Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

This is one of the most direct and succinct articles on Climate Change anywhere. It is written by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. He has a lot of years looking at these types of issues, and calls them for what they are. If I were to start anywhere, and read a quick synopsis of what is wrong with the world today and what needs to be done, I would start here. – LN.

PRESS RELEASE

“In late summer 2007, reports of ice melting were coming at a frenetic pace. Experts were ‘stunned’ when an area of Arctic sea ice almost twice the size of Britain disappeared in a single week,” writes Lester R. Brown in his new book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company).

“Nearby, the Greenland ice sheet was melting so fast that huge chunks of ice weighing several billion tons were breaking off and sliding into the sea, triggering minor earthquakes,” notes Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.

These recent developments are alarming scientists. If we cannot stop this melting of the Greenland ice sheet, sea level will eventually rise 23 feet, inundating many of the world’s coastal cities and the rice-growing river deltas of Asia. It will force several hundred million people from their homes, generating an unimaginable flood of rising-sea refugees.

 “We need not go beyond ice melting to see that civilization is in trouble. Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. It is time for Plan B,” Brown says in Plan B 3.0, which was produced with major funding from the Farview, Lannan, Summit, and Wallace Genetic foundations, the U.N. Population Fund, Fred and Alice Stanback, and Andrew Stevenson.

“Plan B 3.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are fast undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems,” says Brown. “Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.”   

  

To read the rest of this article, go to:     http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm    

 

       

 

When Is It Real Money???

When Is It Real Money???

   To paraphrase the late Everett Dirkson, “A Billion here, a Billion there and pretty soon it adds up to real money.” So how about $750 Billion? Is that real money? You would think so. After all that is the amount we pay out every year for oil to foreign countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.

   Maybe, because we send it out of the country, we lose track of it – like we never had it to begin with. But just suppose we could keep it here in the USA. What could we do with it in just one year?

     a)    Install 40,000,000 roof top Photovoltaic Collectors at 3KW each. With net metering and proper insulation, each of these homes would be nearly energy independent.

b)    Retrofit 75 million residential homes (avg. cost of $10,000 each) to reduce their energy usage by at least 25%.

c)    Invest in wind farms for electrical energy on the scale of T. Boone Pickens. Using his investment figures as a guide, $750 Billion would:

1)    Install 200,000 Wind Turbines at 1.5 Megawatts each, and built in the USA.

2)    Produce 300,000 Megawatts of electricity

3)    Provide to power 90,000,000 homes

   When seen in this light, it seems like pretty real money producing some real benefits. And none of these suggestions is impossible. The technology is already in place, and it’s not rocket science. Granted, it might take 10 years to implement and we might only be able to devote $375 Billion (half the amount), but think of the benefits:

a)    Each individual component can be put in place quickly.

b)    It is clean, renewable energy, and it continues to “give” year after year

c)    It’s good for our economy, producing millions of good paying jobs that stay here in America

d)    It also benefits the environment by reducing Green House Gas Emissions.

 

   The only thing missing is the political will to move forward. Congress needs prodding, and lots of it. After all, there is real money on the table.