Monday night saw Rachel and I attending our second World Affairs Council talk this year. After the auspicious beginning with Lord Patten's talk, our hopes were high. We were not disappointed. The speaker was Lester Brown who is most famous for founding the Earth Policy Institute, an organization whose mission is to educate the public on the Earth's global health. For example, here is their chart on global warming.
Lester was there primarily to promote his latest book Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. His speech in classic style had three main parts. First, he shared the analysis of why China was forcing us to understand the impact of our unsustainable fossil fuel, throw away economy much sooner given their rate of growth. For example, within 25 years China will reach the same level of GDP per capita as the US. If they follow the same trend of having 3 cars for every 4 people, then that will equate to 1.1 billion cars. The total number of cars in the world today is 800 million. Second, he talked about some of the rays of hope both in terms of government attitudes and activities within renewable energy. For example, he praised the China government when after a major flood back in 1998 they went and analyzed the value of a tree left standing compared to a tree cut down and concluded that it was worth 3x more left standing than cut down. He also talked about the potential for wind energy and Goldman Sachs investment in Horizon who would shortly be delivering 5000 Megawatts or the equivalent of 17 average coal fired power plants. Finally, he talked about the three elements of his "Earth get well" plan: restructuring the economy so markets tell the ecological truth; reducing poverty and stabilizing populations; and earth restoration. In aggregate this plan would cost some $161 BN annually which is about one third of the US military.
Serious food for thought...
How-do-you-do, just needed you to know I have added your site to my Google bookmarks because of your extraordinary blog layout. But seriously, I think your site has one of the freshest theme I've came across. It really helps make reading your blog a lot easier.
Posted by: oil paintings | September 08, 2010 at 11:07 PM
I have found this article very interesting. It’s a beautifully written article. The write has gathered and arranged information in a brilliant fashion. The beauty of this article is in its language and verbosity. The subject of this article is also very capturing.
Posted by: Catering krakow | July 26, 2011 at 09:51 AM
Thank you for sharing. I completely agree with you. I really like this article. You would probably get more readers if you interviewed controversial people for your blog. I did some research on the subject and have found nearly all people agree with your blog.
Posted by: Oil Paintings | November 10, 2011 at 06:17 PM