In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now.
We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of the issues Lester R. Brown skillfully distills in World on the Edge. Bringing decades of research and analysis into play, he provides the responses needed to reclaim our future.
World on the Edge
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“Lester Brown is one of the pioneers and heroes of global environmentalism. If the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize had been extended to a third recipient, the logical candidate would have been Lester Brown.” (E. O. Wilson )
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 Japan’s Blue Planet Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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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
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
56 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have been following Lester Brown's work ever since he founded Worldwatch Institute in the early 1980's. He has since left Worldwatch and now leads the Earth Policy Institute. I urge all readers to go their web site while reading this book. You will get more related information.
This book is one of the best summaries of the current global environment crisis. Check out what the book says about the global water crisis and the global crisis of fisheries. In reading this book, it is hard not to get angry with our world's leaders, particularly those in the rich nations. There are so many solutions to global problems that have been known for years such as drip irrigation but these are not being adopted on anywhere near the scale that is needed.
The best part of the book is Chapter 13, "Saving Civilization". If you have a limited amount of time read this. This details solutions. Brown even has a global environmental reform budget, $110 billion a year, a tiny sum in global standards that could do so much for environment but it's not being done.
My problems with the book rest with overly optimistic predictions. According to most respected predictions the share of coal will rise in the next ten years in the world energy production. Wind and solar power are still a tiny fraction of world energy production. However, in spite of these faults this book is very worthwhile.
Brown is right on target with his view that America needs nothing less than a national mobilization similar to what we did in World War II.
If you go to my profile, I have a Listmania list of books related to Future Watch Studies.
This book is one of the best summaries of the current global environment crisis. Check out what the book says about the global water crisis and the global crisis of fisheries. In reading this book, it is hard not to get angry with our world's leaders, particularly those in the rich nations. There are so many solutions to global problems that have been known for years such as drip irrigation but these are not being adopted on anywhere near the scale that is needed.
The best part of the book is Chapter 13, "Saving Civilization". If you have a limited amount of time read this. This details solutions. Brown even has a global environmental reform budget, $110 billion a year, a tiny sum in global standards that could do so much for environment but it's not being done.
My problems with the book rest with overly optimistic predictions. According to most respected predictions the share of coal will rise in the next ten years in the world energy production. Wind and solar power are still a tiny fraction of world energy production. However, in spite of these faults this book is very worthwhile.
Brown is right on target with his view that America needs nothing less than a national mobilization similar to what we did in World War II.
If you go to my profile, I have a Listmania list of books related to Future Watch Studies.
36 of 41 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Lester Brown brings to his latest book a distinguished career packed with ominous but prescient forecasting on the dangerous decline of our planet's capacity to survive and provide for the future. His impressive history can be found many places including Wikipedia.
In a poignant piece in the Sunday January 16, 2010 Washington Post, Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter reminds us of another great American's look into our future with this quote from his January, 1961 farewell address, more famous for his warning about our burgeoning "military industrial complex", but more important when he said, "We . . . must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
Not quite an environmental statement, but one which counsels a careful look at the future and a deep concern for next generation, even before most of us were thinking about peak oil, global warming, and the population explosion.
Born in 1931, I feel an enormous kinship with this author, as I have been an activist in the family planning field since 1965, having helped start and served on the boards of several then fledgling NGO's just when so many of these presently now well known agencies were first organized to address this primary underlying influence on all our present planetary crises.
Despite the decades ago warnings of many besides Brown about this brewing population crisis, most of the world's leaders have steadfastly ignored allocating adequate expenditures toward providing universal family planning's humane and gentle solutions. Their shortfall in so doing has already proved devastating and will accelerate in intensity as Brown forecasts.
Brown, who was born in 1934, has for decades been an activist in his urgent call for action on the population issue along with all the other predictors of danger rising and has powerfully chronicled them fully in his earlier 50 books. For his pains, he has frequently been dismissed as crying wolf, just as Paul Ehrlich for his premature world famine prediction in 1975, which now has shown itself so correct.
