Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
by Lester R. Brown
Published for the Earth Policy Institute
by W.W. Norton & Company
This book is available free to download from the Earth Policy Institute website or can be bought as a bound paperback from booksellers but both the paperback version, and also a hardback version, can be bought from the Earth Policy Institute website as well.
COULD FOOD SHORTAGES BRING DOWN CIVILIZATION?
Lester R. Brown certainly thinks so and he may just be right.
“In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted,” writes Lester R. Brown in his new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company).
“In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis then plan to use their oil wealth to import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people,” notes Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.
“The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation,” says Brown in Plan B 4.0. But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines.
Read more here: http://greenreview.blogspot.com/2009/10/plan-b-40-book-review.html
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