Lester Brown's plan to stop climate change

Pioneering environmentalist Lester Brown has a plan to stop climate change, and save civilization in the process.

Marco Visscher | June/July 2009 issue

Can you give an example?

"Texas, which for the last century has been the leading source of oil in the U.S., is now our leading generator of electricity from wind. What we have in operation, under construction and under development is at least 45,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity. Think 45 coal-fired power plants. I mean, this is huge. We’ve never seen thinking on this scale before in either the fossil fuels or with nuclear power. When these wind farms are finished, they will produce more energy than the 24 million people in Texas can consume. Soon, Texas will be exporting wind-generated electricity. Just years ago, this was unthinkable."

You mean, change is accelerating.

"Yes, and we know so much more. Hardly a month goes by that we don’t discover a new effect of climate change or find evidence that some things we could see only vaguely in the past are becoming much clearer. Take rising sea levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of a couple years ago mentioned that during this century, sea levels would rise by something like a foot and a half. The most recent reports are saying it could be five feet by the end of this century. There’s a big difference in how you think about a problem. With each new report, it seems the problem is more serious and more threatening than we realize. So we need a continual updating of how serious the problems are, and of how we are addressing them. Ultimately, we need to be focusing on solutions so we can provide people with a sense of what can be done."

If you could introduce one piece of worldwide legislation, what would it be?

"It would be a restructuring of tax systems—not a change in the amount of tax, but a reduction of income taxes combined with a rise in the carbon tax. By doing that, we would tell the market the environmental truth. After all, the costs of climate change, of burning fossil fuels, of damage from acid rain, of breathing polluted air on health care and so forth would be reflected in the increase in the carbon tax. That’s crucial. I think it was Oystein Dahle, a former vice-president of Exxon in Norway, who once said that socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth and that capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth. In that pithy statement, he summed up a key issue we’re facing in the world today."

State of the World Forum

Lester Brown, together with other leading thinkers and innovators, will speak at the State of the World Forum, a three-day conference taking place from November 12th to 14th in Washington, D.C. The State of the World Forum was established in 1995 to create a global leadership network committed to discerning and implementing those principles, values and actions necessary to guide humanity wisely as it gives shape to an increasingly global and interdependent world. In Washington, the Forum will launch a 10-year Global Transition Initiative to green the global economy. Over the next few months, Ode will profile some of the 2009 Forum participants. For our profile of Ken Wilber, another Forum speaker, go to odemagazine.com/wilber. To find out more about the State of the World Forum, go to worldforum.org.

Interview by Marco Visscher, Ode’s managing editor.

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Comments (1)

I hate to sound sour. I respect what Mr. Brown has done and written. I can say the same for Ken Wilbur. What is sour? I do not see significant enough change to alter the future. I see people going to conferences, writing, speaking but not enough talking with family and neighbors and deciding to change behaviors.

Most of the people who go the the conference in Washington, DC from the surrounding area will be driving to the conference, some from their homes that are more than 50 miles from DC and their daily commute. They all mean well but if they can't even change their own behavior; how do they expect others to follow their advice?

One need only look at the globalization of the poultry trade in the last ten years to see the "handwriting on the wall." Farmers, nations, companies all jumped on the poultry market as a way to earn US Dollars and Euros. The result is massive expansion of avian-related influenza types and the probable pandemic that will kill millions of people.

More than a billion people want to have an automobile as a symbol of escape from generations of being "under-developed" and the number one sign that "I have arrived!" What will that do to the environment in the next five years?

Real change takes place person by person, block by block, with lots of people leading by example and not more books, movies, articles and speeches.

So... How will the publishers of ODE change to help real change begin? Grin.

posted by nedhamson on 6/26/2009 2:36 pm