Customer Reviews

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

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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.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
The Future of Life

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.

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.

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.

Two years ago Lester R. Brown was introduced to me by another who had noticed I had Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth. The recommendation of Brown's book Plan B 2.0 Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble proved true. Brown could have won the Nobel Prize for his book and for his organization the Earth Policy Institute. However, a Nobel Prize to Brown would have passed under the media radar. Gore had reached the top of the best-sellers list. It was the beginning of a big year for Gore. With Gore as a winner, controversy ensued, bringing airplay week after week.

Brown is yet the master. Brown advocates mobilization in his new book, a reflection on the scale of the challenge and the "wartime speed" of the response that is called for.

Beyond mobilization, I find significant Brown's call for the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth. Writes Brown, "How will we respond to our children when they ask, 'How could you do this to us? How could you leave us facing such chaos?' These are questions we need to be thinking about now - because if we fail to act quickly enough, these are precisely the questions we will be asked." Brown goes on to note how the global economic accounting system leaves costs off the books which carries consequences. "If we can get the market to tell the truth, then we can avoid being blindsided by a faulty accounting system that leads to bankruptcy."

Brown's discussion of the increasing number a failing states is also significant. Brown suggests a link between the degree of state failure and the destruction of environmental support systems. Spreading political instability across borders could disrupt global economic progress.

The day calls for addressing the business of a sustainable plan - for mobilization. This is it.

Lester R. Brown does a very good job of outlining the threats facing all of us today. If you are not up to speed on the fact that most irrigation water for the food we eat comes from fossil aquifers, and that it is being pumped far faster than it replenishes itself, you have got to read this book. He also covers the fact that we (meaning the whole planet) are already at peak agriculture production; however, our population is still booming. World food reserves are nearly completely drained, and more folks are going hungry every year. Meanwhile, continued plowing and deforestation are depleting the top soil, which we need to grow food, and the worlds deserts are growing. It is not a pretty picture, and he lines it all out in detail and with references and documentation. This is stuff we all need to know. It will be affecting us much sooner than you hope.

The problem I have with the Plan B--is that it seems to offer very few suggestions about what you and I can do. The one I have run across, so far, is about eating less animal protein, and while good advice, it is somewhat simplistic. He contends that the grain used to feed animals would feed far more people than the meat which results from animals eating the grain. This is well based in fact, and many of us should eat less animal protein--if for no other reason than our personal health. However, not all animals are fed grain. Pastured, grass fed and finished, and free range animals are healthier for us, and they often convert resources that would not otherwise produce food into something we can eat. Well managed grazers actually improve water and nutrient cycles and top soil; which is not mentioned in Plan B. For more information on beneficial uses of livestock you will have to see the work of Alan Savory (Holistic Management) and Joel Salatin (You Can Farm).

Plan B is rich with pricey solutions (we are talking billions of dollars) that the author, Lester R. Brown, seems to think that our governments are going to fund. Folks, I am not holding my breath. Something about our history, about history in general, leads me to have little faith in any modern government doing anything that makes sense; which is exactly why I wrote "Food Security & Sustainability for the Times Ahead." This little book will show you exactly what you need to do to ensure food security for yourself and your family--in a way that will expand that security to your community, region, and the world. It is all about choices, a simple healthy diet, and getting involved with gardening and the local food movement. The plan outlined in "Food Security & Sustainability" will help you take a small step at a time. The end result, if enough of us start now, is that we will save ourselves and our planet.

Lester Brown can spend his time lobbing governments for billions of dollars. If he can get the money spent, soon enough and in an effective way, it will be a miracle. I am not going to hold my breath for that to happen. I am going to do what I can, right here and now. I hope you will join me. I believe we can save the planet through the choices we each make every day.

Lester Brown gives us a solid plan to save civilization from the ravages of Peak Oil and Global Warming. But at $190 billion a year, it just sounds too easy.

In fact Peak Oil is now becoming Peak Everything (the title of Richard Heinberg's latest book), driving huge price increases in many key commodities. This means that the actual cost is likely to become twice Brown's estimate or more, the longer we delay, the higher the price. To keep costs down will take a global mobilization, with many agreements like the proposed Oil Depletion Protocol (subject of another Heinberg book) and massive rationing or taxation of non-essential consumption.

One way or another global economic decline is in the offing. This is a scary issue, especially for politicians, but it needs to be faced. This is because there is a huge difference in how this decline occurs. Business-as-usual decline (Plan A) will lead to collapse, possibly by mid-century. Decline imposed through mobilization (Plan B) will lead to survival, though with far less of many of today's luxuries.

