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Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
by by Lester R. Brown
By
Published: Jan 01, 2008
Category:
Non Fiction
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
by Lester R. Brown
You know all about the polar ice caps. But did you read about a “plastic soup” of waste in the Pacific Ocean that’s twice as big as the United States? And how about the latest stunner: Biofuels — that’s ethanol, every corn-bribed politician’s solution to the problem of decreasing oil supply and increasing gas prices — “cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these ‘green’ fuels are taken into account.”
Makes you wanna holler. Sure doesn’t make you think you can do much about it. Oh, change your light bulbs. Eat less meat, buy a bike. But really, how much does any of that matter when the fricking ice caps are melting?
So unless you’ve been taking the sleep cure in Switzerland for the last few years, skip the first section of Lester R. Brown’s book. “A civilization in trouble” — yeah, roger that, and the details will only send you looking for Wellbutrin. You’re a Solutions Person, you want the memo that suggests ways we can turn this planetary tipping point into a transformational opportunity. And in Part II, “The Response”, Brown delivers.
Control population, educate the poor. Everyone sane says this. But Brown knows better ways to help that along than the usual entreaties. Like: Mexico, where “a well-written soap opera can have a profound short-term effect on population growth.” Consider: The day after a soap-opera character visited a literacy office on TV, 250,000 followed his example — in one day — in Mexico City. Across the country that season, 600,000 more Mexicans enrolled in literacy courses.
Move down the food chain. Michael Pollan can show you how.
Acknowledge that the suburbs are museums of the recent past; re-engineer cities to make them more people-friendly. That means parks, bike lanes, better and more buses. “On my bike, I estimate I get easily 7 miles per potato,” Brown writes. Not a bad line from a thinker who heads the Earth Policy Institute. Not bad ideas, given that “by 2020 close to 55 percent of us will be living in cities.”
Use less energy. Prime energy wasters: the gold and bottled water industries. You know about bottled water, of course; you use home water filters and SIGG bottles. Still, it is bracing to recall that American bottled water companies burn about 50 million barrels of oil — a year.
Switch to renewable energy. Here Brown hits his stride, and his list of countries using natural sources of power will brighten your day. China has 160 million people getting hot water from rooftop solar heaters. Ninety percent of Iceland’s homes are heated with geothermal energy. Sixty million Europeans get electricity from wind farms.
Wind makes for the most exciting reading. By Brown’s calculations, an Iowa farmer growing corn on a quarter-acre of land produces enough corn to make $300 worth of ethanol. If he put wind turbines on that quarter-acre, he’d produce $300,000 worth of electricity in a year. Please send this book to any corn farmers you know.
Want to stabilize the climate? Brown’s solution: Install 1.5 million 2-megawatt wind turbines. Of course this would require mass manufacturing of turbines. Where might we do that? The assembly lines of Detroit auto factories. Unless, like Mitt Romney, you believe full employment making cars that people want is still possible for Detroit, this could strike you as an exciting idea. Even if you’re sentimental about General Motors, you might warm to the image of wind turbines in the Sahara — and Algeria selling electricity to Europe.
There’s more. And it requires a national commitment to get it done — like the first year of World War II, when America turned into a giant factory to pump out tanks and planes. Will we step up in time? Lester R. Brown gives you the facts and ideas you need to do better thinking than you’ll find in what passes for most “serious” conversations.
To buy “Plan B 3.0” from Amazon.com, click here.
For Lester Brown’s web site, click here.
