Review and Impact of Lester Brown's work

Eco-Economy: Building An Economy For the Earth, New York, W. W. Norton, 2001 and Plan B:Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, New York, W. W. Norton, 2003.

Our world view is changing, thanks in large part to these books. Everyday I encounter new voices in the social media that understand Lester Brown and the solutions presented by him and the several other authors, each with his own slant on the same problem.

We are capable of pulling back. We are not lemmings, each one of millions running desperately into the sea to relieve the stress of overcrowding or desperate to find relief from thirst. Not yet. At least not all of us.

Still, many of us are hungry or desperate, and some of us need to get busy using less, being more efficient and awakening to the crisis already affecting too many humans and too much life on this beautiful Eden, Earth.

Lester Brown’s Worldwatch Institute gave us the first warnings year after year with real data. And the 2001 book Eco-Economy gave us a reliable guide to the policies needed to secure the future.

Recent books echo Brown’s 2003 Plan B. Some refine the detailed options, but all agree on the ever more desperate need for the world view that requires an ecologically honest cost/benefit analysis. We still tout economic growth as a panacea for all our economic ills when in fact it is costing us and the Earth far more than it is worth.

The solutions outlined by Brown should be blatantly obvious: Our resource base must be analyzed in relationship to projected population growth. Our barriers to family planning need to be removed. Ecology and efficiency must trump short-term economic gain. Protecting our remaining world resources like water and forests is now urgent, as is the upgrading of our cities.

We can do this, as Plan B and Eco-Economy and other recent books make crystal clear. The solutions have been studied and refined since the 1970’s. It’s not magic, just political will and corporate greed that stand in our way. People in developed countries need to use less. We need to shift the tax and subsidy codes; get off fossil fuels, coal and plastic; increase efficiency in electrical grids and automobiles; and redo urban transport. (I have a vivid childhood memory of the rails being torn up in Oakland, California.)

The media can help, as can the wealthy and writers of fiction. Brown tells the tale of soap operas successfully illustrating how individuals can make a huge difference. Fiction can be a powerful paradigm changer.

We cannot buy our way out of overusing the planet, nor the lemming-like desperation of overcrowding that threatens human populations throughout the world. We’re all in this together.