Lester Brown notes that if the environmental trends of recent decades continue, the global economy will soon begin to unravel. The food sector, he believes, is the most vulnerable. Record-high temperatures and falling water tables are already taking the edge off grain harvests in some countries, including China, the world's largest grain producer.

The wake-up call will come, Brown believes, when 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with an $80 billion trade surplus start competing with Americans for U.S. grain, driving up food prices. Rising food prices could create political instability in low-income countries, disrupting global economic progress.

At that point, it will be clear that business as usual—Plan A—is not working. In Plan B, Brown outlines a World War II-type mobilization to stabilize climate by restructuring the global energy economy and to stabilize population by investing heavily in health care, family planning, and the education of girls in developing countries.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 14 reviews)

This is a must read!

This highly valuable but inexpensive book is available on line. Its readable content and organization, attention to detail and conclusions are important to all. In fact, I recommend this up-to-date, well-referenced book to all professionals involved in all fields of natural resources management as well as to all members of the general public interested in the future of civilization. In fact, unless responsible and concerned citizens, professionals, and elected and appointed officials do read this book - and follow through on its suggestions - its worst predictions will come true, and we will be responsible for failure to act. I would add, on the remote chance that Brown and I are both wrong, we would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that we conscientiously tried to avoid the catastrophes he predicts and documents. by Peter E. Black
October 31, 2006

Could there be another explanation, Mr. Brown?

Brown begins this book with the thesis from his previous book, Eco-economy, which posited that the environment is not part of the economy as many believed, but instead the economy is part of the environment, and from this it follows that the economy must be designed to fit the larger ecosystem of which it is a part. This line of thinking sets up a natural hierarchy, one that holds the environment in the highest position as all important and in high esteem, and the economy in a lower (and some would say the lowest) position. Although it sounds reasonable- indeed, it is meant to sound not only reasonable, but also logical and rational, when one considers the support Brown marshals in defense of his thesis, intelligent and thinking individuals have no choice but to conclude that his point of view is not only flawed, but flat-out erroneous.

Brown, a long-time China Watcher, sells this latest installment of ecological peril with a blurb on the back cover that predicts impending doom for the world's most populous nation. He supports this view by citing the ebb and flow of both grain stocks and rivers in China. He also cites rising global temperatures and falling water tables (the latter almost exclusively focused on one area in China) in support of his dubious `China Syndrome'. Brown would like us to believe that grain supplies are fixed because land area for cultivation is fixed and that only two countries produce grain for export- the US and Canada. Furthermore, he would also like us to believe that `valuable farmland' is being lost at an incredible rate to urbanization- namely, that scourge of all modern, industrial civilizations, parking lots for cars. Brown hopes that this last argument will serve as the proverbial (?) nail in the coffin, an airtight defense of his position that economically developing (not simply growing) China is headed for an Environmental Armageddon.

At first glance I look askance at such dire prognostications of Armageddon, given first the difficulty many have had in obtaining reliable statistics on command economies such as China and the USSR in the past, and second the fact that like most countries going through the process of economic development (most notably, China's historical rival, Japan), China will increasingly obtain more of its grain on the world commodity markets. It does not necessarily follow that impending doom will befall the Middle Kingdom, unless of course, you believe that the only place China can get grain is from the US and/or Canada, and that grain harvests can not be increased.

In reality, while total land area for cultivation can be considered fixed (more or less), the proportion of this land given over to cultivation varies over time, and as long as you believe that all the available cultivable land is under the plow all the time, then barring productivity increases, it does certainly seem to follow that the supply of grain is fixed- it can't possibly go up. Furthermore, besides the United States and Canada, several countries around the world export grain (nations like Australia, Brazil and Argentina come readily to mind). Indeed, China will most likely migrate to the world commodity market to buy its grain not because of rising temperatures and falling water tables, but because it would be cheaper to buy it on the world market than to produce it domestically.

As for his position that valuable farmland is being lost at a rapid rate to urbanization, I respond by asking what is meant by valuable farmland and what constitutes a rapid rate. Long experience has shown that farmland `lost' to urbanization typically has gone through a succession of agricultural use rendering it thoroughly unrecoverable as profitable farmland and exists at the rural-urban interface before it is gobbled up for suburban tract home development, malls and parking lots (for proof, just look at what is currently happening in California).

