Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

by Lester R. Brown

Book Overview

Lester Brown notes that if the environmental trends of recent decades continue, the global economy will soon begin to unravel. The food sector, he believes, is the most vulnerable. Record-high temperatures and falling water tables are already taking the edge off grain harvests in some countries, including China, the world's largest grain producer. The wake-up call will come, Brown believes, when 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with an $80 billion trade...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393325237
• ISBN13: 9780393325232
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive and well researched

Brown addresses the grand challenges of our age: population, exhaustion of existing fuels, destruction of ecosystems, corruption of the atmosphere. He makes meticulously researched economic arguments in language accessible to all literate persons. In the first chapters, Brown cites case after case to show that we really do have a problem. In the latter chapter, he maps a way out, Plan B 2.0, which has an annual budget about 1/6th the expenditure for military arms. To dispute him, one would have to disprove each argument five different ways. He's very convincing. The footnotes alone take 71 pages. My principal complaint is the format of the book. It is too big to fit in the pocket of a pair of jeans or a jacket. Brown has made an important statement on which each of us should develop an opinion. Our lives depend on it.

Good science is not discredited by bad science

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.

I agree with that person, buy 10 and pass them out.

Wow, after reading this book, I am left speechless. I read this book in conjunction with a Native American Studies class that I took, and I have never learned more terrifying facts in my entire life. Lester Brown, although he admits that the task is too great for one book, describes bluntly the thin line our species is walking between self preservation and self destruction. He does not pull any punches in describing how the human race is pushing Earth dangerously close to its breaking point. Brown outlines the clear reality that if trends continue the demand put on the environment by humanity will overtake its carrying capacity. He makes many interesting points but he also stays true to the title of the book, not only spreading blame, of which there is plenty to spread, but also offering possible solutions to the most important of problems. I thought I was environmentally conscious before I read this book, boy was I surprised. This book brought my environmental consciousness to a whole new level. It also unfortunately made me realize that unless the rest of the world gets on the same page as Brown in a hurry, the environmental damage will be irreparable. I'll agree once again with what that other reviewer said. Read this book and buy 10 copies to hand out.

A species out of control?

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,

Required reading

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