[SustainableTompkins] Plan B 3.0 - Mobilizing to Save Civilization

[Tony Del Plato]

 Rachel's Democracy & Health News, March 13, 2008

*PLAN B 3.0 -- MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION*

[Rachel's introduction: We have reached a fork in the road to the future. In
his new book, Lester Brown shows us that major economic change is
inevitable. We can choose to stamp out poverty, prevent run- away global
warming and invest in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and ecological
restoration. Or we can pursue business as usual and watch civilization
unravel.]

by Tim Montague

Have you ever wondered what it would actually take to transform our global
economy into a much cleaner, greener and hopefully sustainable machine?
Well, Lester Brown of the Earth Policy
Institute<http://www.earth-policy.org/>has done the math and his new
book, Plan
B 3.0 -- Mobilizing to Save
Civilization<http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm>is the
result. Whatever your interest -- addressing the needs of low-income
people, improving human health, restoring ecosystems, fighting global
warming, or reducing industrial contamination of our air, land and water --
Plan B 3.0 will be a fountain of ideas and inspiration for your work.

As Brown says, "No one can argue today that we do not have the resources to
eradicate poverty, stabilize population, and protect the earth's natural
resource base. We can get rid of hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty,
and we can restore the earth's soils, forests, and fisheries." Brown shows
us how we can shift resources from wasteful military spending to his Plan B
economy that creates justice and sustainable prosperity for all the earth's
people, a "World that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized."

So what's the plan? The first priority is to realize that we are at a unique
period in history. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Brown reminds us,
found that humans surpassed the sustainable use of all earth's ecosystem
services in 1980. In 2007 we exceeded those limited resources (water, soils,
forests, fisheries and so on) by 25 percent.

In short, we're cooking the planet, melting the polar ice caps, sucking dry
our fresh water supplies, chopping down our forests, over fishing our seas
and polluting every corner of the earth with industrial and human waste.
This isn't news to Rachel's readers, but if you hanker for a current global
analysis of just how threadbare the earth's life support systems have
become, Brown provides it. Many of the book's informative tables and
the *entire
text of the book are available for FREE download* at the Earth Policy
Institute <http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm> website.

Brown makes the case that growing food insecurity is tied to peak oil and
rising oil prices (the price of oil was less than $50 in 2004, now it's over
$100). As oil becomes scarcer, the industrialized nations have started using
food crops for fuel (ethanol from corn, for example) which has caused grain
prices to surge. Corn prices more than doubled from 2005 to 2007 and world
grain stocks have been declining for seven of the last eight years, reaching
a 34-year low in 2007.

The first years of the new millennium have witnessed the resurgence of world
hunger which had steadily declined in the latter half of the 20th century.
In 2007 the UN World Food Programme announced the "18,000 children are now
dying each day from hunger and related causes." Many countries are now being
destabilized by the combination of rampant poverty, shredded ecosystems, and
associated civil unrest. The number of severely failing
states<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3865>--
where governments can no longer provide basic services and social
chaos
reigns -- grew from 7 in 2004 to 12 in 2007.

With his always-optimistic demeanor, Brown then sets forth Plan B, not to
save the planet, but to save civilization. We have to reduce global
greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2020 by investing heavily in energy
efficiency, renewable energy, and mass transit. We have to stop deforesting
the earth, plant millions of trees, and restore our ailing fisheries and
farmland. And we have to greatly improve the lives of poor people with free
health care, family planning, school lunch and literacy programs. And we
have to do all this with wartime urgency.

The good news is that eradicating poverty and restoring basic ecological
health to the planet (from humanity's perspective) is doable. It won't be
easy, it will require massive mobilization at all levels of society and
government. As Brown says, "There are many things we do not know about the
future. But one thing we do know is that business as usual will not continue
for much longer. Massive change is inevitable. Will the change come because
we move quickly to restructure the economy or because we fail to act and
civilization begins to unravel?"

Plan B -- a plan of hope

Plan B is a plan for restructuring our global economy and financial
priorities to achieve four goals: eradicating poverty, stabilizing
population, stabilizing climate, and restoring earth's ecosystems.
Addressing any of these problems in isolation is a ticket for failure, says
Brown.

*Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population*

Like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, Brown believes that eradicating
global poverty<http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/TimeMagazineMar142005-TheEndofPovertysmall1.pdf>is
relatively affordable and doable (see Rachel's
#880 <http://www.precaution.org/lib/06/prn_rachels_view.2.htm>). Lifting
over a billion people out of povertywill slow population growth and greatly
improve economic productivity. China reduced the number of people living in
poverty from 648 million in 1981 to 218 million in 2001, a two-thirds
reduction, by rapid economic development and focused social programs that
target those most in need. The cornerstones of reducing poverty are
universal primary education, adult literacy programs, health care and family
planning.

