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Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition | 
 enlarge | Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy Used: $9.74
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Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 2676
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0393330877
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.7
EAN: 9780393330878
Publication Date: January 16, 2008
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Product Description
"How to build a more just world and save the planet....We should all heed Brown's advice."—Bill Clinton
In this updated edition of the landmark Plan B, Lester Brown outlines a survival strategy for our early twenty-first-century civilization. The world faces many environmental trends of disruption and decline, including rising temperatures and spreading water shortage. In addition to these looming threats, we face the peaking of oil, annual population growth of 70 million, a widening global economic divide, and a growing list of failing states. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent
With Plan A, business as usual, we have neglected these issues overly long. In Plan B 3.0, Lester R. Brown warns that the only effective response now is a World War II-type mobilization like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 The Best and Most Essential Guide, Not the Whole Picture January 11, 2008
97 out of 103 found this review helpful
I have followed Lester Brown's dedication to evaluating the state of our planet for over a decade, and wrote to the Nobel Committee urging them to recognize him, Herman Daly, and Paul Kawkins and the two Lovins instead of Al Gore. They have all done a great deal more of the heavy lifting.
I decided to purchase this book when Medard Gabel, creator of the analog World Game with Buchminster Fuller, gave me a budget for saving the planet that totals no more than $230 billion a year (at a time when we spend $1.3 trillion waging war).
I've gone through the book and consider it to be a best in class effort, a seminal work no one else on the planet could have produced. In the author's chosen area of focus, there is no other book like this one. However, some other books are easier to read and understand, such as High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, and others do a better job of addressing all ten high-level threats to Humanity and Earth, such as A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.
Here are a few highlights:
+ Book is offered free online (but the hard copy is much better deal, easier to work with, mark up and return to as a reference....use the online version to search for specifics.
+ The Introduction is clear and inspiring. This book is loaded with carefully collected facts ably presented.
+ $12 per gallon of fuel in "true costs" externalized and not billed
+ One 25 gallon ethanol tank takes enough grain to feed a person for a year. This means that those in hunger going to double from 600 million to 1.2 billion, as cars compete for grain (which is nuts).
+ Food-oil axis is developing into a triple crisis: oil, food, water. As 50% live in cities, the fuel intensity of food in the face of Peak Oil is becoming a major issue.
+ Stopping the ethanol program dead in its tracks is the single best thing US Government could do, followed my more wind farms and an end to coal plants.
+ Amazon reaching a tipping point, mega-fires are foreseen (as with New York City if its 1920's water system fails and a firestorm emerges)
+ Western model will not work for China or India (or Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other Wild Cards)
+ Ice cap is melting fast, gfalciers are melting fast and causing small earthquakes.
+ 600 million refugees expected if sea level rises ten meters (33 feet)
+ Mortality has been reduced, but fertility has not, leaving persistent population issues.
+ 15 of 24 primary ecosystems degraded or pushed beyond their limits.
+ Climate has become more destructive, with 55 weather events costing $1.5 billion or more each since the 1980's.
+ Great discussion of the ecology of cities, Bioneers would resonate with all the author recommends.
+ Scarcity crossing national boundaries.
+ Excellent notes, heavy reliance on UN and other primary sources.
+ He proposes a budget of $190 billion a year to achieve our social goals and restore the Earth.
+ The only thing missing from this book are some of the positives, for example bacteria as an energy source, healing bacteria, eletrified water as a cleanser needed no other ingredients, the recovery of the Dead Sea with furrows that retain every drop of water.
I am so surprised to find only one review that I wanted to quickly add my praise for this author, while also pointing out three things that a handful of wealthy philanthropists could do tomorrow to execute this vision.
#1 We should all support the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) as created by the Natural Capital Institute, and encourage colleges and universities around the world to begin loading the "true cost" information for all products and services (e.g. 4000 gallons of water in a designer T-shirt). Delivered to end-users via cell phone query at the point sale, this will dramatically affect markets.
#2 We should ask the 90 major foundations in the USA to host a summit to which all governments, non-governmental organizations, prominent wealthy individuals, and the United Nations are invited. The objective should be to create an online "Range of Gifts" Table that identifies specific contributions that can be made at every cost level, to eradicate the ten high level threats within fifteen years, by harmonizing the twelve policies such that ALL organizations and ALL individuals can opt in on a master budget that is strategically sound, operationally executable, and tactically open to all.
#3 We must absorb the wisdom of C. K. Prahalad, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and others listed below, and recognize that the only enduring sustainable solutioin lies in educating the five billion poor, who do not have the time or the money to sit in a classroom for 18-22 years. We can create today, using Telelanguage.com, an immediate registry of 100 million volunteers with Internet access, speaking 183 languages among them, who can educate the poor--who are not stupid, just illiterate--one cell call at a time.
