Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised) by Lester R. Brown Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)
Book Review: His Challenge: Reduce Carbon 80 Percent by 2020
Summary: 5 Stars
Lester Brown and Barak Obama share something in common: they've got HOPE in abundance. And they both have the wisdom to share it with those on the tipping point of dispair.
Lester has been on the road most of his life talking to world leaders in private and to audiences of hundreds and 1,000s in public. As one of the highest paid speakers in the world, when Lester Brown speaks, people listen. And they also buy his books.
Now, he is digging deep into his life-long ideabank to come up with solutions that could turn the world around tomorrow, if ... and only if ... people do more than read and agree with what he says. People will need to take action soon, before the domino effect of economic collapse worldwide creates panic, not strategic planning.
Plan B offers hope, and a real plan. In his book, Lester Brown proposes an all-out effort to cut net carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020. Want to learn how? Buy the book. I did, and highly recommend it! My own book focuses on global warming and human adaptation strategies to accelerate self-evolution. If Lester's plan works, then you won't need mine.
Alexia Parks, author of Rapid Evolution, Seven Words That Will Change Your Life Forever!
Book Review: Should be required reading to live on our planet
Summary: 5 Stars
Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute, has written another splendid summary of the environmental problems we face. Even better, he has formulated a plan we can use to increase our odds of surviving the coming crises. This is the third edition of Plan B and has many updates. Even though I have read the first two editions, I still enjoyed Plan B 3.0 and learned much.
Mr. Brown starts with a review of the problems. Declining reserves of oil, increasing food insecurity, increasing climate change, decreasing supplies of clean water, shrinking forests, collapsing fisheries, and advancing deserts - all these issues are coming together to challenge our generation. Our overpopulation and wanton overuse of resources is catching up with us.
Lester Brown emphasizes that if we continue along the current course (e.i. Plan A ), we are fast heading towards societal collapse and misery. We simply can not continue to use resources at a rate faster than the resources regenerate.
The second part of the book is the the best summary I have read about what we should do. The author reviews various tasks such as stabilizing population, restoring forests, rebuilding soils, raising water productivity, redesigning transportation, raising energy efficiency, and turning to renewable energy. I was much inspired by Mr. Brown's review of specific tools we can use to carry-out these programs. He speaks with great hope of a "Great Mobilization" in which we actually realize the mess we are in and work together to insure a healthy future for generations to come.
In summary, this spectacular book provides a good initial blueprint for action that may indeed preserve civil society.
Book Review: After the usual litany of problems, really exciting ideas for solutions
Summary: 4 Stars
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" --- 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 filters and carry 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.
Book Review: Thorough Coverage of What We May Face
Summary: 5 Stars
For those of us who ruminate on the death knell of the consumerist culture, this book offers some optimism. There are more ideas and possible solutions discussed here than in many of the books of this type. It definitely deserves a place on the bookshelf, after a thorough study!Book Review: An extraordinary plan
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an extraordinary book and the time to implement its suggestions is now. Read it, then write your elected officials and ask them to read it too. As individuals there is much we can do to live more sustainably but to really have an impact on climate change will take coordinated action on a global scale. Brown provides the game plan and sorts out the promising (e.g. wind and solar) from the counter-productive (e.g. nuclear). The breadth of the scope is astonishing.