[Vision2020] Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

[Ted Moffett]

All-

Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute, was interviewed last week
on NPR radio.  This discussion centered around the release of his new
book, "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization
in Trouble," that he claimed on NPR would be soon available in its
entirely for free download from the Earth Policy Institute web site:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm

His discussion of the environmental and related energy and resource
crises was sobering, yet workable solutions were offered.  He
downplayed the potential for environmentally sane coal power using CO2
sequestration, pointing out the costs and limited investment aimed at
this technology.  He emphasized wind electric power as a major
solution to the climate change/oil depletion crisis, arguing that a
massive wind turbine production effort immediately be implemented,
along the lines of the industrial production goals that the US
government proposed when tooling up for World War II, even giving the
astonishing figures for how many tanks, ships and other armaments US
industry was aiming to produce at that time.  He answered the
objections to wind power focusing on the lack of wind or steady wind
in some areas, insisting that new and better integrated transmission
line systems could allow electric power to be distributed where it is
needed in areas with no or limited wind.  Massive roll out of wind
power could be used to power gas or diesel electric plug in hybrids
vehicles.  He portrayed the objections of some to the appearance of
massive wind turbines, ruining the view of the ocean, for example,
with off shore wind power, as ridiculous, given the critical need for
alternative power wind can provide.

He emphasized that there is immediate action needed to reduce CO2
emissions, rather than waiting for the new post-Kyoto international
accords to be implemented to ward off catastrophic climate change.
The independent efforts to address CO2 emissions in California were
mentioned as a quicker way to effect change, with other states and
regions in the US acting on CO2 emissions reductions, rather than
waiting for the federal government to aggressively address the issue.

Along the lines of this more local approach to solve the climate
change/oil and resource depletion crisis, there is much that can be
done on the Palouse to reduce our CO2 emissions and support
alternative energy, with local implementation of wind and solar
energy, for example, that requires initial investments that can pay
for themselves in the long run.  Easier said than done, given the lack
of interest, even among those of substantial personal financial means,
or through local government funding, of making these investments, that
will require an upfront economic sacrifice for a long term good.  I
asked Moscow Mayor Nancy Cheney recently if one city building in
Moscow had a single solar panel in use.  She replied not that she
knew, the reason being a lack of funding.  Indeed, that's my "excuse"
for not having at least one solar panel or wind generator to
supplement personal electric power consumption.  If your not part of
the solution, your part of the problem, and that means me!

I could attempt to objectively factually describe the gravity of the
environmental and energy crises our civilization, indeed the whole
planet, is facing, but Lester Brown can speak more authoritatively
than I.  The facts offered on the costs of powering electric vehicles
compared with gasoline engines (50 cents of electricity equivalent to
a gallon of gas!) are encouraging, as gas prices are primed to hit 4
dollars a gallon in the USA this year:

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm

"Our global civilization today is on an economic path that is
environmentally unsustainable, a path that is leading us toward
economic decline and eventual collapse," says Lester Brown in Plan B
2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

"Environmental scientists have been saying for some time that the
global economy is being slowly undermined by environmental trends of
human origin, including shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling
water tables, eroding soils, collapsing fisheries, rising
temperatures, melting ice, rising seas, and increasingly destructive
storms," says Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy
Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research
organization.

Although it is obvious that no society can survive the decline of its
environmental support systems, many people are not yet convinced of
the need for economic restructuring. But this is changing now that
China has eclipsed the United States in the consumption of most basic
resources, Brown notes in Plan B 2.0, which was produced with major
funding from the Lannan Foundation and the U.N. Population Fund.

Among the basic commodities—grain and meat in the food sector, oil and
coal in the energy sector, and steel in the industrial sector—China
now consumes more than the United States of each of these except for
oil. It consumes nearly twice as much meat (67 million tons compared
with 39 million tons) and more than twice as much steel (258 million
to 104 million tons).

These numbers are about total consumption. "But what if China reaches
the U.S. consumption level per person?" asks Brown. "If China's
economy continues to expand at 8 percent a year, its income per person
will reach the current U.S. level in 2031.

"If at that point China's per capita resource consumption were the
same as in the United States today, then its projected 1.45 billion
people would consume the equivalent of two thirds of the current world
grain harvest. China's paper consumption would be double the world's
current production. There go the world's forests."

If China one day has three cars for every four people, U.S. style, it
will have 1.1 billion cars. The whole world today has 800 million
cars. To provide the roads, highways, and parking lots to accommodate
such a vast fleet, China would have to pave an area equal to the land
it now plants in rice. It would need 99 million barrels of oil a day.
Yet the world currently produces 84 million barrels per day and may
never produce much more.

The western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered,
throwaway economy—is not going to work for China. If it does not work
for China, it will not work for India, which by 2031 is projected to
have a population even larger than China's. Nor will it work for the 3
billion other people in developing countries who are also dreaming the
"American dream."

And, Brown notes, in an increasingly integrated world economy, where
all countries are competing for the same oil, grain, and steel, the
existing economic model will not work for industrial countries either.
China is helping us see that the days of the old economy are numbered.

Sustaining our early twenty-first century global civilization now
depends on shifting to a renewable energy-based, reuse/recycle economy
with a diversified transport system. Business as usual—Plan A—cannot
take us where we want to go. It is time for Plan B, time to build a
new economy and a new world.

Plan B has three components—(1) a restructuring of the global economy
so that it can sustain civilization; (2) an all-out effort to
eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and restore hope in order to
elicit participation of the developing countries; and (3) a systematic
effort to restore natural systems.

