As a race, we don't seem to be doing very well in real terms. Our planet not only has a temperature, but is covered in lesions and cancerous sores of every kind. Mother Earth's lifeblood, water, is being polluted and over consumed; her lungs, the soils and forests of the world, are being systematically contaminated and destroyed; the very air she breathes is tainted, even saturated in some places, with various toxins, and the planet's other occupants, the millions of species that we share this rock with, are being decimated.

Although we've been slow to grasp it, increasingly it's being realised that we humans are the cause of the major ecological meltdown now underway. You could say we're a virus; a plague of parasites leeching life from a gracious, selfless host. Our present industrial, economic and political frameworks are failing not only our children and grandchildren, but they're failing us,  the present generation, too. Our survival is dependent on our swiftly recognising these failures and looking for another way, another plan. You could call it Plan B.

Some of you will be familiar with Lester Brown's Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble -- a book we've run excerpts from regularly on Celsias. Well, today is the online launch day for an updated, fully revised version.

Several weeks ago I was sent a pre-release copy of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. From the very first page I was hooked, and I know that if my schedule was not what it was (and if my wife didn't hog the book every chance she got) I would have had the thing read in a flash. You see, every now and again a writer manages to fully bridge the gap often found in books (often they're either technically proficient but tedious, or readable but insubstantial). Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute is one such writer/researcher -- taking a serious, sometimes-overwhelming topic (the state of the planet and what we should do about it), and sharing nuggets of thought, research, historical examples, statistics, policy suggestions and much more into a work that would rival a John Grisham novel in readability, but likely accomplish a lot more....

What is the difference between the two versions, you ask? From the book's preface:

Perhaps the most revealing difference between Plan B 2.0 and Plan B 3.0 is the change of the subtitle from “Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble” to simply “Mobilizing to Save Civilization.” The new subtitle better reflects both the scale of the challenge we face and the wartime speed of the response it calls for.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first, 'A Civilization in Trouble', does a superb job of encapsulating the main ecological, energy and social/humanitarian issues we face. If reading about collapsing ecosystems, peak oil, rising energy demands and failing states has never been your thing -- it might be because you haven't read it written like this!

The second section, 'The Response: Plan B', is a thorough and common sense look at potential solutions and methods to transition our embedded infrastructure from death dealing to healing. There is a wealth of logic to be found here, and these aren't pie-in-the-sky ideas that are impossible to implement either. Lester Brown proposes practical solutions to very real problems. If many of these solutions are never implemented it will be due to industry lobbying and a lack of political will more than any technological or other practical inability to act.

The third, An Exciting New Option, is a can-do call to embark on a 'Great Mobilisation', of the likes we witnessed during WWII. Time is running out, and, as we know, our political leaders are having meeting after meeting, where they talk about how to go about talking about doing something, and setting deadlines for when they promise to have decided something. This is not good enough. Our brief window of opportunity to act will quickly close. As Lester Brown expresses, business as usual will not continue much longer -- our economies, our material world as we know it, are already changing due to environmental/resource constraints. It's better we be at the helm, intelligently steering these changes, rather than the alternative of merely being passive victims of them.

The book is today made available for free download. Aside from your own personal edification, I would encourage you to purchase a few hard copies for others in your area -- family members, friends, and, of course, key local politicians who need to see that modern economics will only survive if company balance sheets are also made to include their true cost of business.

Anyway, I'll leave you to it -- I've got to get back to reading the book. Oops, my wife just snatched it back again....