Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised) [Paperback]

Lester R. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2008

"How to build a more just world and save the planet....We should all heed Brown's advice."—Bill Clinton

In this updated edition of the landmark Plan B, Lester Brown outlines a survival strategy for our early twenty-first-century civilization. The world faces many environmental trends of disruption and decline, including rising temperatures and spreading water shortage. In addition to these looming threats, we face the peaking of oil, annual population growth of 70 million, a widening global economic divide, and a growing list of failing states. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent

With Plan A, business as usual, we have neglected these issues overly long. In Plan B 3.0, Lester R. Brown warns that the only effective response now is a World War II-type mobilization like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book provides excellent insights for academics, students and lay readers alike... in tackling a host of pressing issues in a single book, Plan B 2.0 makes for an eye-opening read.” (The Times Higher Education Supplement)

“Brown is an effective Cassandra. His picture of climate-change-induced chaos is terrifying and convincing.” (Andrew Simms - New Scientist)

About the Author

Lester R. Brown is the founder of the Earth Policy and Worldwatch Institutes. He has been honored with numerous prizes, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the United Nations Environment Prize, and twenty-five honorary degrees. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Substantially Revised edition (January 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393330877
• ISBN-13: 978-0393330878
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

LESTER R. BROWN, founder and President of Earth Policy Institute, has been described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers" and as "the guru of the global environmental movement" by The Telegraph of Calcutta. The author of numerous books, including World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, chapters, articles, etc., he helped pioneer the concept of environmentally sustainable development. His principal research areas include food, population, water, climate change, and renewable energy. The recipient of scores of awards and honorary degrees, he is widely sought as a speaker. In 1974, he founded Worldwatch Institute, of which he was President for its first 26 years. As President, he launched the World Watch Papers, the Worldwatch/Norton books, the annual State of the World, World Watch magazine, the annual Vital Signs, and the Institute's News Briefs. For relaxation, Lester runs

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

135 of 146 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best and Most Essential Guide, Not the Whole Picture January 11, 2008

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have followed Lester Brown's dedication to evaluating the state of our planet for over a decade, and wrote to the Nobel Committee urging them to recognize him, Herman Daly, and Paul Kawkins and the two Lovins instead of Al Gore. They have all done a great deal more of the heavy lifting.

I decided to purchase this book when Medard Gabel, creator of the analog World Game with Buchminster Fuller, gave me a budget for saving the planet that totals no more than $230 billion a year (at a time when we spend $1.3 trillion waging war).

I've gone through the book and consider it to be a best in class effort, a seminal work no one else on the planet could have produced. In the author's chosen area of focus, there is no other book like this one. However, some other books are easier to read and understand, such as High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, and others do a better job of addressing all ten high-level threats to Humanity and Earth, such as A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

Here are a few highlights:

+ Book is offered free online (but the hard copy is much better deal, easier to work with, mark up and return to as a reference....use the online version to search for specifics.

+ The Introduction is clear and inspiring. This book is loaded with carefully collected facts ably presented....

+ $12 per gallon of fuel in "true costs" externalized and not billed

+ One 25 gallon ethanol tank takes enough grain to feed a person for a year. This means that those in hunger going to double from 600 million to 1.2 billion, as cars compete for grain (which is nuts).

+ Food-oil axis is developing into a triple crisis: oil, food, water. As 50% live in cities, the fuel intensity of food in the face of Peak Oil is becoming a major issue.

+ Stopping the ethanol program dead in its tracks is the single best thing US Government could do, followed my more wind farms and an end to coal plants.

+ Amazon reaching a tipping point, mega-fires are foreseen (as with New York City if its 1920's water system fails and a firestorm emerges)

+ Western model will not work for China or India (or Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other Wild Cards)

+ Ice cap is melting fast, gfalciers are melting fast and causing small earthquakes.

+ 600 million refugees expected if sea level rises ten meters (33 feet)

+ Mortality has been reduced, but fertility has not, leaving persistent population issues.

+ 15 of 24 primary ecosystems degraded or pushed beyond their limits.

+ Climate has become more destructive, with 55 weather events costing $1.5 billion or more each since the 1980's.

+ Great discussion of the ecology of cities, Bioneers would resonate with all the author recommends.

+ Scarcity crossing national boundaries.

+ Excellent notes, heavy reliance on UN and other primary sources.

+ He proposes a budget of $190 billion a year to achieve our social goals and restore the Earth.

+ The only thing missing from this book are some of the positives, for example bacteria as an energy source, healing bacteria, eletrified water as a cleanser needed no other ingredients, the recovery of the Dead Sea with furrows that retain every drop of water.

I am so surprised to find only one review that I wanted to quickly add my praise for this author, while also pointing out three things that a handful of wealthy philanthropists could do tomorrow to execute this vision.

#1 We should all support the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) as created by the Natural Capital Institute, and encourage colleges and universities around the world to begin loading the "true cost" information for all products and services (e.g. 4000 gallons of water in a designer T-shirt). Delivered to end-users via cell phone query at the point sale, this will dramatically affect markets.

#2 We should ask the 90 major foundations in the USA to host a summit to which all governments, non-governmental organizations, prominent wealthy individuals, and the United Nations are invited. The objective should be to create an online "Range of Gifts" Table that identifies specific contributions that can be made at every cost level, to eradicate the ten high level threats within fifteen years, by harmonizing the twelve policies such that ALL organizations and ALL individuals can opt in on a master budget that is strategically sound, operationally executable, and tactically open to all.

