by Lester Brown
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Inferno on Earth: Wildfires spreading as temperatures rise 1
Posted 6 days, 8 hours ago Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Even as more people move into fire-prone wildlands around the world, the intense droughts and higher temperatures that come with global warming are likely to make fires more frequent and severe in many areas. Read More -
The Copenhagen Conference on food security 7
Posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry. This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security. Read More -
Three models of social change 6
Posted 3 weeks ago Can we change fast enough? When thinking about the enormous need for social change as we attempt to move the world economy onto a sustainable path, Lester Brown finds it useful to look at various models of change. Read More -
By the numbers—data highlights on poverty and population 1
Posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago In Chapter 7 of the recently released Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown lays out the Plan B goals for eradicating poverty and stabilizing population. Read More -
The rising tide of environmental refugees 2
Posted 1 month ago Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Read More -
U.S. headed for massive decline in carbon emissions 4
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago For years now, many members of Congress have insisted that cutting carbon emissions was difficult, if not impossible. It is not. During the two years since 2007, carbon emissions have dropped 9 percent. While part of this drop is from the recession, part of it is also from efficiency gains and from replacing coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal energy. Read More -
PONZICONOMY
Our global pyramid scheme 3
Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago Today's mismanaged world economy is like a giant global illusion. If we keep overpumping, overgrazing, overplowing, overfishing, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, how long before our pumped up Ponzi-conomy unravels and collapses? Read More -
trash crash
Throwing out the throwaway economy 0
Posted 3 months ago The throwaway economy is on a collision course with the earth's geological limits. Read More -
how to save a life
A civilizational tipping point 5
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago In recent years there has been a growing concern over thresholds, or tipping points, in nature. The social tipping points that lead to decline and collapse when societies are overwhelmed by a single threat or by simultaneous multiple threats are not always easily anticipated. Read More -
Is hindsight 20/20?
Learning from past civilizations 2
Posted 3 months, 4 weeks ago To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. Read More
