Review - World on Edge, by Lester Brown

Lester Brown

When the news hits my television featuring a piece about the environment – a thousand to one odds it’s going to be nothing but doom and gloom. We’ve gotten to that point, when discussing the environment, where we basically have the scientific equivalent of madmen with signs telling us to repent because the end is nigh. Or, at least, that’s how it seems to me. Lester Brown’s World on the Edge is like someone transcribed all those news stories, condensed the information, presented them with heartfelt imminence -- and then provided a lengthy, comprehensive plan. That, and they begin their talk of how to implement the solution with the words, 'well, in an ideal world...'.

Under the surface, that’s a good thing. On the surface itself, it doesn’t really solve the problem. World on the Edge doesn’t offer you a ground-breaking view of a future devoid of today’s problems with real solutions – but it does provide a succinct and up-to-date account of all that’s choking out our environment and threatening civilization as we know it. As well, government initiatives proposed thus far to mitigate impending disaster (also how insufficient they are), and offers a glimmer of hope for a world teetering on the edge.

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Main Thesis / Main Idea:
Plan B: Massive social, political and industrial restructurings are required at war-time speed save the Earth from climate change.

Ideas Addressed:
--How far gone are we?
--What are the ongoing details of environmental destruction around the globe?
--What has been the government response to environmental crises thus far?
--Are different governments responding at different levels? Who’s motivated and who isn’t?
--How can we turn the tide and save our planet?

Full of statistics.
Heartfelt.
Offers several points of hope for those that want to pull through and see our planet thrive in the future.

No sources are available in the book itself…so you’re never sure if any of the statistics are real.
An over-arching plan to solve all crises where the premise, for all intents and purposes, should begin with, “ideally” -- may strike some as unrealistic.

If you’re raising carbon taxes but lowering personal taxes…where’s the incentive to change?
How does eradicating poverty help the planet?

Reading Brown’s take on environmental degradation is like envisioning a society on stilts. When a harsh environment keeps blowing us slightly off-balance, all we'll need is that final catastrophe to act as the the tipping point.

“My sense is that the ‘perfect storm’, or the ‘ultimate recession’ could come at any time. It will likely be triggered by an unprecedented harvest shortfall, one caused by a combination of crop-withering heat waves and emerging water shortages as aquifers are depleted.”

A sudden shortage of resources could trigger massive social unrest.
Source: PeakWater

Knowing this, we could simply choose to ignore the situation and carry on with business as usual, hoping it goes away or gets solved by someone of significance. Brown calls this option – which is, by and large, the one being carried out right now – Plan A. Plan B is Brown’s answer to this stifling inaction. Plan B is a rapid overhaul of our energy industry and a complete restructuring of taxes to allocate ‘security’ expenses within the budget to face our real enemies: dwindling resources and environmental damage.

“There are two policy cornerstones underlying the Plan B transformation. One is to restructure taxes by lowering income taxes and raising the tax on carbon emissions to include the indirect costs of burning fossil fuels, such as climate change and air pollution, in fossil fuel prices.”

It seems like simply subsidizing alternatives to fossil fuel would be the real point, while simultaneously raising taxes on carbon emissions…that way you know that people are spending their new-found dollars on a solution. Right?

Regardless, let’s cut right to the chase. The scope of the problem is such that anyone with fresh ideas has a real shot at saving civilization as we know it. So what is Brown bringing to the table?

First and foremost -- we need to save the planet. Brown suggests cutting emissions by curbing fossil fuel use and switching to alternative, renewable energies. This seems like a given, so you’d expect Brown to expand on these areas and discuss problems in scalability, how to address the problems, how routes of delivery may work, the price differentials for transition, environmental impacts of those new technologies and loss of first-world affluence as a result thereof – but for the most part, he doesn’t.

Truth be told, two of the three sections within World on the Edge provide a lengthy (and quite detailed) list of the ongoing resource depletions ongoing worldwide. You can get many of these statistics elsewhere, such as falling grain yields that are forcing more and more countries to import grain, and water shortages resulting in the same. The real meat and potatoes of World on the Edge is the last third of the book – Plan B.

Though I don’t want to sound too harsh. There is a section directly preceding Plan B in which Brown discusses “failing states”, or those countries which are already succumbing to the pressures caused by environmental stressors. Much of this is fascinating and may be news to those who are unsure of which countries are now considered failed states -- and ergo more susceptible to climate-related pressures and social/political unrest.

“When governments lose their monopoly on power, the rule of law begins to disintegrate. At this point, they often turn to the United Nations for help. In fact, 8 of the top 20 failing countries are being assisted by U.N. peacekeeping forces, including Haiti, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The number of peacekeeping missions doubled between 2002 and 2008."

So what does Plan B propose, then, anyway?

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Genre:

Environmental Issues