Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (Paperback)

by Lester R. Brown (Author) "As world population has doubled and as the global economy has expanded sevenfold over the last half-century, our claims on the earth have become excessive..." (more)
Key Phrases: food bubble economy, raising water productivity, more destructive storms, United States, World Bank, Great Plains (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, believes that "we can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the earth's people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized." Brown (Eco-Economy) backs up his argument with clear and well-reasoned text that outlines how to solve the world's severe environmental problems. According to Brown, the earth's populations are currently living in a bubble economy based on reckless consumption of natural resources. Because of water shortages, soil erosion and rising temperatures, grain production has seriously fallen off. If this situation continues, especially in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, hunger and disease will prevail and lead to disastrous consequences for the entire world. Drawing on careful research, Brown outlines the details of Plan B, a committed global cooperative effort to raise water and land productivity, cut carbon emissions and stabilize population growth before time runs out. He provides many individual success stories, such as the Netherlands' embrace of the bicycle for transportation instead of the environmentally poisonous automobile. Since 1989, Iran has cut its spiraling population growth through education and access to contraception. In this measured plea, Brown points out that for Plan B to be adopted worldwide, it desperately needs the leadership of the U.S., as the wealthiest nation on earth, to change its focus and resources from a military presence to one that fosters a global economy that will sustain generations to come.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
For the past three decades, Brown has expressed his viewpoints on environmentalism through his advocacy organization, gaining publicity for his proposals through books such as this. His current two-part program to save the planet as outlined here would have developed countries increase their aid to less developed countries by $62 billion annually to support educational and health programs (to reduce population growth), and would impose punitive taxes on petroleum (to halve carbon dioxide emissions). Knowing the political improbability of even sympathetic Democrats realizing the latter idea (the Clinton administration proposed, but Congress disposed of, a BTU tax), Brown suggests that a concomitant reduction in income taxes will turn the trick. His prescriptions aside, Brown's text serves as an information resource, essentially reviewing recent literature about deleterious environmental conditions (e.g., melting ice caps), and the green technologies he favors (e.g., wind farms). Libraries may expect some interest in this call to action. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1 edition (September 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393325237
• ISBN-13: 978-0393325232
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #618,367 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A species out of control?, March 1, 2004

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (Hardcover)

Lester Brown recently wrote Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth in which his thesis was that "the environment was not part of the economy...but instead that the economy was part of the environment." (p. xv)

Here he presents an upbeat and positive plan for saving the world from the consequences of what he calls the planet-wide "bubble economy." His central argument is that we are about to face a food shortage of crisis proportions as our aquifers and rivers run dry. The relative price of food, which is directly dependent upon ready water supplies from underground and through the diversion of rivers, he argues, is about to skyrocket as China and other grain-hungry nations begin to import grain.

His plan B is a combination of interventions that would include environmental tax reform, that is, taxing products in terms or their true cost including pollution and the use of non-renewable resources. Thus the consequences of pollution-induced illnesses like asthma, etc. be factored into the cost of gasoline. In this way non-polluting energy sources such as windmills and solar energy cells would become cost-competitive with fossil fuels almost immediately.

The first half of the book is devoted to describing the problem, which he calls "A Civilization in Trouble." The second half is devoted to his Plan B which includes adopting "honest global accounting," stabilizing the population, and raising land productivity. He wants not only to shift taxes from the environmentally sound ways of doing business to the ecologically harmful ways, but to shift the subsidizes that many countries now give to fossil fuel producers and to fishing and logging industries to environmentally safe products and industries. He points out that it is foolhardy to subsidize the destruction of our environment as we are now doing.

Brown quotes Oystein Dahle, former Vice President of Exxon for Norway as saying: "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth." (p. 210)

A striking example of what Brown means by shifting taxes comes from former Harvard Economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who wrote: "Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming..." (p 214)

Incidentally, Brown asserts that rising temperatures adversely affect crop yields. He notes that crops are grown in many countries "at or near their thermal optimum, making them vulnerable to any rise in temperature." He cites a study by Mohan Wali at Ohio State University showing that photosynthesis increases until the temperature reaches 68 degrees F. and then plateaus until it hits 95 degrees whereupon it begin to decline, and ceases at 104 degrees. (pp. 62-63)

The problem with his solution is that, as Brown points out, the body politic, especially that of the United States, must take action to implement the changes. Unfortunately, President Bush, who represents corporate interests (as most American politicians do), will continue to call for more studies, and nothing will be done. More particularly, taxing destructive practices will only work if all (or at least a substantial majority) of the countries of the world cooperate. Polluted air, acid rain, depleted aquifers, and rivers run dry cross borders. Consequently we have a daunting task in front of us.

A crucial psychological problem is that our instincts were honed in the pre-history when the resources of forest and savanna were effectively inexhaustible, where it didn't matter how much we burned and polluted since we could just move on. Our numbers were so small relative to the land that it would renew itself as we were despoiling other lands. With six billion-plus people on the planet there are no "other lands" and there is no time for the land to renew itself. We can no longer toss our waste over our shoulders, defecate in the stream, and slash and burn.

This is just one respect in which we have to ask, are human beings as presently evolved able to cope with the modern world? The tribal mentality, with its violence toward outsiders and toward the environment, is still with us, but the tolerance of the environment for such behavior is not. The myth of the noble savage and indigenous people living in harmony with nature needs a reality check. We are savages in headsets, neither noble nor ignoble. We are indigenous people whose lands have gone the way of the Garden of Eden. We are clumsily and incompletely adjusting to a different landscape: the modern world.