Like his previous book, Eco-economy, this book contains all of Brown's trademark ideas, beliefs and values, but this time around manages to be more hopeful and less polemical. Plan B is also noticeably shorter than his typical rants on the environment, and Brown freely admits to recycling much of the material from his previous book, Eco-economy. In it, the reader will find expositions long on hyperbole (and short on verifiable fact) on a diverse range of topics. I found his treatment of tax-shifting laughable as always, especially when he invokes the rationale of taxing gasoline consumption (while neglecting to tell the reader that every volume of gasoline is already taxed at the pump; indeed, like cigarettes, the majority of the price paid for it is given over to taxes of some form or another). Brown's statement of falling water tables worldwide, based on an illegitimate leap from a few anecdotal stories presented in the text, also gave me a few chuckles. However, I especially enjoyed his erroneous take on China's food future by far, and eagerly await the day he is proven wrong. If I were a betting man, I would lay odds with him, much like Julian Lincoln Simon did most famously with Paul Ehrlich many years ago.

In sum, my single biggest problem with this book and others like it (Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist comes readily to mind) is the tone of absolute certainty the author takes, that his conclusions (generally based on a disparate set of premises, factual or not) are inevitable and inescapable, without allowing any room for alternative explanations. My only consolation is that Brown, who so often in the past has cried wolf, has a long history of being wrong, like many others who have tried their hand at prediction of outcomes dependent on many factors and agents. I believe it was Henry Spencer who once said, "Belief is no substitute for arithmetic," and in the case of this book, blind acceptance of its contents cannot be countenanced without more than a little thought.

May 20, 2006

Tough Problem - Weal Solution

"Plan B' is divided in to two parts - the problem including increasing population, environmental degradation, food shortages, disease migration, and the solution to them. This was a superior analysis of the scope and depth of the problems this world faces. Unfortunatgely I found the "Plan B" solution(s) familiar, ie. hydrogen fuel, population control, etc. I wanted to see some real creative ideas which were just not there. Ideas like redesigning public education, a global task forces on food allocation, or free morning-after pills. The time for being "politically-correct" is running out. Something this author just didn't face.
March 22, 2006

Good top-down overview of world problems and solutions

Plan B is a quick read that brings you up to speed on today's global climate crisis and what can be done about it. Lester Brown does an impeccable job using primary sources to build the Big Picture in a gripping way. Surprises abound. For example, countries with threatened water supplies will import grain. Why? Because it takes 1,000 tons of water to produce a ton of grain (p. 24). Brown also warns of increased storms and climate change due to global warming, remarking that "New Orleans would be under water" (p. 74). If anything, the severity of polar melt and other changes has been worse than Brown predicts, and he was writing in 2003!

Plan B offers a three-fold solution to these problems: (1) tax-shifting, i.e. reducing income taxes while increasing taxes on toxics and carbon emissions. This would mean much higher gas taxes. (2) A re-mobilization of resources modeled after wartime economies that would rapidly build out energy efficiency, hydrogen, wind and solar power infrastructures. (3) A $62 billion / year plan to uproot the social causes of runaway population and environmental stress. This would provide universal basic education and health care, reproductive health and planning (serious business with 29 million HIV cases in Africa --p. 82), school lunch programs (the only reliable meal millions of children may have), etc. Compare this to the U.S.A.'s 2002 budgets of $10 billion in foreign aid and $343 billion for the military (pp. 219, 220).

And here is where the book falls a bit short for me. There's not much mention of what can be done locally, even individually, other than (implicitly) go through top-down political channels that many believe are corrupt. Words such as "organic," "permaculture," "new urbanism," etc. do not appear in the book. It does condemn water-based sewage (in favor of composting toilets - p. 126), but that's as far as it goes for individual choice. With tax-exempt contributions, people can begin their own "tax shifting" and exert political pressure. I'd have liked to see at least a few hints along these lines.

Perhaps Plan B. 2.0, to be published in January 2006, will addres these issues. According to the Earth Policy Institute, the new book will directly address Peak Oil, Urban Farming, and other topics that have come to the fore in the three short years since the first edition. Things are changing fast; I'm betting on Brown to keep us informed.
December 15, 2005

A must read for anyone concerned with the future of the planet.

The author outlines the problems that we face today with water, energy, pollution, aids, global warming, etc. and he proposes solutions.

In other words there is a way out of this mess but it will take a great deal of will and courage by all peoples of the world, particularly governments, to move us to Plan B because Plan A, business as usual, will ultimately lead to catastrophe.

September 15, 2005

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