Plan B for the Earth - and why it needs to happen now

I have been sloooowly reading Lester R. Brown's Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. I wish it hadn't been such slow going, but lots of technical details (and repetition) have a soporific effect on me. In the end, I was pretty much reading it like an academic text - pulling out information rather than really digesting each sentence. It's the kind of book you want around as a reference, full of facts and figures and lots of suggestions.

Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute, and he is writing to attempt to save the Earth from collapse. Our use of resources is unsustainable, and even so, far too much of the planet's population lives in poverty. So Plan B is two-fold: poverty-alleviation and "earth restoration." The annual price tag for the two: $161 billion. Sounds steep, until you realize that the United States spends more than three times that much on defense each year. And we know that some of that money is being wasted. So the money is there (and in lots of other places too, for those of you Defense Dept. boosters).

While reading, I vacillated between optimism and despair. We are in bad, bad shape. And my mind still boggles: what on earth were we thinking that oil - a fossil fuel that takes eons to form - would just never run out?! Or trees? Or topsoil? But on the other hand, lots of places are doing amazing things. Sweden and Germany have reformulated their tax systems to better reflect the costs of unsustainable activities. Bogota has dramatically dropped crime while making the city more pedestrian-friendly. New technologies have so much potential for sustainable energy, water, and more - and will create new jobs at the same time.

But it's a big, overwhelming task. We need to take it seriously. As Brown puts it, "We have won a lot of local battles, but we are losing the war." It's winnable. And we have to win.