Lester Brown
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Smart planning for the global family
Spreading the message in Malawi.When it comes to population growth, the United Nations has three primary projections. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.5 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility, has population […]
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World on the Edge, a book review
“The world now has the technologies and financial resources to stabilize climate, eradicate poverty, stabilize population, restore the economy’s natural support systems, and, above all, restore hope. The United States, the wealthiest society that has ever existed, has the resources and leadership to lead this effort.” -Lester Brown World on the Edge, a just-released, 200-page […]
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The ‘food bubble’ is bursting, says Lester Brown, and biotech won’t save us
As food prices spike anew, the pioneering environmentalist has a chilling report about the global "food bubble." I asked him whether policymakers and biotech execs are right that genetically modified seeds are the answer to "feeding the world." His answer? No.
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The Emerging Politics of Food Scarcity
A dangerous geopolitics of food scarcity is emerging in which individual countries, acting in their narrowly defined self-interest, reinforce the trends causing global food security to deteriorate. This began in late 2007 when wheat-exporting countries, like Russia and Argentina, attempted to counter domestic food price rises by limiting or banning exports. Viet Nam banned rice […]
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The Return of the Bicycle
The bicycle has many attractions as a form of personal transportation. It alleviates congestion, lowers air pollution, reduces obesity, increases physical fitness, does not emit climate-disrupting carbon dioxide, and is priced within the reach of the billions of people who cannot afford a car. Bicycles increase mobility while reducing congestion and the area of land […]
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The Population-Poverty Connection
The 21st century began on an inspiring note: The United Nations set a goal of reducing the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty by half by 2015. By early 2007, the world looked to be on track to meet this goal, but as the economic crisis unfolds and the outlook darkens, the […]
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Cars and People Compete for Grain
At a time when excessive pressures on the earth’s land and water resources are of growing concern, there is a massive new demand emerging for cropland to produce fuel for cars—one that threatens world food security. Although this situation had been developing for a few decades, it was not until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when […]
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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 […]