#3 We must absorb the wisdom of C. K. Prahalad, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and others listed below, and recognize that the only enduring sustainable solutioin lies in educating the five billion poor, who do not have the time or the money to sit in a classroom for 18-22 years. We can create today, using Telelanguage.com, an immediate registry of 100 million volunteers with Internet access, speaking 183 languages among them, who can educate the poor--who are not stupid, just illiterate--one cell call at a time.

I believe that Reuniting America, True Majority, and WISER are reaching critical mass. All we lack now is one well endowed champion who sees that it is our collective intelligence that will solve the world's problems, and there is no need to run for President. Here are the handful of books I would recommend to Michael Bloomberg if he were to ask me today how to fulfil his vision of political, educational, and philanthropic reform.

Visit Earth Intelligence Network for free public intelligence on the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers. The weekly report "GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review," will appeal to anyone interested in this book and its topic.

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52 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Single Volume on Saving the Earth, Period. January 8, 2008

By Geoffrey Holland

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the third iteration of the Plan B series. They just keep getting better. This book delivers beautifully in laying out the unprecedented challenges faced by humanity as we move into the 21st century. Plan B thoughtfully examines the critical global issues of our time: fresh water scarcity, soil depletion, deforestation; desertification; fisheries collapse; habitat destruction; species extinction; extreme weather; global warming, energy policy, and human population growth. Though the subject matter is sobering, it is presented in highly engaging and convincing fashion. Lester Brown and his support team show that we humans are our own worst enemy. But the book is hardly all gloom and doom. There is a decidedly wise and positive course offered in these pages. Plan B shows that we are capable of cleaning up the mess we have made of our planet. It includes a clear, reasonable, and immanently doable public policy blueprint that offers hope for an equitable, life affirming, and environmentally sustainable future for all life on Earth. Anyone interested in a single volume that will get them up to speed on the world's most pressing issues should look no farther. Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown is as good as it gets.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book in print on creating a viable environmental future for our planet January 18, 2008

By Future Watch Writer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Lester Brown is the creator of Worldwatch Institute. I have read every one of its State of the World Reports since the first one came out in 1984.

A few years ago he quit Worldwatch and founded a new organization, the Earth Policy Institute.

This book provides answers about what to do. Too many environmentalists seem to concentrate 99% of their efforts on talk of gloom and doom and only 1% of their efforts to realistic, practical ideas about what to do about the very real problems they worry about. By contrast, Brown and his staff at Earth Policy Institute have taken the time to put together a game plan about how to create a genuinely sustainable society. Nobody is going to agree with all their ideas. I'm a bit skeptical about some of the cost estimates. However, at least Brown has cost estimates. Sadly, very few people or organizations have put togther the kind of detailed plan that is presented here. Buy this book. Read it. Think about it. Discuss it. It creates a solid framework for debate about our planet's future. For anybody who is interested I have lists of some other good books and documentary films on similar subjects on my Amazon profile page.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars After the usual litany of problems, really exciting ideas for solutions February 13, 2008

By Jesse Kornbluth TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

Unless you've been taking the sleep cure in Switzerland for the last few years, skip the first section of Lester R. Brown's book. "A civilization in trouble" --- roger that, and the details will only send you looking for Wellbutrin. You're a Solutions Person, you want the memo that suggests ways we can turn this planetary tipping point into a transformational opportunity. And in Part II, "The Response", Brown delivers.

Control population, educate the poor. Everyone sane says this. But Brown knows better ways to help that along than the usual entreaties. Like: Mexico, where "a well-written soap opera can have a profound short-term effect on population growth." Consider: The day after a soap-opera character visited a literacy office on TV, 250,000 followed his example --- in one day --- in Mexico City. Across the country that season, 600,000 more Mexicans enrolled in literacy courses.

Move down the food chain. Michael Pollan can show you how.

Acknowledge that the suburbs are museums of the recent past; re-engineer cities to make them more people-friendly. That means parks, bike lanes, better and more buses. "On my bike, I estimate I get easily 7 miles per potato," Brown writes. Not a bad line from a thinker who heads the Earth Policy Institute. Not bad ideas, given that "by 2020 close to 55 percent of us will be living in cities."

Use less energy. Prime energy wasters: the gold and bottled water industries. You know about bottled water, of course; you use home filters and carry SIGG bottles. Still, it is bracing to recall that American bottled water companies burn about 50 million barrels of oil --- a year.

Switch to renewable energy. Here Brown hits his stride, and his list of countries using natural sources of power will brighten your day.... China has 160 million people getting hot water from rooftop solar heaters. Ninety percent of Iceland's homes are heated with geothermal energy. Sixty million Europeans get electricity from wind farms.

Wind makes for the most exciting reading. By Brown's calculations, an Iowa farmer growing corn on a quarter-acre of land produces enough corn to make $300 worth of ethanol. If he put wind turbines on that quarter-acre, he'd produce $300,000 worth of electricity in a year. Please send this book to any corn farmers you know.

Want to stabilize the climate? Brown's solution: Install 1.5 million 2-megawatt wind turbines. Of course this would require mass manufacturing of turbines. Where might we do that? The assembly lines of Detroit auto factories. Unless, like Mitt Romney, you believe full employment making cars that people want is still possible for Detroit, this could strike you as an exciting idea. Even if you're sentimental about General Motors, you might warm to the image of wind turbines in the Sahara --- and Algeria selling electricity to Europe.

There's more. And it requires a national commitment to get it done --- like the first year of World War II, when America turned into a giant factory to pump out tanks and planes. Will we step up in time? Lester R. Brown gives you the facts and ideas you need to do better thinking than you'll find in what passes for most "serious" conversations. Read more ›