Global Climate Alarm Sounded

MIDDLETOWN -- The global economy must be radically restructured to curb the world's gluttonous appetite for resources and its climate-warming ways, or it will face ecological and social collapse, environmental guru Lester Brown said Saturday.

He acknowledged that most of the 200 people listening to his lecture at Wesleyan's Exley Science Center may already agree with him.

And as for everyone else, he said, "What's happening in China will convince the rest of us."

Brown brought his urgent and gloomy message - and a hopeful look at the future - to Wesleyan's third annual environmental studies symposium, which was focused on how we are vulnerable to global climate change.

Speakers looked at the possible increase in diseases such as malaria and other public health problems; the potential for more severe hurricanes; and how society might best respond to the challenges posed by a warming Earth.

Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the author of scores of books. His talk Saturday mirrored his latest book, "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble."

The economy, he contends, is on an unsustainable path that will lead to the breakdown of the environment and social order - but we already have some of the means by which to extricate ourselves from this mess.

If a fast-developing country such as China models its economy after the United States, it will overwhelm the world's ability to provide what it needs to survive, Brown argued. China already has passed the United States in total consumption of basic resources, except for oil, Brown said.

If China's 1.4 billion people eventually come to match the U.S. in per capita consumption, the drain on resources would be staggering: twice what the world currently produces in paper, more than a billion cars, and more oil in a day than the world currently produces.

China teaches us that the Western model, the "throw-away economy," won't work for China, "nor for others in developing countries who are dreaming the American dream," he said.

"We are consuming renewable resources faster than they can regenerate," Brown writes in his book. "Forests are shrinking, grasslands are deteriorating, water tables are falling, fisheries are collapsing, and soils are eroding. ... And we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb them, setting the stage for a rise in the earth's temperature well above any since agriculture began."

History illustrates how misuse of the environment destroyed civilizations such as the Sumerians and the Mayans, he said.

But Brown's vision includes solutions, many of which are already here: renewable energy from wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower and biofuels; alternative transportation such as hybrid cars, light rail and bicycles; and an economy built around reusable products and more efficient manufacturing and agriculture.

"We see it in the wind farms of Western Europe," which are already providing power to 40 million people, he said. He cited solar rooftops in Japan, geothermal energy in Iceland, the bicycle-friendly streets of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, and the growth of hybrid cars in the United States.

Brown issued a warning about the push to turn corn into biofuel, however.

As the price for ethanol grows more competitive with oil, more corn will be consumed as fuel, and that means less for food. And much of what we eat is corn-based, from beef raised on corn to milk and eggs to soft drinks and other processed foods.

So, the price of food will start to go up. As with many of the projected impacts of global warming, higher prices and shortages of food will hit harder on poor and developing countries.

Brown said the amount of grain needed to fill a car's tank with ethanol would feed a person for a year, and the entire grain harvest in the U.S. would supply only 16 percent of our energy needs. A far better system, he said, would have everyone driving gas-electric hybrid cars whose batteries are charged by wind-power-generated electricity.

Wind power "is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, climate-benign, and it's ours: No one can cut off the supply, and the price never goes up," Brown said.

The key to change, Brown said, "is to get the market to tell the truth" about the costs we pay for our way of living. Gasoline may cost about $3 a gallon, but that does not include the cost of breathing polluted air and the effects of global warming caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions.

He said the United States needs to restructure its tax system to replace the income tax with a carbon tax to better reflect the costs of consuming fossil fuels.

Above all, he said, the need to deal with global warming is urgent. We have already set in motion changes to the climate that we won't feel for decades. "Nature is the time-keeper," he said, "and we can't see the clock."

He urged the audience to become politically active in the push for change. As inspiration, he cited some of the dramatic changes of the past century - the U.S. mobilization at the start of World War II and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

"Change can come quickly if we're convinced of the need for it."

Contact David K. Funkhouser at dfunkhouser@courant.com.

For more on the Earth Policy Institute and "Plan B," go to http://www.earth-policy.org/index.htm