Here's how decline will hit home, even with mobilization. Brown, along with the Apollo Alliance and many others, are now talking about a new economy of "green collar" jobs, with re-localization of much outsourced productive activity. What they don't tell you is that most of these jobs will pay far less in real purchasing power than most white and blue collar jobs in today's top industries.

But good people will take these Walmart-pay type jobs anyway because of layoffs that will skyrocket in the coming decades. That is, today's wealth is based primarily on cheap energy, so with many more people competing there will a lot less wealth to go around as we head down the Peak. Much of Plan B amounts to learning how to live with less. Many of those who've looked carefully at the numbers don't see the resources to build and maintain the renewable energy we'd need to replace all of today's fossil fuels.

This brings up the population issue. Brown says that we must stabilize at eight billion people. But will we really have the resources for 8 billion people to live sustainably and with at least basic middle class amenities (decent food, clothing, housing, health care, education, transportation, ...)? Some people are now saying that we need to think two billion or less.

Radical population reduction seems impossible without invoking the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But it's actually very simple in concept: Women have only one child, on the average, and that child is born in the woman's mid thirties, again on the average. Mathematically this will reduce the population by a factor of 4 in 80 to 100 years. Sure, this would take a global cultural mobilization, but it is possible. As Brown points out, Iran cut its population growth rate in half in less than a decade, and Thailand did too. Perhaps we need Al Gore to show the world the kind of Apocalypse that happens when an exploding population uses up all its resources.

Lester Brown has taken on the daunting task of examining in painstaking detail, the scope of the interconnected problems we face on this planet. The cascade of crises between global warming, water shortages, starvation, environmental refugees, species extinction, desertification, and failed states producing terrorism are all leading to catastrophe. Hard to put down, if for no other reason than it makes it impossible to sleep, the first half of the book is truly terrifying.

But Brown takes equal pains to analyze and document the efforts that need to happen to turn this into a web of solutions equal to the task at hand. Some of these efforts are already happening, others are proposed, but all are achievable and for a pricetag that is less than half the U.S. military spending so far in Iraq.

Lester Brown is stunning in his grasp of details, but what he doesn't address is the need for deep underlying change in the cultural values of how we live. His solutions are practical, achievable, and realistic, but not philosophical. They aim to mitigate the crisis and make civilization sustainable, but do not address the underlying break from Nature that has led to our domination and exploitation. But given the scope of Plan B, that would be a different book, and one could say he has accomplished quite enough in this impressive manifesto for our planet. (see Waking the Global Heart: Humanity's Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love

One can see no reason whatsoever not to make Plan B the worldwide plan for the future. Everyone should read this book.

I've read a number of Lester's books, including Plan B 2.0 and this, the latest iteration, 3.0. Is there enough of a difference between 2 and 3 to merit the purchase? Absolutely. Not only is there plenty of new material, but to see how swiftly things have moved in the short span between editions is staggering.

No need for me to get into WHY this is a worthy read. Other reviewers have that covered.

What I WILL offer is a money back guarantee to anyone who buys this book and finds it less than staggering. I'm far, far from a wealthy man, but I do believe in the world-changing significance of this book that I will back up my offer. I'm easy to contact mind you.

Lastly, try to pick up the book directly through Earth Policy Institute. That way EPI actually makes a few cents to further their research.

This is one of the finest books to summarize in layman's terms both the problems and solutions to our unsustainable, industrialized economy. What distinguishes Lester Brown form other authors on the topic of sustainability is the ease of readability of his books. That definitely cannot be said about other, overly laborious works that mostly appeal to policy makers or academia.

Version 3.0 (2007) here expands where Plan B 2.0 left off and what Eco Economy started in 2001. There is much valuable news and trends in 3.0 not in 2.0 as this is an extremely fast moving topic which needs updating every year. (I've had Harvard profs tell me they need to completely revamp their sustainability lectures each year to keep up with the latest happenings).

Positives: very clear, readable writing style ... a keen ability to "connect the dots" of the many issues of a unsustainable society ... depth and insight ... loaded but not overloaded with useful eco-factoids ... and ability to balance bad news/good news and not be either wholly focused on total eco-gloom disaster scenarios or a total pie-in-the-sky-kind-of-a-guy. His balance is superb and his recommendations believable.

Negatives: not many but some charts and graphs to break up the text would have enhanced the points and visual interest. Also, the 100+ pages of reference notes could have been indexed on the website to save some trees and shipping weight (as only researchers need this for most part).

Other good recent books include "Earth: The Sequel" by Fred Krupp (super detailed accounts about the latest eco-solution technologies poised to change the world) ... and "Peak Everything" by Richard Heinberg (how the collision course of severe resource constraints and industrialization impacts will wreak havoc on society and how new thinking is required to dig out of this mess).

Note: version 4.0 arriving Dec. 2009.