Vital Signs 1997 (Vital Signs: The Environmental Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

by Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin, Michael Renner

This annual volume from Brown and the Worldwatch Institute concisely presents the good news, the bad news, and some surprises about the health of our planet and civilization. Worldwatch's award-winning researchers have culled information from around the globe to come up with key indicators that best track change in the environmental, economic, and social health of the world. Graphs & tables.

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Lester Russel Brown is an American environmentalist, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day calls him "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."

In the mid-1970s, Brown helped pioneer the concept of sustainable development, during a career that started with farming. As early as 1978, in his book The Twenty-Ninth Day, he was already warning of "the various dangers arising out of our manhandling of nature...by overfishing the oceans, stripping the forests, turning land into desert." In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources.”

He has been the recipient of many prizes and awards, including, the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his "contributions to solving global environmental problems."

Excerpted from Wikipedia.