Earth Policy Institute, is a non-profit environmental research organization dedicated to providing a vision of an eco-economy and a roadmap on how to get there. The Institute was founded in 2001 with the following goals:
- to provide a global plan (Plan B) for moving the world onto an environmentally and economically sustainable path
- to provide examples demonstrating how the plan would work, and
- to keep the media, policymakers, academics, environmentalists, and other decision-makers focused on the process of building a Plan B economy.
The basic research of the Institute has been published in the form of seven books:
1. Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (2001) by Lester R. Brown
The book discusses the need for a dramatic shift in our worldview by seeking answers to whether the environment is a part of the economy or the economy part of the environment. It argues that treating the environment as part of the economy has produced an economy that is destroying its natural support system. It describes how to restructure the global economy to make it compatible with the earth’s eco-system so that economic progress can continue. The eco-economy is designed to mesh with the Earth’s ecosystem instead of destroying it. It contains detailed descriptions of the policy instruments, such as tax shifting and eco-labeling, which will be at the center of the restructuring process. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
2. The Earth Policy Reader (2002) by Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen and Bernie Fischlowitz Roberts
The book attempts to bring together in one volume the essential Eco-Economy Updates of the Institute that monitor the shift from the old economy to the new. The book attempts to chart the progress in building the eco-economy, an economy that is compatible with the earth's ecosystem. It also deals with how converging ecological deficits are undermining local economies on a scale that has no precedent. And since an eco-economy relies heavily on recycling materials already in the system, the Reader explains how in this new economy, recycling industries will largely replace mining industries. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
3. Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (2003) by Lester R. Brown
The book calls for a worldwide mobilization to stabilize population and climate before they spiral out of control. It provides a plan for sustaining economic progress worldwide. This book shows how a bubble economy has been created whose output is artificially inflated by over consuming the earth's natural capital.
The present course, Plan A, will lead to continuing environmental deterioration and eventual economic decline. The alternative is Plan B, a worldwide mobilization to stabilize population and climate before these issues spiral out of control. The goal is to stabilize population close to the United Nation's low projection of 7.4 billion, to reduce carbon emissions by half by 2015, and to raise water productivity by half. The book presents a workable blueprint that can be enacted now. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
4. Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (2004) by Lester R. Brown
The book documents how human demands are outstripping the earth's natural capacities and how the resulting environmental damage is undermining food production. The author investigates these issues and outlines the steps needed to secure future food supplies.
Agriculture is a water-intensive activity and, while public attention has focused on oil depletion, it is aquifer depletion that poses the more serious threat. There are substitutes for oil, but none for water and the link between our fossil fuel addiction, climate change and food security is now clear. The future food security depends not only on efforts within agriculture but also on energy policies that stabilize climate, a worldwide effort to raise water productivity, the evolution of land-efficient transport systems, and population policies that seek a humane balance between population and food. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
5. Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (2006) by Lester R. Brown
The book is an expansion and update to Brown's previous best-selling book Plan B. In this book a plan, budget, and timetable for rescuing our twenty-first century civilization has been outlined. The plan includes eradicating poverty and stabilizing population, protecting and restoring soils, forests, rangelands, and fisheries, and conserving the earth's biological diversity. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
6. Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2008) by Lester R. Brown
The book is a major expansion and update to Brown's earlier works Plan B and Plan B 2.0, where the author outlines a plan, a budget, and a timetable for rescuing our twenty-first century civilization. In addition to the looming threats discussed earlier, peaking of oil, annual population growth of 70 million, a widening global economic divide, and a growing list of failing states are new problems discussed. The scale and complexity of issues facing this fast-forward world have no precedent. The book outlines a survival strategy for this early twenty-first century civilization that includes cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020, achievable with existing technologies. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
7. Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2009) by Lester R Brown
The book demonstrates the interconnectedness of major global problems and proposes an ambitious set of solutions, arguing that what is needed is nothing less than a wartime-type mobilization to, among other things, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2020. The book calls for the need to act quickly and decisively, to avert a constellation of mutually reinforcing crises from population pressure, climate change, poverty, loss of natural resources and worldwide hunger. The book can be downloaded at the Earth Policy Institute’s website here.
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