A Blueprint for Saving Civilization
Plan B — How to Stop Global Warming
By Bryan Walsh, TIME
It's called eco-anxiety — free-form worry triggered by concerns about the worsening fate of the planet — and if you suffer from it, you might want to give Lester Brown's new book, Plan B 3.0, a pass. Brown — the president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank — paints a comprehensive and depressing picture of the planet, with ream after ream of dire statistics. Here's just a handful: Arctic summer sea ice shrinkage increased by 9.1% a decade between 1979 and 2006, and this year an area of ice almost twice the size of Britain melted in a single week. In an era of unprecedented global economic growth, the number of hungry people increased from 800 million to 830 million between 1996 and 2003. At current rates of logging, the natural forests of Indonesia and Burma will be gone within a decade or so. Each year the number of failing states increases — Sudan and Somalia today, perhaps Pakistan tomorrow — a trend that climate change will only worsen. Global demands on the Earth already exceed sustainable capacity by 25% — and we're set to add another 3 billion people by 2050. As Brown writes: "Civilization is in trouble."
But take a few deep breaths and relax — a little bit. Brown, one of the U.S.'s most respected environmentalists, has a plan — and it's called Plan B. (Hear Brown talk about Plan B 3.0 in this week's Greencast.) After detailing just how screwed our overpopulated, overconsuming world is — thanks to an economic system that rewards production without regard for environmental impact — Brown lays out an alternate path that could save us from the worst consequences of climate change. At the heart is a call to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2020 — far more aggressive than anything you'll hear from political leaders or even most activists. It's an ambitious plan, one that is less concerned with political feasibility than the survivability of the planet. "This is not Plan A, business as usual," Brown writes. "This is Plan B — a wartime mobilization, an all-out response proportionate to the threat that global warming presents to our future."
(More here.)
By Bryan Walsh, TIME
It's called eco-anxiety — free-form worry triggered by concerns about the worsening fate of the planet — and if you suffer from it, you might want to give Lester Brown's new book, Plan B 3.0, a pass. Brown — the president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank — paints a comprehensive and depressing picture of the planet, with ream after ream of dire statistics. Here's just a handful: Arctic summer sea ice shrinkage increased by 9.1% a decade between 1979 and 2006, and this year an area of ice almost twice the size of Britain melted in a single week. In an era of unprecedented global economic growth, the number of hungry people increased from 800 million to 830 million between 1996 and 2003. At current rates of logging, the natural forests of Indonesia and Burma will be gone within a decade or so. Each year the number of failing states increases — Sudan and Somalia today, perhaps Pakistan tomorrow — a trend that climate change will only worsen. Global demands on the Earth already exceed sustainable capacity by 25% — and we're set to add another 3 billion people by 2050. As Brown writes: "Civilization is in trouble."
But take a few deep breaths and relax — a little bit. Brown, one of the U.S.'s most respected environmentalists, has a plan — and it's called Plan B. (Hear Brown talk about Plan B 3.0 in this week's Greencast.) After detailing just how screwed our overpopulated, overconsuming world is — thanks to an economic system that rewards production without regard for environmental impact — Brown lays out an alternate path that could save us from the worst consequences of climate change. At the heart is a call to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2020 — far more aggressive than anything you'll hear from political leaders or even most activists. It's an ambitious plan, one that is less concerned with political feasibility than the survivability of the planet. "This is not Plan A, business as usual," Brown writes. "This is Plan B — a wartime mobilization, an all-out response proportionate to the threat that global warming presents to our future."
(More here.)
Labels: energy, environment, global warming, Plan B 3.0
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