Brown and certainly many of us who have spent our lives immersed in action on these issues now see many of these concerns coagulating into a complex mix attaining more powerful impetuous for disaster than ever in the history of the planet. This new book's title, World on the Edge, puts it forward precisely. In short, as he carefully documents, the human populations of our planet are running out of running room. And soon. There are now many paths to perdition and some of us, including me have suggested a possible apocalypse worldwide should be fail to take corrective actions.
Never just a prophet of gloom, Brown always offers us a path to salvation and this latest book is no exception. In Chapter 13, entitled "Saving Civilization" he reiterates his earlier Plan B recommendations, "With Plan B, we can change course and move onto a path of sustainable progress, but it will take a massive mobilization--at wartime speed. This plan or something very similar to it, is our only hope." What are those goals? "Stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the economy's natural support systems--are mutually dependent. All are essential to feeding the world's people. It is unlikely that we can reach any one goal without reaching the others. Moving the global economy off the decline-and-collapse path depends on reaching all four goals."
A tall order indeed and many observers including me are not optimistic that Plan B, even if urgently executed now, can ward off massive numbers of human deaths. Formidable experts such as the late Garrett Hardin felt the planet's human numbers were already too large to sustain. The jury is still out and we are blessed to have this cogent voice still seeking a sensible, workable scenario for the future. Despite my pessimism, I vigorously applaud this giant of environmentalist (e.g. Founder of Worldwatch Institute in the early 1980's and subsequently his present NGO, the Earth Policy Institute) for continuing to offer solid information and solutions both in his books and on the Earth Policy web site. Brown's latest offering becomes a must read for all who care about our future.
In a poignant piece in the Sunday January 16, 2010 Washington Post, Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter reminds us of another great American's look into our future with this quote from his January, 1961 farewell address, more famous for his warning about our burgeoning "military industrial complex", but more important when he said, "We . . . must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
Not quite an environmental statement, but one which counsels a careful look at the future and a deep concern for next generation, even before most of us were thinking about peak oil, global warming, and the population explosion.
Born in 1931, I feel an enormous kinship with this author, as I have been an activist in the family planning field since 1965, having helped start and served on the boards of several then fledgling NGO's just when so many of these presently now well known agencies were first organized to address this primary underlying influence on all our present planetary crises.
Despite the decades ago warnings of many besides Brown about this brewing population crisis, most of the world's leaders have steadfastly ignored allocating adequate expenditures toward providing universal family planning's humane and gentle solutions. Their shortfall in so doing has already proved devastating and will accelerate in intensity as Brown forecasts.
Brown, who was born in 1934, has for decades been an activist in his urgent call for action on the population issue along with all the other predictors of danger rising and has powerfully chronicled them fully in his earlier 50 books. For his pains, he has frequently been dismissed as crying wolf, just as Paul Ehrlich for his premature world famine prediction in 1975, which now has shown itself so correct.
Brown and certainly many of us who have spent our lives immersed in action on these issues now see many of these concerns coagulating into a complex mix attaining more powerful impetuous for disaster than ever in the history of the planet. This new book's title, World on the Edge, puts it forward precisely. In short, as he carefully documents, the human populations of our planet are running out of running room. And soon. There are now many paths to perdition and some of us, including me have suggested a possible apocalypse worldwide should be fail to take corrective actions.
Never just a prophet of gloom, Brown always offers us a path to salvation and this latest book is no exception. In Chapter 13, entitled "Saving Civilization" he reiterates his earlier Plan B recommendations, "With Plan B, we can change course and move onto a path of sustainable progress, but it will take a massive mobilization--at wartime speed. This plan or something very similar to it, is our only hope." What are those goals? "Stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the economy's natural support systems--are mutually dependent. All are essential to feeding the world's people. It is unlikely that we can reach any one goal without reaching the others. Moving the global economy off the decline-and-collapse path depends on reaching all four goals."
