Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

by Lester Brown

Earth Policy Institute

Experts were "stunned" this past summer by the loss of Arctic sea ice. An area almost twice the size of Britain disappeared in a single week.

The Greenland ice cap is melting so fast that it is triggering minor earthquakes as pieces of ice weighing several billion tons break off the ice sheet and slide into the sea. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is also melting faster than predicted.

If we cannot curb CO2 emissions quickly enough to save these two huge ice sheets, sea level will rise 39 feet, inundating many of the world's coastal cities and creating over 600 million rising-sea refugees.

The annual addition of 70 million people to world population is concentrated in countries where water tables are falling and wells are going dry, forests are shrinking, soils are eroding, and grasslands are turning into desert. In countries overwhelmed by these trends, weaker governments are breaking down. Each year the number of failing states increases. Failing states are an early sign of a failing civilization.

With business-as-usual (Plan A), these trends will continue. More and more states will fail until civilization itself begins to unravel.

We do not have much time. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize. These deadlines are set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.

About the Author
Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, is one of the world's most widely published authors, with books in more than forty languages. A MacArthur Fellow, he lives in Washington, DC.