come. (Sustain )

[I]t will be an instant classic. (E. O. Wilson )

The book should be bought just to demonstrate how good arguments are put together. (Paul Ganderton )

The book proposes that the challenge of feeding the world is at least as much about energy, water, climate and population. This view is no more than we should expect from Lester Brown, whose forte, eloquently expressed in the course of writing dozens of books over the past four decades, is to emphasize the links that connect all our development sectors, sometimes obviously, sometimes covertly, often crucially. (Times Higher Education Supplement )

About the Author

Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, is one of the world’s most widely published authors, with books in more than forty languages. He has been honored with numerous prizes, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the United Nations Environment Prize, and Japan’s Blue Planet Prize. He lives in Washington, DC.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393327256
• ISBN-13: 978-0393327250
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #498,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, is one of the world's most widely published authors with books in more than 40 languages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wake up call, February 27, 2005

By 

wilson harris "wilson" (canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Outgrowing The Earth (Paperback)

this is an excellent and well written overview of the many challenges facing the world as it faces increasing demands for food and decreasing food supplies due to factors such as urbanization, global warming, increased population, water shortages. the author presents the issues in a factual and articulate manner without seeking to be too alarmist or anti-business. the book is short on rhetoric but full of relevant data from which the reader can form his/her own conclusions. it makes you think about food in an entirely new perpsective.

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Overview of the Food Security Challenge, December 5, 2008

By 

Daniel Lobo (Washington, DC More often than not.) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Outgrowing The Earth (Paperback)

Quite the volume to approach the essential and much misunderstood issue of food security. Critical reading to develop an argument for policy chance and avoid, or lessen, the crisis. The book is dated 2004 and like it suggests there is a strong feeling to expand and update figures and analysis in the face of recent developments. Much of that update points to the Earth Policy Institute where Lester Brown is President, but there is much from him, and plenty other authors to add to the debate.

While one is left with little doubt about the severity of the demands on the earth's capacity, something is lacking by way of helping to make a strong public argument, one that will raise actual social awareness. But that is not so much a flaw of the book as a challenge of a topic that for its importance seems to be placed on the periphery of public concern.

On a personal planning note, I am particularly intrigued by the validity of the argument offered by food security regarding urban density. Urban density has been typically misconstrued as an ideological necessity, either romanticizing the idea of the city to support it, or defending individual liberty against central planning to defend sprawl. Here not only the environmental argument is strengthen, but a solid line of thinking emerges since sprawl is an essential cause of the decrease of croplands in particular by the paving for roads, highways, parking lots and its related lifestyle. Density would be a remedy to that, although that would be far from solving on its own the huge sustainability challenges that urbanization faces.

5.0 out of 5 stars Outgrowing The Earth by Lester Brown, August 11, 2007

By 

Nicholas B. Robson (Bradford, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Outgrowing The Earth (Paperback)

Excellent work as all of this author's are. This book should be required reading for all government ministers of all stated globally.
Nick Robson, South Asian Strategic Stability Institute.