A tall order indeed and many observers including me are not optimistic that Plan B, even if urgently executed now, can ward off massive numbers of human deaths. Formidable experts such as the late Garrett Hardin felt the planet's human numbers were already too large to sustain. The jury is still out and we are blessed to have this cogent voice still seeking a sensible, workable scenario for the future. Despite my pessimism, I vigorously applaud this giant of environmentalist (e.g. Founder of Worldwatch Institute in the early 1980's and subsequently his present NGO, the Earth Policy Institute) for continuing to offer solid information and solutions both in his books and on the Earth Policy web site. Brown's latest offering becomes a must read for all who care about our future.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've read and reviewed a number of books by Lester Brown and his advocacy agency, and have especially appreciated the State of the World series, and his Plan B Series that keeps getting pushed back, and now has a Plan B 4.0, but between that latter book and this one, I chose this one.
It gets four stars for reasons I outline in passing below. The author has his pet rocks, they are all here, but NOT in this book can one find corruption, disease, mercury, rare earths, a strategic analytic model that is holistic, actual true costs across the spectrum of options, or a strategic analytic model.
However, and this is strong praise, if you are going to get only one book by Lester Brown, this is the book to get. There are others I recommend, including High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, and A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, the latter also free online.
Here are highlights, generally things I did not know and thought worth putting into my notes.
+ 2020 could be the ultimate recession
+ We need a massive mobilization at wartime speed -- but I have a negative annotation, "Old C4I mindset?" In my thinking, and all the books I am reading on cognitive surplus, web 4.0, swarm intelligence, etcetera, the answer is not more government control but rather shutting government down and going back to indigenous circles of full consultation and long-view consensus, something that can only happen with everyone gets it. The elites dug this hole themselves, by trying to micro manage and rule by secrecy at the same time they dumbed down the population and drove the smartest with their integrity intact out of politics.
+ Russia and Pakistan are examples of the future for the West if it does not radically adjust. This is a bit out of date since Russia seems well on its way to overcoming the Harvard-Soros-CIA-Trilateral economic sabotage, and if they have put the fear of death into the Goldman Sachs leaders, all the better. What does not appear in this book in any tangible way is the FACT that the US Government, for lack of integrity, allowed Wall Street to explode the global economy. Mark Lewis gave us full warning in the 1980's with Liar's Poker.
+ The book mentions "indirect costs" and cites Herman Daly, whose book Ecological Economics, Second Edition: Principles and Applications is a foundation work, more recently complemented by Paul Hawkin's Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, but the book does not go nearly far enough on this foundation aspect (which, together with integrity and stategic analytics, would turn the world around in ten years).
QUOTE (8): "Falling water tables today signal rising food prices tomorrow."
QUOTE (11): "On the social front, the most disturbing trend is spreading hunger."
I am much taken with his description of the food bubble being based on the "free water" culture around the world.
QUOTE (15): "The time when military forces weere the prime threat to security has faded into the past. The threats now are climate volatility, spreading water shortages, continuing population growth, spreading hunger, and failing states. The challenge is to define new fiscal priorities that match these new security threats."
+ Saudi Arabia is buying and leasing land in counteris including two of the world's hungriest, Ethipoia and Sudan.
+ I have a note based on the book, "depletion of acquifers = social collapse." I have reviewed over twelve books on water, I no longer use Amazon lists because they do not credit their creators, look for my Huffington Post article, < WATER-Soul of the Earth, Mirror of Our Collective Souls > where I review twelve books I bought in support of a UNESCO survey task.
QUOTE (22): "The world is incurring a vast water deficit - one that is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. Half the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling as aquifers are deleted."
+ Elsewhere in this section I learn that they are no longer going down a meter or two a year, now it is six to ten meters a year. And while he does not make this point, made better in Marc de Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, when an aquifer near the sea goes down under sea level, the sea can push in and contaminate what is left.