Glimpses of the new economy can be seen in the wind farms of Western
Europe, the solar rooftops of Japan, the fast-growing hybrid car fleet
of the United States, the reforested mountains of South Korea, and the
bicycle-friendly streets of Amsterdam. "Virtually everything we need
to do to build an economy that will sustain economic progress is
already being done in one or more countries," says Brown.

"Among the new sources of energy—wind, solar cells, solar thermal,
geothermal, small-scale hydro, biomass—wind is emerging as a major
energy source. In Europe, which is leading the world into the wind
era, some 40 million people now get their residential electricity from
wind farms. The European Wind Energy Association projects that by
2020, half of the region's population—195 million Europeans—will be
getting their residential electricity from wind.

"Wind energy is growing fast for six reasons: It is abundant, cheap,
inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign. No other
energy source has this combination of attributes."

For the U.S. automotive fuel economy, the key to greatly reducing oil
use and carbon emissions is gas-electric hybrid cars. The average new
car sold in the United States last year got 22 miles to the gallon,
compared with 55 miles per gallon for the Toyota Prius. If the United
States decided for oil security and climate stabilization reasons to
replace its entire fleet of passenger vehicles with super-efficient
gas-electric hybrids over the next 10 years, gasoline use could easily
be cut in half. This would involve no change in the number of cars or
miles driven, only a shift to the most efficient automotive propulsion
technology now available.

Beyond this, a gas-electric hybrid with an additional storage battery
and a plug-in capacity would allow us to use electricity for short
distance driving, such as the daily commute or grocery shopping. This
could cut U.S. gasoline use by an additional 20 percent, for a total
reduction of 70 percent. Then if we invest in thousands of wind farms
across the country to feed cheap electricity into the grid, we could
do most short-distance driving with wind energy, dramatically reducing
both carbon emissions and the pressure on world oil supplies.

Using timers to recharge batteries with electricity coming from wind
farms during the low demand hours between 1 and 6 a.m. costs the
equivalent of 50¢-a-gallon gasoline. We have not only an inexhaustible
alternative to dwindling reserves of oil, but an incredibly cheap one.

"Building an economy that will sustain economic progress requires a
cooperative worldwide effort," notes Brown. "This means eradicating
poverty and stabilizing population—in effect, restoring hope among the
world's poor. Eradicating poverty accelerates the shift to smaller
families. Smaller families in turn help to eradicate poverty."

The principal line items in the budget to eradicate poverty are
investments in universal primary school education; school lunch
programs for the poorest of the poor; basic village-level health care,
including vaccinations for childhood diseases; and reproductive health
and family planning services for all the world's women. In total,
reaching these goals will take $68 billion of additional expenditures
each year.

A strategy for eradicating poverty will not succeed if an economy's
environmental support systems are collapsing. Brown says, "This means
putting together an earth restoration budget—one to reforest the
earth, restore fisheries, eliminate overgrazing, protect biological
diversity, and raise water productivity to the point where we can
stabilize water tables and restore the flow of rivers. Adopted
worldwide, these measures require additional expenditures of $93
billion per year."

Combining social goals and earth restoration components into a Plan B
budget means an additional annual expenditure of $161 billion. Such an
investment is huge, but it is not a charitable act. It is an
investment in the world in which our children will live.

"If we fail to build a new economy before decline sets in, it will not
be because of a lack of fiscal resources, but rather because of
obsolete priorities," adds Brown. "The world is now spending $975
billion annually for military purposes. A large segment of the U.S.
2006 military budget of $492 billion, accounting for half of the world
total, goes to the development and production of new weapon systems.
Unfortunately, these weapons are of little help in curbing terrorism,
nor can they reverse the deforestation of the earth or stabilize
climate.

"The military threats to national security today pale beside the
trends of environmental destruction and disruption that threaten the
economy and thus our early twenty-first century civilization itself.
New threats call for new strategies. These threats are environmental
degradation, climate change, the persistence of poverty, and the loss
of hope."

The U.S. military budget is totally out of sync with these new
threats. If the United States were to underwrite the entire $161
billion Plan B budget by shifting resources from the $492 billion
spent on the military, it still would be spending more for military
purposes than all other NATO members plus Russia and China combined.

Of all the resources needed to build an economy that will sustain
economic progress, none is more scarce than time. With climate change
we may be approaching the point of no return. The temptation is to
reset the clock. But we cannot. Nature is the timekeeper.

It is decision time. Like earlier civilizations that got into
environmental trouble, we can decide to stay with business as usual
and watch our global economy decline and eventually collapse. Or we
can shift to Plan B, building an economy that will sustain economic
progress.

"It is hard to find the words to express the gravity of our situation
and the momentous nature of the decision we are about to make," says
Brown. "How can we convey the urgency of moving quickly? Will tomorrow
be too late?

"One way or another, the decision will be made by our generation. Of
that there is little doubt. But it will affect life on earth for all
generations to come."



"Lester Brown tells us how to build a more just world and save the
planet from climate change in a practical, straightforward way. We
should all heed his advice." –President Bill Clinton

"A great book which should wake up humankind!" –Klaus Schwab, World
Economic Forum

"An enormous achievement—a comprehensive guide to what's going wrong
with earth's life support system and how to fix it." –Grinning Planet

"Lester Brown should receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his new book."
–Talli Nauman, The Herald Mexico

"...exactly what we need to do to get sustainability moving. And it's
a very vital approach to it." –Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut

"... the most compelling blueprint I have seen yet for restoring the
planet."  –Tom Weiss, enXco, Inc.

Lester R. Brown is Founder and President of Earth Policy Institute.
The Washington Post has called him "one of the world's most
influential thinkers."
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett