Lester Brown launches Plan B: 3.0
This week Academy Fellow Lester R. Brown published Plan B: 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization. He believes the world’s situation to be as dire as the subtitle suggests. But he also lays out a specific plan to pull us back from the brink of extinction.
“The world faces many environmental trends of disruption and decline,” he says, “including rising temperatures and spreading water shortage. In addition to these looming threats, we face the peaking of oil, annual population growth of 70 million, a widening global economic divide, and a growing list of failing states. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent.”
The only “effective response now is a World War II-type mobilization like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
Dr. Lester Brown’s latest book points to the proliferation of carbon dioxide in the environment as the single greatest threat to mankind and calls for a reduction of 80% by 2020.
The plan’s prescriptions include: wind generation; lowering income taxes while levying a carbon tax that progressively grows to $240 a ton of CO2; more solar and geothermal power; hybrid cars; and less meat in our diet. (Switching from a meat-rich diet to a vegetarian diet has the same CO2 impact as switching from a SUV to a Prius.)
While this may sound radical, Brown points out first that it’s necessary to our very survival, and second that great progress is already being made on all these fronts.
Time Magazine’s website created an audio podcast with Lester Brown, click here to play.
Purchase book: www.amazon.com/Plan-3-0-Mobilizing-Civilization-Third/dp/0393330877
Original source: www.worldbusiness.org
I can't help but think of Einstein's quote about not being able to solve one's problems while thinking in the way that caused them.
I do not find flaw in Lester Brown's or Al Gore's views of what needs to be done. I do find flaw in the notion that human cultures are changed by facts and figures, the obsession with which is what has gotten us into the mess we're in. Ecopsycholgists, long ago, showed how environmentalism was perpetuating environmental crises rather than eliminating them - because of its reliance on scare tactics. Does anyone really think that scaring people and making them feel guilty about driving a car or taking a vacation on an airplane actually helps build momentum for a more sustainable culture? We're human beings -- not computers! Our decisions are unconsciously driven, not driven by logic!
How about focusing on how we can build better lives and enjoy them more? The very things that are destroying our environment have degraded our lives already. Mega-corporations and consumerism are a way of life that erodes our values and our environment. And yet, we inherently don't want to give up the stuff to which we've become addicted. This is what we need to be talking about -- not doom and gloom about the mess we're in -- but positive models for how we can live more simply and more meaningfully.
Just my two cents . . .
Earon Davis www.divineprimates.com
posted by Earon on 7/20/2008 10:08 pm