+ Overall I appreciate the high-level concise overview of water catastrophies looming for Afghanistan, China, India, Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and he covers the US as well.
+ The section on eroding soils and expanding deserts points out that there are two massive dust bowls, one in northwest China, West Mongolia, and Central Asia, the other in Central Africa and particularly across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where the UN continues to have major forces engaged.
+ Nigeria is losing 867,00 acres of rangeland and cropland to desertification A YEAR. EACH year. This is really scary.
In discussing the politics of food scarcity, the author seems bent on avoiding any discussion of corruption in government or corruption in corporations. While he discusses the need to end ethanol as a grain drain (humor intended), I am really not satisfied with the long litany of crimes against humanity that are integrated in how the industrialized food chain has been corrupted, poisoned, diluted, and generally trashed for reasons that are uniformly against the public interest.
QUOTE (66): "One of the little noticed characteristics of land acquisitions is that they are also water acquisitions."
In relation to the above quote, it bears mention that the illegal war on Libya by NATO and the USA is about oil, but also about the gold that Libya has amassed, and the most precious Libyan acquifer.
The author also observes that governments are selling or leasing millions of acres without consulting the indigenous peoples on them; in some cases they get butchered out of their homestead by corporate mercenaries, in others, such as the Philippines, public anger forces the government to back off on this atrocity and crime against indigenous humanity.
Environmental refugees, we learn are caused by rising seas, flooded river deltas, advancing deserts, toxic waste dumps, and Chernobyl. Since refugees are also caused by wars, both international and civil, and by transnational criminal networks, this is one place where the narrowness of the "look" is more obvious.
I've spent a lot of time living in and studying failing states, including the USA where most of the preconditions for revolution now exist, and poverty has doubled under the incumbent Administration, so I find this author's overview of failing states to be somewhat bland and not very compelling. For me it boils down to a lack of integrity in the West enabling massive corruption everywhere else.
Drawing toward a close the book states that Plan B focuses on stabilizing climate, restoring earth's natural systems, stabilizing population, and eradicating poverty. All well and good, nothing here that was not anticipate in the 1980's but books such as Limits to Growth.
The budget for restoring natural systems is according to the author $200 billion a year. I find this interesting, consistent with E. O. Wilson's estimates in The Future of Life, a book I found to be extraordinary. Medard Gable, co-craetor with Buckminster Fuller of the analog world Game, has estimated that the cost for eradicating all of the threats to humanity is on the order of $300 billion a year, or one third the cost of what the USA has spent per year on invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and in creating the monstrocity two authors call Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
The author touches on holistic design, but nowhere near the complete concepts of Medard Gabel and the Earth Intelligence Network, but certainly demanding that the author have a seat at the high table seeking to catalyze public thinking. He writes of building an energy efficient global economy, redesigning cities for people, and reinventing transportation from bicycle paths to high speed rail.
The section on alternative energy is not as complete as I would like, focusing only on wind, solar, and geothermal, but it is certainly a great section if you only have time for one read.
+ Wind power can supply up to 4000 Gigawatts by 2020, one half of the need, IF the reinvention goes as proposed.
I sense the author is still in the Industrial-Era paradigm of centralized wind farms, where Buckminster Fuller and others have clearly shown that the greatest efficiencies come from LOCALIZED mixes of wind, solar, and other (e.g. idling automobiles--WIRED Magazine had a great cover story the same week Dick Cheney was meeting with Enron and Exxon to plot the invasion of Iraq). Read more ›
It gets four stars for reasons I outline in passing below. The author has his pet rocks, they are all here, but NOT in this book can one find corruption, disease, mercury, rare earths, a strategic analytic model that is holistic, actual true costs across the spectrum of options, or a strategic analytic model.
However, and this is strong praise, if you are going to get only one book by Lester Brown, this is the book to get. There are others I recommend, including High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, and A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, the latter also free online.
Here are highlights, generally things I did not know and thought worth putting into my notes.