With an emphasis on serving girls and women, the Global South can rapidly
stabilize population growth, which is a foundation for economic development.
As education rises, birth rates fall. Family planning and better health care
fuel this upward spiral creating an economic engine to take a country from
less developed to developed. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are examples
Brown gives of countries that have successfully applied this formula.

*Stabilizing Climate -- Restoring the Earth's Systems*

To stop global warming we have to stop dumping heat-trapping gases into the
atmosphere and use less energy to do more. We need a carbon- free economy.
We must simultaneously use less energy, phase out all uses of fossil fuels,
and restore natural carbon sinks, especially forests. Industrial carbon
capture and storage<http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/ht071108.htm#Carbon_Sequestration>(carbon
sequestration) is not an option, neither is nuclear energy -- Brown
rules these out as too expensive.

Brown shows us that, using today's technology, zero waste
manufacturing<http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/ht070329.htm#The_Death_of_Recycling>(cradle
to cradle design), and energy efficient buildings and appliances, we
can keep our global energy demand constant for the next fifteen years, while
population and economic growth continue.

We can replace virtually all fossil fuels -- certainly all coal, and oil --
with wind, solar and geothermal sources; Plan B allows for some natural gas
combustion. Each of these sources of renewable energy ALONE can power all of
civilization. Brown reports that Stanford University scientists concluded
that harnessing just one-fifth of the world's wind resources would generate
seven times our global electricity needs.

Taken together a renewable energy grid is totally feasible with today's
technology and can be implemented in less than fifteen years. Yes, we have
to convert idled automobile plants to manufacture wind turbines and solar
cells en masse; which of course will create millions of high wage green
collar jobs. This isn't rocket science -- it's a no-brainer win-win for
people, profits and the planet.

Cars running on gasoline and biofuels will be relics of the past in a
carbon-neutral economy. If we use biofuels at all, it will be by burning
them to generate electricity which is ten times more efficient than
converting crops to liquid fuels, according to Brown. When you consider that
filling the tank of an SUV just one time with ethanol from corn consumes
enough food to feed a person for an entire year, you know something is
wrong.

Going carbon-free also means greatly reducing our use of wood for fuel (in
the developing world) and paper (in the developed countries). Cutting the
remaining boreal forests and tropical rain-forests for cooking fuel,
Kleenex, junk mail catalogs and copy paper won't do. Recycling just 50% of
all paper, as South Korea does, could reduce global wood pulp consumption by
a third. Wood and other carbon-based cooking fuels can be replaced by
low-cost ($10) solar cookers.

In the final chapter Brown explains what all this will cost and how society
can pay for it. Here's what the
budget<http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Plan%20B%203.0%20Data%20-%20Chapter%2013.xls>looks
like:

 Plan B Budget

Goal....................................Funding ($ billions)
Basic Social Goals
..Universal primary education................. 10
..Eradication of illiteracy.................... 4
..School lunch for the poor.................... 6
..Assistance to preschool children............. 4
..Family planning............................. 17
..Universal health care....................... 33
..Closing the condom gap....................... 3
Total......................................... 77

Earth Restoration Goals
..Planting trees to reduce flooding............ 6
..Planting trees to sequester carbon.......... 20
..Protecting topsoil and cropland............. 24
..Restoring rangelands......................... 9
..Restoring fisheries......................... 13
..Protecting biological diversity............. 31
..Stabilizing water tables.................... 10
Total........................................ 113

Grand Total.................................. 190



*Tax and Subsidy Shifting*

Brown says we need to invest 190 billion dollars per year to stabilize the
climate, restore ecosystem services and greatly improve living standards in
the Global South. This is one fifth of the annual global military
budget<http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Plan%20B%203.0%20Data%20-%20Chapter%2013.xls>and
one third of the US military budget.

By systematically shifting taxes onto and subsidies away from coal, oil, and
nuclear, we can fuel the massive positive change we seek. Brown proposes a
worldwide carbon-tax of $240 per ton to be phased-in at the rate of $20 per
year for the next twelve years. If the gas tax in Europe were considered a
carbon-tax, the current average tax of $4.40 per gallon would translate into
a carbon-tax of $1,815 per ton.

Tax shifting is becoming the norm in Europe. Germany successfully applied
tax shifting from labor to energy starting in 1999. By 2003 they reduced
annual C02 emissions by 20 million tons and helped to create 250,000
additional jobs. Similar plans have been applied in France, Italy, Norway,
Spain and the United Kingdom.

And so, "It is decision time. Like earlier civilizations that got into
environmental trouble, we can decide to stay with business as usual and
watch our modern economy decline and eventually collapse, or we can
consciously move onto a new path, one that will sustain economic progress.
In this situation, no action is a de facto decision to stay on the
decline-and-collapse path."


-- 
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap
between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were
instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting
out ink.
  - George Orwell