Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition | 
| Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 3610
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
ASIN: 0393330877
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 16 more reviews...
Saving Civilization Won't Be This Easy May 5, 2008
Lester Brown gives us a solid plan to save civilization from the ravages of Peak Oil and Global Warming. But at $190 billion a year, it just sounds too easy.
In fact Peak Oil is now becoming Peak Everything (the title of Richard Heinberg's latest book), driving huge price increases in many key commodities. This means that the actual cost is likely to become twice Brown's estimate or more, the longer we delay, the higher the price. To keep costs down will take a global mobilization, with many agreements like the proposed Oil Depletion Protocol (subject of another Heinberg book) and massive rationing or taxation of non-essential consumption.
One way or another global economic decline is in the offing. This is a scary issue, especially for politicians, but it needs to be faced. This is because there is a huge difference in how this decline occurs. Business-as-usual decline (Plan A) will lead to collapse, possibly by mid-century. Decline imposed through mobilization (Plan B) will lead to survival, though with far less of many of today's luxuries.
Here's how decline will hit home, even with mobilization. Brown, along with the Apollo Alliance and many others, are now talking about a new economy of "green collar" jobs, with re-localization of much outsourced productive activity. What they don't tell you is that most of these jobs will pay far less in real purchasing power than most white and blue collar jobs in today's top industries.
But good people will take these Walmart-pay type jobs anyway because of layoffs that will skyrocket in the coming decades. That is, today's wealth is based primarily on cheap energy, so with many more people competing there will a lot less wealth to go around as we head down the Peak. Much of Plan B amounts to learning how to live with less. Many of those who've looked carefully at the numbers don't see the resources to build and maintain the renewable energy we'd need to replace all of today's fossil fuels.
This brings up the population issue. Brown says that we must stabilize at eight billion people. But will we really have the resources for 8 billion people to live sustainably and with at least basic middle class amenities (decent food, clothing, housing, health care, education, transportation, ...)? Some people are now saying that we need to think two billion or less.
Radical population reduction seems impossible without invoking the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But it's actually very simple in concept: Women have only one child, on the average, and that child is born in the woman's mid thirties, again on the average. Mathematically this will reduce the population by a factor of 4 in 80 to 100 years. Sure, this would take a global cultural mobilization, but it is possible. As Brown points out, Iran cut its population growth rate in half in less than a decade, and Thailand did too. Perhaps we need Al Gore to show the world the kind of Apocalypse that happens when an exploding population uses up all its resources.
 exhaustive and detail oriented April 8, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a difficult book to get wrapped around. Which is good news, and then again it is bad news.
The good news is that this is an excellent and wide-sweeping run-up to the current health of our Earth.
Such topics as Our Socially Divided World, Eradicating Poverty, Designing Cities For People, and The Great Mobilization are spread over 287 pages of dense statistics and research, backed up by nearly another 100 pages of footnotes.
The bad news? There is far more content than is of interest to me - the motivated renewable energy reader. Some day I will wade through the less interesting parts, and then leave the remainder as a source reference.
The book cover heralds "REVISED AND EXPANDED". Actually, I would have preferred the less-is-more previous edition.
 a good book April 7, 2008
This book does a good job of suggesting that the United States trims it's military budgets from the largest to a very slim one.
and demonstrates how necessary it is to move away from oil, thru the use of windmills and electric cars.
It does a good job of putting into laymans terms facts which most people do not consider in their daily grind, and how decisions made by super powers when it comes to (over)population levels, econimic models, and the environment must be addressed.
According to the book, every single member of the US Senate was given one copy hopefully they read it so they can grasp the issues discussed.
If you don't believe we are all in for some serious challenges... April 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Then you must read this book. It clearly lays how mankind is on the road to ruin if we don't change our ways and the U.S. is no ways immune. It is hopeful also to read about tangible plans on how we can change our ways and build a world for all of us to thrive in, maybe compramising just a little bit for the better well-being of all of us. The book is extremely well writting and the documentation of sources is impressive. My only complaint is that some of it is unessecarily redundant, but I don't blame the author for trying to hit home key points. Anyone with any concern for the future needs to read this book, and take some action, even if just a little.
Plan B 3.0 March 31, 2008
The numbers don't lie. Lester Brown has presented a very informative synopsis of the most pressing issues facing our planet. The trends are all pointing in the wrong direction as far as the environment. He does offer an extremely innovative solution to get us back on a sustainable path. The scary thing is the narrow window of time in which we have to make some monumental changes in the way that we live. This is especially true for us Americans. We need to realize that there are another 6+billion people on the planet and that we all can not consume and waste as Americans collectively do. Great job Lester. I bought 8 copies of the book, which I never done before in my life to circulate to people to get the word out. Buy this book, you will not regret it.
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