+ 2020 could be the ultimate recession
+ We need a massive mobilization at wartime speed -- but I have a negative annotation, "Old C4I mindset?" In my thinking, and all the books I am reading on cognitive surplus, web 4.0, swarm intelligence, etcetera, the answer is not more government control but rather shutting government down and going back to indigenous circles of full consultation and long-view consensus, something that can only happen with everyone gets it. The elites dug this hole themselves, by trying to micro manage and rule by secrecy at the same time they dumbed down the population and drove the smartest with their integrity intact out of politics.
+ Russia and Pakistan are examples of the future for the West if it does not radically adjust. This is a bit out of date since Russia seems well on its way to overcoming the Harvard-Soros-CIA-Trilateral economic sabotage, and if they have put the fear of death into the Goldman Sachs leaders, all the better. What does not appear in this book in any tangible way is the FACT that the US Government, for lack of integrity, allowed Wall Street to explode the global economy. Mark Lewis gave us full warning in the 1980's with Liar's Poker.
+ The book mentions "indirect costs" and cites Herman Daly, whose book Ecological Economics, Second Edition: Principles and Applications is a foundation work, more recently complemented by Paul Hawkin's Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, but the book does not go nearly far enough on this foundation aspect (which, together with integrity and stategic analytics, would turn the world around in ten years).
QUOTE (8): "Falling water tables today signal rising food prices tomorrow."
QUOTE (11): "On the social front, the most disturbing trend is spreading hunger."
I am much taken with his description of the food bubble being based on the "free water" culture around the world.
QUOTE (15): "The time when military forces weere the prime threat to security has faded into the past. The threats now are climate volatility, spreading water shortages, continuing population growth, spreading hunger, and failing states. The challenge is to define new fiscal priorities that match these new security threats."
+ Saudi Arabia is buying and leasing land in counteris including two of the world's hungriest, Ethipoia and Sudan.
+ I have a note based on the book, "depletion of acquifers = social collapse." I have reviewed over twelve books on water, I no longer use Amazon lists because they do not credit their creators, look for my Huffington Post article, < WATER-Soul of the Earth, Mirror of Our Collective Souls > where I review twelve books I bought in support of a UNESCO survey task.
QUOTE (22): "The world is incurring a vast water deficit - one that is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. Half the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling as aquifers are deleted."
+ Elsewhere in this section I learn that they are no longer going down a meter or two a year, now it is six to ten meters a year. And while he does not make this point, made better in Marc de Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, when an aquifer near the sea goes down under sea level, the sea can push in and contaminate what is left.
+ Overall I appreciate the high-level concise overview of water catastrophies looming for Afghanistan, China, India, Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and he covers the US as well.
+ The section on eroding soils and expanding deserts points out that there are two massive dust bowls, one in northwest China, West Mongolia, and Central Asia, the other in Central Africa and particularly across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where the UN continues to have major forces engaged.
+ Nigeria is losing 867,00 acres of rangeland and cropland to desertification A YEAR. EACH year. This is really scary.
In discussing the politics of food scarcity, the author seems bent on avoiding any discussion of corruption in government or corruption in corporations. While he discusses the need to end ethanol as a grain drain (humor intended), I am really not satisfied with the long litany of crimes against humanity that are integrated in how the industrialized food chain has been corrupted, poisoned, diluted, and generally trashed for reasons that are uniformly against the public interest.
QUOTE (66): "One of the little noticed characteristics of land acquisitions is that they are also water acquisitions."
In relation to the above quote, it bears mention that the illegal war on Libya by NATO and the USA is about oil, but also about the gold that Libya has amassed, and the most precious Libyan acquifer.
The author also observes that governments are selling or leasing millions of acres without consulting the indigenous peoples on them; in some cases they get butchered out of their homestead by corporate mercenaries, in others, such as the Philippines, public anger forces the government to back off on this atrocity and crime against indigenous humanity.
