Customer Reviews

Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Brown addresses the grand challenges of our age: population, exhaustion of existing fuels, destruction of ecosystems, corruption of the atmosphere. He makes meticulously researched economic arguments in language accessible to all literate persons. In the first chapters, Brown cites case after case to show that we really do have a problem. In the latter chapter, he maps a way out, Plan B 2.0, which has an annual budget about 1/6th the expenditure for military arms. To dispute him, one would have to disprove each argument five different ways. He's very convincing. The footnotes alone take 71 pages. My principal complaint is the format of the book. It is too big to fit in the pocket of a pair of jeans or a jacket. Brown has made an important statement on which each of us should develop an opinion. Our lives depend on it.

The first half of this book summarizes the numerous problems that our world is facing; the second half provides feasible solutions to those problems. Even though I was well aware of our planet's problems (which include global warming, loss of forest and farmland, loss of fresh water, ongoing and threatened epidemic diseases, exhaustion of our fossil fuel resources, increasing pollution, etc.), I found Brown's fact-filled cataloguing of these problems to be scarier and more alarming than any description I had previously encountered. The gut-wrenching impact of Brown's description of our planet's ills stems partly from the thoroughness with which he backs up his claims and partly from the fact that, unlike most analysts, he forces us to consider ALL of our global problems simultaneously. One is left with the impression--after reading the first half of the book--that it will take super-human efforts to prevent ecological, economic, political and social catastrophe within this century. But then, in the second half of the book, Brown describes strategies by which all of these problems can be solved. Like his description of the earth's problems, Brown's descriptions of ways to solve those problems are well-researched and convincing. In most cases, aspects of his recommended strategies have already been tried in one country or another, in one place or another, and have been shown to work. The strategies do not require tremendous expenditure (an annual outlay of 1/6 of the world's military budget will be sufficient), nor do they require departures from standard market capitalism. One strategy, of which economists would approve (I believe) involves shifting taxes from income to ecologically destructive activities (thus reflecting the true cost of such activities). Such tax-shifting would not increase the average person's tax burden, but it would create tremendous incentives to reduce environmental destruction. In fact, the strategies outlined by Brown are so feasible (so easy to carry out) and promise to accomplish so much that I found the second half of the book to be exhilarating. In my view, it should be required reading for every inhabitant of our planet. Perhaps the word "required" is too strong. No threat of punishment will be needed to make any of us who start reading this book continue to the end. Brown's writing is forceful and clear, the book is fun to read, and one feels much better after reading it. There _is_ hope for this planet!

It's a real shame that the publisher did not take the trouble to load the table of contents into the product information section provided by Amazon, because that alone should persuade anyone that gets to this page that the book is a MUST BUY MUST READ MUST SHARE.

Each of the following section titles has six sub-titles that I will not repeat here:
1. Entering a New World
2. Beyond the Oil Peak
3. Emerging Water Shortages
4. Rising Temperatures & Rising Seas
5. Natural Systems Under Stress
6. Early Signs of Decline
7. Eradicating Poverty, Stabilizing Populations
8. Restoring the Earth
9. Feeding Seven Billion Well
10. Stabilizing Climate
11. Designing Sustainable Cities
12. Building a New Economy
13. Plan B: Building a New Future.

Although an updated version of the first edition published in 2003, this version can be said to be both completely new, and finally ready for public consumption now that Al Gore has put Global Warming on the public mind.

I still prefer J. F. Rischard's High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them for the general reader, and I still think E. O. Wilson's The Future of Life is one of the top three in this area, but this book by Lester Brown has the merit of consolidating and structuring detail in a manner I have not seen elsewhere.

I recommend the book be ready in conjunction with books by Herman Daly's Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics and Paul Hawken's Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, in part because everyone is now starting to realize that green sustainability is in fact the non-negotiable first step for any business to survive into the next decade--natural capitalism.

Most intriguing to me, and the heart of the book on page 257, is the consolidated Plan B budget totallying $161 billion a year needed to meet all of the goals the author postulates.
BASIC SOCIAL GOALS
12B Universal primary education
04B Adult literacy
06B School lunch in 44 poorest countries
04B Assistant to pregnant women and preschool childen in 44 poorest
07B Reproductive health and family planning
33B Universal health care
02B Closing the condom gap (Bill & Melinda Gates can have this one)

EARTH RESTORATION GOALS
06B Reforesting the earth
24B Protecting topsoil on cropland
09B Restoring rangelands
10B Stabilizing water tables
13B Restoring fisheries
31B Protecting biological diversity

As the author points out on the next page, world military expenditures total $975B a year, with the US alone responsible for $492B (this was published before we all knew of the half trillion dollar cost of the Iraq invasion and occupation). Hence, the $161B a year total is a fraction of the total spent on out-dated military systems, and could be funded by the US alone if we had the right leadership and public consensus.

Personally, and based on other readings, I believe that the author is under-estimating the costs, and avoiding a focus on many other factors including the urgent need to eradicate transnational crime and end inter-state and civil war. This is, however, a superb start and ideally suited as a primer for any level of learning.

Readers interested in seeing a broader perspective that places the ten high-level threats (poverty, infectuous disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities, proliferation, terrorism and transnational crime) in the context of the twelve policies that must be managed as a whole by all nations (agriculture, debt, diplomacy, economy, education, energy, family, immigration, justice, security, society, and water), and that in turn oriented toward the urgency of keeping the eight challengers (Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Wild Cards) from repeating our mistakes, can check in at Earth Intelligence Network.

