Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, has come out with a new book PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION. This plan for how we can (and must) cut global emissions by 80% by the year 2020, suggests existing technologies and know-how that will accomplish what political and industrial leaders around the world seem to find so daunting.
In this 4th edition of Plan B, author Lester Brown argues that food may be the issue that convinces the world of the need to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. Every major environmental trend from climate change to deforestation and water scarcity affects food supplies. In this completely revised edition, Brown focuses on details of the plan and how it is already emerging in the energy economy.
On this segment of Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein talks with Lester Brown's colleague at the Earth Policy Institute, Janet Larsen, about how every major environmental trend from climate change to deforestation and water scarcity affects food supplies. We'll discuss the details of Plan B and how it is already emerging in the energy economy.
More on Plan B
Plan B is a worldwide mobilization to stabilize population and stabilize climate. Plan B replaces the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy with a new economic model powered by abundant sources of renewable energy: primarily wind, solar, and geothermal. Its transportation systems are diverse and aim to maximize mobility, widely employing light rail, buses, and bicycles.
A Plan B economy comprehensively reuses and recycles materials. Consumer products from cars to computers are designed to be disassembled into their component parts and completely recycled.
Plan B lays out a budget for eradicating poverty, educating the world’s youth, and delivering better health for all. It also presents ways to restore our natural world by planting trees, conserving topsoil, stabilizing water tables, and protecting biological diversity. With each new wind farm, rooftop solar water heater, paper recycling facility, bicycle path, marine park, rural school, public health facility, and reforestation program, we move closer to a Plan B economy.
Matt Roney is a staff researcher at the Earth Policy Institute, and was closely involved in the research that produced Plan B 4.0.
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