Environmental refugees, we learn are caused by rising seas, flooded river deltas, advancing deserts, toxic waste dumps, and Chernobyl. Since refugees are also caused by wars, both international and civil, and by transnational criminal networks, this is one place where the narrowness of the "look" is more obvious.
I've spent a lot of time living in and studying failing states, including the USA where most of the preconditions for revolution now exist, and poverty has doubled under the incumbent Administration, so I find this author's overview of failing states to be somewhat bland and not very compelling. For me it boils down to a lack of integrity in the West enabling massive corruption everywhere else.
Drawing toward a close the book states that Plan B focuses on stabilizing climate, restoring earth's natural systems, stabilizing population, and eradicating poverty. All well and good, nothing here that was not anticipate in the 1980's but books such as Limits to Growth.
The budget for restoring natural systems is according to the author $200 billion a year. I find this interesting, consistent with E. O. Wilson's estimates in The Future of Life, a book I found to be extraordinary. Medard Gable, co-craetor with Buckminster Fuller of the analog world Game, has estimated that the cost for eradicating all of the threats to humanity is on the order of $300 billion a year, or one third the cost of what the USA has spent per year on invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and in creating the monstrocity two authors call Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
The author touches on holistic design, but nowhere near the complete concepts of Medard Gabel and the Earth Intelligence Network, but certainly demanding that the author have a seat at the high table seeking to catalyze public thinking. He writes of building an energy efficient global economy, redesigning cities for people, and reinventing transportation from bicycle paths to high speed rail.
The section on alternative energy is not as complete as I would like, focusing only on wind, solar, and geothermal, but it is certainly a great section if you only have time for one read.
+ Wind power can supply up to 4000 Gigawatts by 2020, one half of the need, IF the reinvention goes as proposed.
I sense the author is still in the Industrial-Era paradigm of centralized wind farms, where Buckminster Fuller and others have clearly shown that the greatest efficiencies come from LOCALIZED mixes of wind, solar, and other (e.g. idling automobiles--WIRED Magazine had a great cover story the same week Dick Cheney was meeting with Enron and Exxon to plot the invasion of Iraq). Read more ›
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of WOTE
Lester Brown's World On The Edge has a rather deceptive title. When one reads it, they immediately imagine the author to be some nut raving about the end of the world. Read more
Published 11 days ago by David Roland
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something to think about
Try to keep calm as you turn each page, this book evokes the helplessness one feels in living in a world out of control
Published 18 days ago by reva pauker
5.0 out of 5 stars
An indispensable book
This is a book everyone must read in order to understand how fast global capitalism is destroying the biological foundations of life on Earth. Lester Brown is not at all a doomer. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Luiz Marques
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lester is the best
This is the best book available to summarize world resources and resource use, as well as the trends and potential for responsible resource use.
Published 3 months ago by chris covelli
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slaps you in the face and completely wakes you up
Remember when you were in college and you read a text-book. You started with a highlighter and marked the sections that were important, that you would need to or want to remember,... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Norbert Haupt
4.0 out of 5 stars
Scary reality, but excellent book
I heard the author speak on NPR and immediately went on Amazon to purchase his book. It was excellent and I have passed on to friends and family to read. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Jesse Garin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book!
I needed this book for class. It was a fairly quick read, and it was very informative and interesting! I definitely learned a lot! Read more
Published 5 months ago by dmfnswm
5.0 out of 5 stars
The solution or Plan B
All in all I believe in all that's reported and the solution seems within our grasp all be it a political grasp. If every top politician has not read this yet we will be doomed. Read more
Published 6 months ago by P. McCulloch
2.0 out of 5 stars
The same predictions of food shortages that have failed since 1974
I wanted to find a guide to all the important environmental problems we face today, and this book seemed to be it. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Matt
4.0 out of 5 stars
World on the Edge
The book scared the dickens out of me in the first part. I was relieved to read the second part where so much is being done to combat the desertification happening in many... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Louiser
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