I believe that Reuniting America, True Majority, and WISER are reaching critical mass. All we lack now is one well endowed champion who sees that it is our collective intelligence that will solve the world's problems, and there is no need to run for President. Here are the handful of books I would recommend to Michael Bloomberg if he were to ask me today how to fulfil his vision of political, educational, and philanthropic reform.
Visit Earth Intelligence Network for free public intelligence on the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers. The weekly report "GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review," will appeal to anyone interested in this book and its topic.
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
The Future of Life
The Best Single Volume on Saving the Earth, Period. January 8, 2008
40 out of 41 found this review helpful
This is the third iteration of the Plan B series. They just keep getting better. This book delivers beautifully in laying out the unprecedented challenges faced by humanity as we move into the 21st century. Plan B thoughtfully examines the critical global issues of our time: fresh water scarcity, soil depletion, deforestation; desertification; fisheries collapse; habitat destruction; species extinction; extreme weather; global warming, energy policy, and human population growth. Though the subject matter is sobering, it is presented in highly engaging and convincing fashion. Lester Brown and his support team show that we humans are our own worst enemy. But the book is hardly all gloom and doom. There is a decidedly wise and positive course offered in these pages. Plan B shows that we are capable of cleaning up the mess we have made of our planet. It includes a clear, reasonable, and immanently doable public policy blueprint that offers hope for an equitable, life affirming, and environmentally sustainable future for all life on Earth. Anyone interested in a single volume that will get them up to speed on the world's most pressing issues should look no farther. Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown is as good as it gets.
The best book in print on creating a viable environmental future for our planet January 18, 2008
26 out of 27 found this review helpful
Lester Brown is the creator of Worldwatch Institute. I have read every one of its State of the World Reports since the first one came out in 1984.
A few years ago he quit Worldwatch and founded a new organization, the Earth Policy Institute.
This book provides answers about what to do. Too many environmentalists seem to concentrate 99% of their efforts on talk of gloom and doom and only 1% of their efforts to realistic, practical ideas about what to do about the very real problems they worry about. By contrast, Brown and his staff at Earth Policy Institute have taken the time to put together a game plan about how to create a genuinely sustainable society. Nobody is going to agree with all their ideas. I'm a bit skeptical about some of the cost estimates. However, at least Brown has cost estimates. Sadly, very few people or organizations have put togther the kind of detailed plan that is presented here. Buy this book. Read it. Think about it. Discuss it. It creates a solid framework for debate about our planet's future. For anybody who is interested I have lists of some other good books and documentary films on similar subjects on my Amazon profile page.
A Book to Share January 23, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Two years ago Lester R. Brown was introduced to me by another who had noticed I had Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth. The recommendation of Brown's book Plan B 2.0 Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble proved true. Brown could have won the Nobel Prize for his book and for his organization the Earth Policy Institute. However, a Nobel Prize to Brown would have passed under the media radar. Gore had reached the top of the best-sellers list. It was the beginning of a big year for Gore. With Gore as a winner, controversy ensued, bringing airplay week after week.
Brown is yet the master. Brown advocates mobilization in his new book, a reflection on the scale of the challenge and the "wartime speed" of the response that is called for.
Beyond mobilization, I find significant Brown's call for the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth. Writes Brown, "How will we respond to our children when they ask, 'How could you do this to us? How could you leave us facing such chaos?' These are questions we need to be thinking about now - because if we fail to act quickly enough, these are precisely the questions we will be asked." Brown goes on to note how the global economic accounting system leaves costs off the books which carries consequences. "If we can get the market to tell the truth, then we can avoid being blindsided by a faulty accounting system that leads to bankruptcy."
Brown's discussion of the increasing number a failing states is also significant. Brown suggests a link between the degree of state failure and the destruction of environmental support systems. Spreading political instability across borders could disrupt global economic progress.
The day calls for addressing the business of a sustainable plan - for mobilization. This is it.
A Must Read for Saving Our World January 27, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Lester Brown has taken on the daunting task of examining in painstaking detail, the scope of the interconnected problems we face on this planet. The cascade of crises between global warming, water shortages, starvation, environmental refugees, species extinction, desertification, and failed states producing terrorism are all leading to catastrophe. Hard to put down, if for no other reason than it makes it impossible to sleep, the first half of the book is truly terrifying.
But Brown takes equal pains to analyze and document the efforts that need to happen to turn this into a web of solutions equal to the task at hand. Some of these efforts are already happening, others are proposed, but all are achievable and for a pricetag that is less than half the U.S. military spending so far in Iraq.
Lester Brown is stunning in his grasp of details, but what he doesn't address is the need for deep underlying change in the cultural values of how we live. His solutions are practical, achievable, and realistic, but not philosophical. They aim to mitigate the crisis and make civilization sustainable, but do not address the underlying break from Nature that has led to our domination and exploitation. But given the scope of Plan B, that would be a different book, and one could say he has accomplished quite enough in this impressive manifesto for our planet. (see Waking the Global Heart: Humanity's Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love
One can see no reason whatsoever not to make Plan B the worldwide plan for the future. Everyone should read this book.
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