Rescuing are planet and our civilization is going to be a great deal harder than the author suggests, and is going to need a massive awakening by the public as to the "true cost" of all that we are doing wrong. I expect that we will succeed, in part from top down efforts by Al Gore and this author among others, and in part by bottom up efforts where individuals can get from the Internet the "true cost" of any good or service in terms of water content, fuel content, sweatshop labor content, and tax avoidance status. Noami Klein's books, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism are recommended in this regard.

Over-all an absolutely superb piece of work that caps the author's decades of advocacy on behalf of the planet. There is no other person that has been focused on this topic with due diligence year after year.

I believe this author should be recognized, along with Herman Daly and Paul Hawken and Anthony Lovins and others, for their total commitment over decades.

Our world is changing quickly. The media and our government are so focused on what is happening today that we are getting very little information about what is going to happen next. Thank goodness we have Lester Brown to fill us in on the near future and unfortunately, it is not a pretty picture. Over- population, the oil peak, world hunger, global warming, growing poverty and other calamities are knocking on our door. We need to make broad, deep, and serious changes in the way we live and work. First we need a dialogue about the problems and the solutions, and this book is a great primer on all of this and more. I highly recommend it and while your at it, read The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, another book about the same issues but with a very different take on the subject.

Plan B 2.0 is a timely and hopeful discussion of human survival.

In Plan B, Lester Brown provided a much-needed wake-up call for global action. Plan B 2.0 is a well written update with further information about continuing environmental degradation, as well as potential solutions.

The first half of the book, titled "A Civilization in Trouble," reviews the environmental impacts we humans have had on our planet. The author discusses upcoming decline of global oil supplies, falling water tables, rising global temperatures, shrinking forests, and the enormous potential for environmental refugees. The writing style is clear and accessible. I was especially pleased with the lack of hyperbole. These sections are well researched and documented with good endnotes.

The second half of the book, titled "The Response, Plan B," reviews what we can do. The author discusses human population, biological diversity, food resources, climate stabilization, energy productivity, and sustainable living. I especially enjoyed the hopefulness of the discussion as well as the practical suggestions for improving our chance of survival.

In summary, I highly recommend this book. It may prove to be the most important book of our generation.

Plan B 2.0 is more than an update of Plan B, published two years ago. It updates the threats that overshadow our planet, cites progress where restoration of the earth is already taking place in parts of the world, and sets forth a specific plan to
(1) restructure the global economy to sustain civilization;
(2) eradicate poverty, stabilize population and restore hope to enlist participation of developing countries;
(3) launch a systematic effort to restore natural systems.
An earth budget of $161 billion per year woud save civilization, an unprecedented investment for an unprecedented challenge. Nothing short of human well-being for all time is at stake. Our real enemy is time!

Lester Brown has been monitoring the state of the world for many years and is probably one of the most knowledgeable and authoritative people on this topic. The first half of the book, filled with many little known but interesting and important facts lets us know how a declining resource base at a time of rapidly increasing human population is taking us toward a very unstable and potentially dangerous world. In the second half of the book he spells out what needs to be done worldwide and how it can be accomplished with about 1/3rd of our annual US Defense Dept. expenditures if we wake up to the facts and act immediately.
The book was so factual and encouraging that I bought a dozen to share with my congregation in the hope of spreading the facts, stimulating concern, and seeing some personal action.

I'll just add my 5-stars vote. This is a must read, to get a *comprehensive* view of the environmental challenges facing the planet and what the solutions might look like. There is some discussion on social issues like population, health etc, but the focus is mostly on environment.

Be aware that the solutions proposed are purely techno-centric, market based. The book does not deal with value-systems underlying current crisis.

We do have prophets for our time. Lester Brown is one of the most important among them. In his well founded search for truth and solutions for our demographic, ecological and economic problems of global dimensions, he powerfully opposes the four faces of destructive stupidity of our times: ignorance, refusal to discuss matters, denial, and faithful dysfunctionality. I made this book the present day Bible that must be read and discussed in my course on Bioethics: Perspectives on Human Life, at Le Moyne College, Syracuse NY.
Dr. Andrew Szebenyi S.J.

I have never before read a book that struck me as being as important as this book. There is nothing that I can imagine reading that could provide as honest a vision of current status in the world and the possibilities of the future.

The thing that makes Brown's work most amazing is that it is not solely a book of gloom and doom like so many others. Oh the picture he paints in the first half is stark. In a lot of ways it is even more terrifying than the books that set out to scare you simply because he doesn't resort to theatrics or trickery. It's all just plain spoken terrifying truthfulness.

However, unlike any other book I've read, Plan B 2.0 focuses as much or more on the solutions as on the problems. Brown spends so much effort to describe in detail the multitude of strategies that can be implemented and are being implemented across the world that will preserve the human race, that you just can't help but actually come to believe that it really is possible for us to survive. We have everything we need. The knowledge and the tools are at our fingertips if we just have the will to use them. You feel hope and indeed pride in our species when you read about how astoundingly capable we are of adapting to trials of epic proportions.

Yet at the same time he doesn't delude you into thinking that it is easy or a sure thing. Rather he makes it clear that the future of the world depends on all of us having the courage to step up and rise to the challenge.