The race is on. Which will come first: our adjustment to the needs of the planet or the collapse of our great civilizations? Note well it is the needs of the planet that come first. Note also that the collapse of our civilizations will usher in a period of immense pain and suffering, even for those of us sitting atop Mount Olympus, as it were, in our garden homes sheltered from the storms in our inner cities and in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

A great deal of human suffering can be averted by anticipating the consequences of globalization, of diminishing resources resulting in diminishing returns. But it is also true that a great deal of human suffering can be averted by not doing something stupid that may have unintended consequences. We must use our abilities and our knowledge to choose between the two. Lester Brown is trying to help us do that. This book is a fine introduction to the problem and to a possible solution.

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good science is not discredited by bad science, July 6, 2004

By	Robert P. (California) - See all my reviews

An important contribution to the environmental debate. I was suprised by the critical review below that gives 1 star to Plan B and cites "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg as a refutation of Brown's work. Readers of that review may not be aware that "Skeptical" has been discredited, refuted and rejected by the scientific community. Critical reviews of Lomborg's book can be found in leading science journals, including Nature, Scientific American and Science. The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty issued a decision that declared Lomborg's research "to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty," and to be "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice." (Lomborg is Danish). Readers will not be persuaded by references to junk science coming from an anti-environmentalist.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading, January 29, 2004

By	DAVID-LEONARD WILLIS (Thessaloniki Greece) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is in three sections - the first part provides facts, figures, charts and tables to define the problem; the second part - Plan A - projects the future under the business as usual scenario; the third part - Plan B - is Brown's recommendations of what we must do. The problem has the following components:
- over the last 50 years world population has doubled, the global economy has expanded seven fold and our claims on the earth are excessive;
- we are cutting trees faster than they can regenerate, overgrazing rangelands, over pumping aquifers and draining rivers;
- soil erosion of cropland exceeds new soil formation;
- we take fish from the oceans faster than they can reproduce;
- we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect raising the earth's temperature;
- habitat destruction and climate change are destroying plant and animal species faster than new species can evolve.

Throughout history man has lived on the earth's sustainable yield but humanity's collective demands surpassed the earth's carrying capacity in 1980 and by 1999 exceeded carrying capacity by 20% creating a global bubble economy. "The sector of the economy that seems likely to unravel first is food. Eroding soils, deteriorating range lands, collapsing fisheries, falling water tables, and rising temperatures are converging to make it more difficult to expand food production fast enough to keep up with demand. In 2002, the world grain harvest of 1,807 million tons fell short of world grain consumption by 100 million tons, or 5%. This shortfall, the largest on record, marked the third consecutive year of grain deficits, dropping stocks to the lowest level in a generation." Trying to fill the 100 million ton shortfall, feeding an additional 70m people each year, reducing the number of under-nourished and rebuilding stocks is likely to further deplete aquifers, increase erosion and raise food prices. Farmers face two challenges - rising temperatures and falling water tables. The 16 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1980 with the three warmest in the last five years and this adversely affects grain harvests, forcing traditional grain exporting countries like Canada to reduce or cease exports. World wide 70% of water is used for agriculture, 20% by industry and 10% for residential purposes. Water mining due to governments' failing to limit pumping to sustainable yield has increased pumping costs and reduced profit margins when grain prices are at a historical low, obliging many farmers to withdraw from irrigated agriculture. Industrial demands are increasing and industry can afford to pay much more for its water than farmers. Sandra Postel in 'Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?' details a bleak picture of what is in store for us regarding falling water tables, rivers which don't reach the sea and the impact on food production. China is such a populous country that whatever happens there impacts everyone in the world. China's deserts are expanding and the US Dust Bowl of the 1930s is being reproduced there but on a much bigger scale. China's forthcoming grain deficit will force up grain prices. "Many of the most populous countries of the world - China, India, Pakistan, Mexico, and nearly all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa - have literally been having a free ride over the past two or three decades by depleting their groundwater resources. The penalty of mismanagement of this valuable resource is now coming due and it is no exaggeration to say that the results could be catastrophic for these countries and, given their importance, for the world as a whole." Many countries are living in a food bubble economy; the question for these countries is not whether the bubble will burst, but when.

The food bubble economy is just the first of the bubbles that the author explains. If we continue with business as usual - Plan A - the troubles described will continue or worsen; the world is failing environmentally and will eventually fail economically. "In sum, no one knows exactly the extent of our excessive claims on the earth in this bubble economy. The most sophisticated effort to calculate this, the one by Mathis Wackernagel and his team, estimates that in 1999 our claims on the earth exceeded its regenerative capacity by 20%. If this overdraft is rising 1% a year as seems likely, then by 2003 it was 24%. As we consume the earth's natural capital, the earth's capacity to sustain us is decreasing. We are a species out of control, setting in motion processes we do not understand with consequences that we cannot foresee."

Einstein told us that you can't hope to get out of a problem with the same thinking that got you into the problem so we cannot expect Brown's proposed solutions to be readily accepted or popular. However, they all practical and make sense. Most proposals are familiar but few holding positions of responsibility have been willing to implement them because Plan A gains more votes and today's politicians are unlikely to be around when the leaders of tomorrow have to pick up the pieces. "Plan B is a massive mobilization to deflate the global economic bubble before it reaches the bursting point. Keeping the bubble from bursting will require an unprecedented degree of international cooperation to stabilize population, climate, water tables, and soils - and at wartime speed. Indeed, in both scale and urgency the effort required is comparable to the US mobilization during World War II."

This book is not just for environmentalists; it is of interest to every housewife who will shortly see her housekeeping money pay for less and less. This book should be required reading for everyone who hopes to be alive in a few years time.