Articles by Lester Brown
Lester R. Brown is founder and president of Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Follow EPI: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn
All Articles
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Reduce, Recycle, and Replant – Data Highlights on Restoring the World's Forests
The world’s forests, which cover a third of Earth’s land area, provide us with many essential services. They absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and give us oxygen, limit soil erosion, aid in flood control and aquifer recharge, and host a wealth of biodiversity. But as human populations have grown, so, too, have the demands […]
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Saving Civilization is Not a Spectator Sport
Given the enormous environmental and social challenges faced by our early twenty-first century global civilization, one of the questions I hear most frequently is, What can I do? People often expect me to talk about lifestyle changes, recycling newspapers, or changing light bulbs. These are essential, but they are not nearly enough. We now need […]
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Plan B – A Plan to Save Civilization
There is much that we do not know about the future. But one thing we do know is that business as usual, including our continuing failure to reverse the environmental trends undermining the world food economy, will not last for much longer. Massive change is inevitable. “The death of our civilization is no longer a […]
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Taxpayer dollars subsidizing destruction
One way to correct market failures is tax shifting — raising taxes on activities that harm the environment so that their prices begin to reflect their true cost and offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes. A complementary way to achieve this goal is subsidy shifting. Each year the world’s taxpayers provide at least […]
