Discussion Group Report

"We are harvesting trees faster than they can regenerate, overgrazing rangelands and converting them into deserts, over pumping aquifers, and draining rivers dry. On our cropland, soil erosion exceeds new soil formation, slowly depriving the soil of its inherent fertility. We are taking fish from the ocean faster than they can reproduce.

"We are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, so does the earth's temperature. Habitat destruction and climate change are destroying plant and animal species far faster than new species can evolve, launching the first mass extinction since the one that eradicated the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago.

"Throughout history, humans have lived on the earth's sustainable yield--the interest from its natural endowment. But now we are consuming the endowment itself. In ecology, as in economics, we can consume principal along with interest in the short run but in the long run it leads to bankruptcy."

A study by Mathis Wackernagel and a group of scientists, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, estimated that our demands in 1999 exceeded the Earth's regenerative capacity by 20%. By satisfying our excessive demands by consuming the Earth's natural assets, we are in effect creating a global bubble economy. When the food bubble economy, inflated by the over pumping of aquifers, bursts, it will raise food prices worldwide. The challenge for our generation is to deflate the economic bubble before it bursts.

Since September 11, 2001, political leaders, diplomats, and the media worldwide have been preoccupied with terrorism and the occupation of Iraq. A legitimate concern, terrorism, if it diverts us from the environmental trends that are undermining our future until it is too late to reverse them, Osama bin laden and his followers will have achieved their goal in a way they couldn't have imagined.

In February, 2003, U.N. demographers made an announcement that the world-wide rise in life expectancy has been dramatically reversed by AIDS for a large segment of humanity--the seven hundred million people in sub-Saharan Africa--from 62 to 47 years. Another mega threat, climate change, isn't getting the attention it deserves from most governments, especially that of the U.S., the nation responsible for one-fourth of all carbon emissions. Other neglected mega threats include eroding soils and expanding deserts, which jeopardize the livelihood and food supply of hundreds of millions of the world's people.

Plan A, business as usual, isn't working. Brown recommends a new approach, Plan B, an urgent reordering of priorities and a restructuring of the global economy--to deflate the global economic bubble before it bursts. It involves rapid systemic change, based on market signals that tell the ecological truth.

The tax system would be restructured by lowering income taxes and raising taxes on environmentally destructive activities, such as fossil fuel burning, to incorporate the ecological costs. The economic and social conditions would be changed and the priorities adopted that will lead to population stability. Thirty-six nations, all in Europe except Japan, have already essentially achieved this goal. Crucial to it are extending primary education to all children, providing vaccinations and health care, and offering reproductive health care and family planning services in all nations. There would be a shift from a carbon-based to a hydrogen-based energy economy to stabilize climate. This change is now technologically possible, as shown in advances in wind turbine design, and solar cell manufacturing, the availability of hydrogen generators and the evolution of fuel cells. This transition depends on getting the price right, on incorporating the indirect costs of burning fossil fuels into the market price. Iceland, Germany, Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada have already led out in this endeavor. Israel, with its use of drip irrigation technology, is showing how to deal with the fall of the water table. In stabilizing soils South Korea and the U.S. stand out (the latter by farmers' systematically retiring roughly 10% of their most erodible cropland, planting the bulk of it in grass, and leading the world in adopting minimum-till, no-till and other soil-conserving practices). All the things we need to do to keep the bubble from bursting are now being done in at least a few nations.

Brown presents his plan in his latest book, Plan B. There he estimates the total cost to the world at $62 billion, of which he proposes the U.S. offer one-third, and he feels that, if it did, the rest of the industrial world would be willing to provide the remainder

Adopting Plan B is unlikely unless the U.S. assumes a leadership position, as it did belatedly in World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack. That mobilization of resources within a few months demonstrates that a nation and, indeed, the world, can restructure its economy quickly if it is convinced of the need to do so.

"History judges political leaders," says Brown, "by whether they respond to the great issues of their time. For today's leaders, that issue is how to deflate the world's bubble economy before it bursts. This bubble threatens the future of everyone, rich and poor alike." To paraphrase former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, let no one say it cannot be done. Brown says, "Historians will record the choice--but it is ours to make."