What Is Plan B?

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted February 2, 2006.

Of all the resources needed to build an economy that will sustain economic progress, none is more scarce than time. That is one of the key messages of Lester Brown's new book, "Plan B. 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble." The world may finally be listening.

China now consumes more grain, meat, coal and steel than the United States. If China's income grows as projected, in 2031 its income per person will match incomes in the United States today. At that point, it will be consuming the equivalent of two-thirds of the current world grain harvest, driving 1.1 billion cars (versus 800 million in the world today) and using 99 million barrels of oil per day, well above current world production of 84 million barrels. That's Plan A.

New threats -- climate change, environmental degradation, the persistence of poverty and the loss of hope -- call for new strategies. Brown -- who left World Watch in 2001 to found Earth Policy Institute -- says it's time for Plan B -- a renewable-energy-based, reuse-recycle economy with a diversified transport system: time to build a new economy and a new world. The world is now spending $975 billion annually for military purposes. Plan B -- social goals and earth restoration -- requires an additional annual expenditure of $161 billion.

Brown, founder of the World Watch Institute, was in Europe recently to address the Royal Geographic Society in London, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the OECD in Paris. He will speak to the World Affairs Councils of San Francisco and Los Angeles the first week of February.

TERRENCE MCNALLY: For many, environmental issues are local -- the beach, the nearby polluting factory, the smog. Yet you focused on the global environment at a time when few were. Where did that come from?

LESTER BROWN: Well I suppose there were a number of things that contributed to it. One was, when I was farming I was very much aware of the environmental issues that one has to deal with, whether it's water resources or weather or soils or crop diseases or what have you.

Beyond that, after I graduated from Rutgers in 1955 with a degree in agricultural science, I had the chance to spend half of 1956 living in villages in India, and there I was exposed very directly to the food population issue, though India at that time had only 430 million people or so compared with over a billion today.

Then I became a foreign policy adviser to Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman during the Kennedy-Johnson administration. The population pressures on resources and the problems associated with that, whether it's deforestation or overgrazing or soil erosion, aquifer depletion, those problems were becoming evident way back then. By 1974 I was convinced not only that these were going to be major issues, but also that we needed a research institute to focus on environmental issues at the global level.

TM: Yet you also make clear that we need a vision of the future, not just the bad news.

LB: No question. If we don't have a sense of where we want to go, we're probably not going to get there. I think one of the things that's lacking in the global environmental movement is a vision. We spend so much time being against things, it's not always clear what we're for.

TM: In the first paragraph of the Preface to "Plan B: 2.0," you write: "If our goal is to sustain economic progress, we have no choice other than to move onto a new path." Two things -- first, you don't mention the word "environment" in that sentence, you're talking about economic progress. Second, why isn't that reality being recognized and acted on?

LB: Two things are driving the recognition of the need for a restructuring of the global economy. One is the knowledge of what's happening to the economy's environmental support systems, whether it's forests or fisheries or rangelands or soils or aquifers or the climate system. Many environmentalists have been clear for some time that we have to restructure the economy if we want progress to continue. If we don't, we're going to be in serious trouble.

In Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse," he looked at earlier civilizations, many of which also got on to an economic path that was environmentally unsustainable. He pointed out was that some of those early civilizations realized they were in trouble and made the needed course corrections to survive. Others either did not understand they were in environmental trouble, or understood it but politically they could not mobilize an effective response.

TM: "Plan B" came out two years ago. Why did you feel the need to deliver "Plan B: 2.0"?

LB: Enough things have changed over the past two years, both in terms of what we can do and the potential of new technologies like gas-electric hybrid cars and advances in wind turbine design, and so forth. But more importantly, the evidence first of all, that China has already overtaken the United States in the consumption of most basic resources.

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org).

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »