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Rachel's Democracy & Health News, March 13, 2008
PLAN B 3.0 -- MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION
 [Rachel's introduction: We have reached a fork in the road to the future. In his new book,Lester Brown shows us that major economic change is inevitable. We can choose tostamp out poverty, prevent run- away global warming and invest in energy efficiency,renewable energy, and ecological restoration. Or we can pursue business as usual andwatch civilization unravel.]by Tim MontagueHave you ever wondered what it would actually take to transform our global economyinto a much cleaner, greener and hopefully sustainable machine? Well, Lester Brown of theEarth Policy Institutehas done the math and his new book,Plan B 3.0 -- Mobilizing to  Save Civilizationis the result. Whatever your interest -- addressing the needs of low-income people, improving human health, restoring ecosystems, fighting global warming,or reducing industrial contamination of our air, land and water -- Plan B 3.0 will be afountain of ideas and inspiration for your work.As Brown says, "No one can argue today that we do not have the resources to eradicatepoverty, stabilize population, and protect the earth's natural resource base. We can getrid of hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty, and we can restore the earth's soils,forests, and fisheries." Brown shows us how we can shift resources from wasteful militaryspending to his Plan B economy that creates justice and sustainable prosperity for all theearth's people, a "World that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized."So what's the plan? The first priority is to realize that we are at a unique period inhistory. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Brown reminds us, found that humanssurpassed the sustainable use of all earth's ecosystem services in 1980. In 2007 weexceeded those limited resources (water, soils, forests, fisheries and so on) by 25percent.In short, we're cooking the planet, melting the polar ice caps, sucking dry our fresh watersupplies, chopping down our forests, over fishing our seas and polluting every corner of the earth with industrial and human waste. This isn't news to Rachel's readers, but if youhanker for a current global analysis of just how threadbare the earth's life supportsystems have become, Brown provides it. Many of the book's informative tables and the
entire text of the book are available for FREE download
at theEarth Policy Institute website.Brown makes the case that growing food insecurity is tied to peak oil and rising oil prices(the price of oil was less than $50 in 2004, now it's over $100). As oil becomes scarcer,the industrialized nations have started using food crops for fuel (ethanol from corn, forexample) which has caused grain prices to surge. Corn prices more than doubled from2005 to 2007 and world grain stocks have been declining for seven of the last eightyears, reaching a 34-year low in 2007.
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The first years of the new millennium have witnessed the resurgence of world hungerwhich had steadily declined in the latter half of the 20th century. In 2007 the UN WorldFood Programme announced the "18,000 children are now dying each day from hungerand related causes." Many countries are now being destabilized by the combination of rampant poverty, shredded ecosystems, and associated civil unrest. The number of severely failing states-- where governments can no longer provide basic services andsocial chaos reigns -- grew from 7 in 2004 to 12 in 2007.With his always-optimistic demeanor, Brown then sets forth Plan B, not to save theplanet, but to save civilization. We have to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions 80percent by 2020 by investing heavily in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and masstransit. We have to stop deforesting the earth, plant millions of trees, and restore ourailing fisheries and farmland. And we have to greatly improve the lives of poor peoplewith free health care, family planning, school lunch and literacy programs. And we haveto do all this with wartime urgency.The good news is that eradicating poverty and restoring basic ecological health to theplanet (from humanity's perspective) is doable. It won't be easy, it will require massivemobilization at all levels of society and government. As Brown says, "There are manythings we do not know about the future. But one thing we do know is that business asusual will not continue for much longer. Massive change is inevitable. Will the changecome because we move quickly to restructure the economy or because we fail to act andcivilization begins to unravel?"Plan B -- a plan of hopePlan B is a plan for restructuring our global economy and financial priorities to achievefour goals: eradicating poverty, stabilizing population, stabilizing climate, and restoringearth's ecosystems. Addressing any of these problems in isolation is a ticket for failure,says Brown.
Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population
 Like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, Brown believes thateradicating global poverty is relatively affordable and doable (see Rachel's#880). Lifting over a billion people out of povertywill slow population growth and greatly improve economic productivity. Chinareduced the number of people living in poverty from 648 million in 1981 to 218 million in2001, a two-thirds reduction, by rapid economic development and focused socialprograms that target those most in need. The cornerstones of reducing poverty areuniversal primary education, adult literacy programs, health care and family planning.With an emphasis on serving girls and women, the Global South can rapidly stabilizepopulation growth, which is a foundation for economic development. As education rises,birth rates fall. Family planning and better health care fuel this upward spiral creating aneconomic engine to take a country from less developed to developed. Japan, Taiwan, andSouth Korea are examples Brown gives of countries that have successfully applied thisformula.
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Stabilizing Climate -- Restoring the Earth's Systems
 To stop global warming we have to stop dumping heat-trapping gases into theatmosphere and use less energy to do more. We need a carbon- free economy. We mustsimultaneously use less energy, phase out all uses of fossil fuels, and restore naturalcarbon sinks, especially forests. Industrialcarbon capture and storage(carbonsequestration) is not an option, neither is nuclear energy -- Brown rules these out as tooexpensive.Brown shows us that, using today's technology,zero waste manufacturing(cradle tocradle design), and energy efficient buildings and appliances, we can keep our globalenergy demand constant for the next fifteen years, while population and economicgrowth continue.We can replace virtually all fossil fuels -- certainly all coal, and oil -- with wind, solar andgeothermal sources; Plan B allows for some natural gas combustion. Each of thesesources of renewable energy ALONE can power all of civilization. Brown reports thatStanford University scientists concluded that harnessing just one-fifth of the world's windresources would generate seven times our global electricity needs.Taken together a renewable energy grid is totally feasible with today's technology andcan be implemented in less than fifteen years. Yes, we have to convert idled automobileplants to manufacture wind turbines and solar cells en masse; which of course will createmillions of high wage green collar jobs. This isn't rocket science -- it's a no-brainer win-win for people, profits and the planet.Cars running on gasoline and biofuels will be relics of the past in a carbon-neutraleconomy. If we use biofuels at all, it will be by burning them to generate electricity whichis ten times more efficient than converting crops to liquid fuels, according to Brown.When you consider that filling the tank of an SUV just one time with ethanol from cornconsumes enough food to feed a person for an entire year, you know something is wrong.Going carbon-free also means greatly reducing our use of wood for fuel (in thedeveloping world) and paper (in the developed countries). Cutting the remaining borealforests and tropical rain-forests for cooking fuel, Kleenex, junk mail catalogs and copypaper won't do. Recycling just 50% of all paper, as South Korea does, could reduceglobal wood pulp consumption by a third. Wood and other carbon-based cooking fuelscan be replaced by low-cost ($10) solar cookers.In the final chapter Brown explains what all this will cost and how society can pay for it.Here's what thebudgetlooks like:
Plan B BudgetGoal....................................Funding ($ billions)Basic Social Goals..Universal primary education................. 10..Eradication of illiteracy.................... 4
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