The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Earth Policy News - Preview

Dear Friends,

We haven’t forgotten you!

We know it’s been a while since we sent out an Eco-Economy Update. Our
apologies. Throughout the summer, we have been working nonstop on a new
book—Plan B 2.0, a major expansion and update of Plan B: Rescuing a Planet
Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

The book has just gone to our publishers and will be released the first
week of January 2006. We are excited about the new information and
analysis it contains and we think you will be, too. With the issues of
rising oil prices and climate change getting ever more attention, we
believe this book meets a key need—a plan to move us quickly onto a
sustainable economic path.

We thought you might like to preview the new book, so we have posted on
our website Chapter 1 “Entering a New World” (in pdf)
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/pb2ch1.pdf
and the Table of Contents for Plan B 2.0
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/Contents.htm.

Feel free to download it or email it to friends and colleagues. And let us
know if you think we’re on the right track.

Below is the introduction to Chapter 1.

Again, thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,


Les Brown and the Earth Policy Institute staff
www.earthpolicy.org



Chapter 1. Entering a New World

Our global economy is outgrowing the capacity of the earth to support it,
moving our early twenty-first century civilization ever closer to decline
and possible collapse. In our preoccupation with quarterly earnings
reports and year-to-year economic growth, we have lost sight of how large
the human enterprise has become relative to the earth’s resources. A
century ago, annual growth in the world economy was measured in billions
of dollars. Today it is measured in trillions.

As a result, we are consuming renewable resources faster than they can
regenerate. Forests are shrinking, grasslands are deteriorating, water
tables are falling, fisheries are collapsing, and soils are eroding. We
are using up oil at a pace that leaves little time to plan beyond peak
oil. And we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster
than nature can absorb them, setting the stage for a rise in the earth's
temperature well above any since agriculture began.

Our twenty-first century civilization is not the first to move onto an
economic path that was environmentally unsustainable. Many earlier
civilizations also found themselves in environmental trouble. As Jared
Diamond notes in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, some
were able to change course and avoid economic decline. Others were not. We
study the archeological sites of Sumerians, the Mayans, Easter Islanders,
and other early civilizations that were not able to make the needed
adjustments in time.

Fortunately, there is a consensus emerging among scientists on the broad
outlines of the changes needed. If economic progress is to be sustained,
we need to replace the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway
economy with a new economic model. Instead of being based on fossil fuels,
the new economy will be powered by abundant sources of renewable energy:
wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, and biofuels.

Instead of being centered around automobiles, future transportation
systems will be far more diverse, widely employing light rail, buses, and
bicycles as well as cars. The goal will be to maximize mobility, not
automobile ownership.

The throwaway economy will be replaced by a comprehensive reuse/recycle
economy.  Consumer products from cars to computers will be designed so
that they can be disassembled into their component parts and completely
recycled.  Throwaway products such as single-use beverage containers will
be phased out.

The good news is that we can already see glimpses here and there of what
this new economy looks like.  We have the technologies to build
it—including, for example, gas-electric hybrid cars, advanced-design wind
turbines, highly efficient refrigerators, and water-efficient irrigation
systems.

We can see how to build the new economy brick by brick.  With each wind
farm, rooftop solar panel, paper recycling facility, bicycle path, and
reforestation program, we move closer to an economy that can sustain
economic progress.

If, instead, we continue on the current economic path, the question is not
whether environmental deterioration will lead to economic decline, but
when. No economy, however technologically advanced, can survive the
collapse of its environmental support systems.

To read the full chapter in pdf
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/pb2ch1.pdf