Lester Brown, Guest Writer
Lester R. Brown is president of Earth Policy Institute, an organization dedicated to building a sustainable future. Described by the Washington Post as "one of the world's most influential thinkers," Brown started his career as a tomato farmer. Shortly after earning a degree in agricultural science, he spent six months living in rural India, where he became intimately familiar with the food/population issue. Brown later became head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's International Agricultural Development Service. In 1974 he founded the Worldwatch Institute, leaving in 2001 to found the Earth Policy Institute. He has authored or co-authored over 50 books, the most recent of which is World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, and has received 24 honorary degrees and numerous awards, including the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, a MacArthur Foundation "genius award," and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Latest Stories from Lester Brown, Guest Writer - Page 6
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Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fell in 2009, But Swift Action Is Still Necessary
China's and India's carbon dioxide emissions have grown, while others nations' have dropped In 2009, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China--the world's leading emitter--grew by nearly 9 percent. At the same time, emissions in most industrial countries
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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
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The Welcome 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
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Balancing the Weights of Poverty and Population
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
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Raising Water Productivity to Increase Food Security
With water shortages constraining food production growth, the world needs an effort to raise water productivity similar to the one that nearly tripled land productivity over the last half-century. Since it takes 1,000
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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
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Parking Lots to Parks: Designing Livable Cities
As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center in 1998, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. It was obvious that Tel Aviv, expanding from a small
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Reclaim the Streets, Put the Brakes on Car Traffic
Cars promise mobility, and in a largely rural setting they provide it. But in an urbanizing world, where more than half of us live in cities, there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city.
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Offshore Wind, Not Offshore Oil
The enormously devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is just one reminder that stretching out an addiction to a polluting and planet-warming fossil fuel poses risks to our health, our environment, and our
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Reduce, Replant, and Recycle - 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
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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
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Lowering Income Taxes While Raising Pollution Taxes Reaps Great Returns
As economic decision-makers--whether consumers, corporate planners, government policymakers, or investment bankers--we all
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Wind Power Soared Past 150,000 Megawatts in 2009
Even in the face of a worldwide economic downturn, the global wind industry posted another record year in 2009 as cumulative
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China's Changing Economy
In Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, I have presented a plan to dramatically reduce carbon emissions by increasing energy efficiency and replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. In the push to reduce emissions, all eyes are on China,
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Coal-Fired Power On the Way Out?
The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States. Initially led by environmental groups, both national and
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Smarter Grids, Appliances, and Consumers
More and more utilities are beginning to realize that building large power plants just to handle peak daily and seasonal demand is a very costly way of managing an electricity system. Existing
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Mounting Stresses Put More Failing States On International Life Support
After a half-century of forming new states from former colonies and from the breakup of the Soviet Union, the international community is today focusing on the disintegration of states. The term "failing state"
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U.S. Feeds One Quarter Of Its Grain To Cars While Hunger Is On The Rise
The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars
