Plan B 4.0: Chapter 2

Population Pressure: Land and Water

"The French use a ride eel to teach schoolchildren the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond, so the riddle goes, contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles - two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the fourth, and so on. 'If the pond is full on the thirteenth day, at what point is it half full?' Answer: 'On the twenty-ninth day.'" (Brown, page 31)

Civilization's Foundation Eroding

"The thin layer of topsoil that covers the planet's land surface is the foundation of civilization. This soil, typically 6 inches or so deep, was formed over long stretches of geological time as new soil formation exceeded the natural rate of erosion. But sometime within the last century, as human and livestock populations expanded, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation over large areas." (Brown, page 32) 

Water Table Falling

"Since the over pumping of aquifers is occurring in many countries more or less simultaneously, the depletion of aquifers and the resulting harvest cutbacks could come at roughly the same time. And the accelerating depletion of aquifers means this day may come soon, creating potentially unmanageable food scarcity." (Brown, page 41) 

Farmers Losing Water to Cities

"The world's freshwater supplies are shrinking, and the world's farmers are getting a shrinking share of this shrinking supply. While water tensions among countries are more likely to make news headlines, it is the jousting for water between cities and farms within countries that preoccupies local political leaders. The economics of water use do not favor farmers in this competition, simply because it takes so much water to produce food." (Brown, page 42) 

Land and Water Conflicts

"As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinking age of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social tensions." (Brown, page 44) 

Cars and People Compete for Grain

"The price of grain is now tied to the price of oil. Historically the food and energy economics were separate, but now with the massive U.S. capacity to convert grain into ethanol, that is changing." (Brown, page 49)

The Rising Tide of Environmental Refugees

"Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measurable by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking." (Brown, page 51)

Preface

"We are entering a new food era, one marked by higher food prices, rapidly growing numbers of hungry people, and an intensifying competition for land and water resources..." (Brown, xi)

Internationally negotiated climate agreements are becoming obsolete:

1. No government wants to concede too much compared with other governments.
2. It takes years to negotiate and ratify these agreements; we may simply run out of time.

"The question we face is not what we need to do, because that seems rather clear to those who are analyzing the global situation. The challenge is how to do it in the time available. Unfortunately we don't know how much time remains. Nature is the timekeeper but we cannot see the clock." (Brown, xiv)

Selling Our Future

Lester Brown explains that as a result of persistently high food prices, hunger is spreading on page 4 of Plan B 4.0

One of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to reduce hunger and malnutrition

• In the mid-1990s, the number of people in this category had fallen to 825 million.
• Reaching upward to 915 million at the end of 2008.
• Jumped to over 1 billion in 2009.

Brown projects that by 2015, the number of hungry people will be at 1.2 billion or more due to the diversion of grain to produce fuel for cars, spreading shortages of irrigation water, and other trends.

Food: The Weak Link

Farmers are facing many trying trends in the struggle to feel all of the worlds people.

Demand side:

1. Population growth
2. Growing consumption of grain-based animal protein
3. Massive use of grain to fuel cars

Supply side:

Environmental and Resource trends:

1. Soil erosion
2. Aquifer depletion
3. Crop-shrinking heat waves
4. Melting ice sheets and rising sea level
5. Melting of the mountain glaciers that feed major rivers and irrigation systems

Resource trends:

1. Loss of cropland to non-farm uses
2. Diversion of irrigation water to cities
3. Coming reduction in oil supplies

The Emerging Politics of Food Scarcity

"The inability to negotiate long-term trade agreements was accompanied by an entirely new genre of responses among the more affluent food-importing counties..." (Brown, page 10)

Our Global Ponzi Economy

"A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earning are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself." (Brown, page 14)

Mounting Stresses, Failing States

"As a number of failing states grows, dealing with various international crises becomes more difficult. Actions that may be relatively simple in a healthy world order, such as maintaining monetary stability or controlling an infectious disease outbreak, could become difficult or impossible in a world with numbers disintegrating states." (Brown, page 23)

Plan B - A Plan to Save Civilization

The goal of Plan B is to move the world from the current decline and collapse path onto a new path where food security can be restored and civilization can be sustained.

Reasons Plan B is far more ambitious than anything the world has ever undertaken:

1. Cutting net carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2020
2. Stabilizing population at 8 billion or lower
3. Eradicating poverty
4. Restoring the earth's natural systems, including its soils, aquifers, forests, grasslands, and fisheries

"The challenge is not only to build a new economy but to do it at wartime speed before we miss so many of nature's deadlines that the economic system begins to unravel." (Brown, page 27)