On Wednesday May 22 the EPI team grew by two. Our Research Associate Matt Roney and his wife Sarah welcomed twins into the world. Born two minutes apart at 8:32 and 8:34 am, Calvin Alexander, 7 pounds 5 ounces, and Abigail Helen, 6 pounds 12 ounces, are both healthy and happy. It remains to be seen if Calvin will take on the roles of being a big brother.

Congratulations to the happy family!

Sincerely,

Julianne

During our first month, we held three press conferences: one to launch the Institute, the next about the dust bowl challenging China, and the third on how President Bush’s energy plan totally neglected wind power. 

That year we were off the blocks in alerting the world to issues that have mostly gotten worse: China’s worsening water shortages, rising sea level, the drop in the world grain harvest, and climate change.

We also published Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth by Lester Brown, in which he said that we needed to shift our focus from thinking the environment is a subset of the economy to realizing that the economy is a subset of the environment. As he astutely noted that if the economy is not compatible with the earth’s ecosystem both will suffer (and they are certainly incompatible right now).

The larger the economy becomes relative to the ecosystem, and the more it presses against the earth’s natural limits, the more destructive this incompatibility will be.
An environmentally sustainable economy—an eco-economy—requires that the principles of ecology establish the framework for the formulation of economic policy and that economists and ecologists work together to fashion the new economy. (from Eco-Economy)

Eight books have followed Eco-Economy.  The Plan B series was designed to keep front and center an overarching plan that could be quickly implemented should world leaders have the political will to do something. Our most recent book is Full Planet, Empty Plates, and another is in the works (more about that in a later blog). And our books are not confined to English; they have been published in some 33 languages, including Esperanto!

Over the years, we have broadened the types of publications we do. Our newest are Data Highlights, such as a recent one by Emily Adams, “The Energy Game is Rigged: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Topped $620 Billion in 2011.”

Our original Plan B Updates provide fresh analyses such as Matt Roney’s on how overfishing threatens a critical link in the food chain. And Lester Brown’s Update on the world food situation.

Although we’ve seen a lot of discouraging action and inaction by governments and corporations, we’ve also seen a lot of encouraging and inspiring things taking shape, as evidenced in Janet Larsen’s two Updates on bike-sharing programs around the world.

While the majority of our material is in text or graphics, we also have terrific visuals. Just take a look at our Data Center. Looking for legitimate data? Check it out.

There is also a film by award-winning documentary producers Marilyn and Hal Weiner of Screenscope. Plan B has aired a number of times on national public television and is also available for purchase.

We’ve also posted a number of other videos on our website, including a synopsis of Full Planet, Empty Plates.

And, for you who like to listen while you drive, run, etc., we have podcasts of all of our reports.

Our intrepid researchers have also put together amazing slide shows summarizing the wealth of information in our books, such as for Full Planet, Empty Plates and World on the Edge, which are sometimes also translated into other languages.

As a small research organization, our goal is to provide the information that others will use to effect positive change. We have been seeing that happen and have collected a number of examples of what people have been inspired to do. For instance, after reading one of our books, people have changed careers, working to promote a sustainable future. Others have started organizations and movements to push for Plan B in their countries and cities. They have distributed books to policymakers and started reading groups. They have used our publications in the classroom, in lectures, and in churches. Our books have been used as the book in common at universities. They have even inspired songwriters and investment bankers.

Accomplishments outside of honorary degrees, awards, and publications? Well, after decades of running, Lester finally achieved national ranking as a ten-miler, placing third in the seventy-five to seventy-nine age group. He’s planning on ranking at least as high in the eighty and up category at next year’s Ten-Mile Cherry Blossom Race. Janet and her husband are preparing to celebrate the second birthday of their beautiful daughter, Mandolyn. Matt and his wife Sarah are getting ready to double their fun with twins. Reah Janise keeps knitting, mainly her own designs, and helps her husband with their community garden. (Already munching on lettuce!) Millicent and her sisters like to travel, recently taking their mother to Las Vegas to celebrate her birthday. They say they did everything but gamble! Julianne is preparing to start an evening master’s program in communications at Georgetown, while Emily and her husband Steve are off sampling Parisian cuisine.

It’s been a great twelve years so far, especially since we are working to provide a plan to save civilization. Isn’t that what we all want?

Cheers,

Reah Janise Kauffman

In December, he spoke at a Chesapeake Climate Action Network conference in Baltimore that was focused on the problem of fracking.

He also received the Planet and Humanity Medal from the International Geographical Union presented by Ron Abler. The medal is for his “early, incisive, and tireless advocacy of measures to promote public and policy maker awareness of global ecological issues via trenchant publications and public presentations.”

In January, Ira Flatow, host of NPR’s Science Friday, interviewed Lester on Full Planet, Empty Plates, getting to the heart of Lester’s history with this issue. January also saw Lester speaking at the Women’s National Democratic Club on the new geopolitics of food scarcity and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. He took time out to trip the “light fantastic” at the Green Inaugural Ball (even though he never made it to the dance floor!)

In April, he gave two luncheon addresses, the first for the National Food Policy conference hosted by the Consumer Federation of America. “It was the perfect luncheon address – thought provoking, entertaining and tied into a number of our other panel discussions throughout the day. Multiple attendees came up to me over the course of the two days to say how impressed they were with his speech,” said Chris Waldrop, Director of The Food Policy Institute.

The second address was for the agricultural committee of the Organization of Women in International Trade . He talked about how the world is now in transition from an era of food abundance and surpluses to an era of chronic scarcity. As food prices climb, the worldwide competition for control of land and water resources is intensifying. “In this new world,” he said, “access to food is replacing access to oil as an overriding concern of governments. Food is the new oil, land is the new gold.”

Chapter 1 of Full Planet, Empty Plates is now available on our website and over the next several weeks we will be releasing the rest of the book in installments. Look for a new chapter about every other week and sign up for our email list to receive them directly. Supporting data, video, and slideshows are also available for free download and check our Events page for Lester's future speaking engagements.

Best,

Julianne

As one of the grandfathers of the environmental movement, Lester Brown is an original “face of climate change,” writing about population, food, and land issues in the early 1960s when he was at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shortly after earning a degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University in 1955, he spent six months living in rural India where he became intimately familiar with the food/population issue. He then earned a master’s degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland.

Lester’s most recent book Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity exposes the increasingly volatile food situation the world is facing. The newest challenge confronting farmers is climate change. The massive burning of fossil fuels is increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, raising the earth’s temperature and disrupting climate. It is now in a state of flux. Historically when there was an extreme weather event—an intense heat wave or a drought—we knew it was temporary and that things would likely be back to normal by the next harvest. Now there is no “norm” to return to, leaving farmers facing a future fraught with risk.

The environmental movement is making bigger waves than ever and although the faces may have changed, the message is still the same: we cannot continue with business as usual. As we say here at the Institute, pick an issue and get to work on it. Perhaps it is getting a world-class recycling center operating in your community. Or it might be writing and talking to political leaders about the need for a carbon tax. Our People in Action page gives some examples of what people have done. In the meantime, look for an Earth Day event near you!

Best,

Julianne

Matt is an associate researcher whose focus is on renewable energy and the food system. Both issues can be tough to tackle, but we’re guessing it might be a little more challenging to care for newborn twins.

The EPI staff gave some helpful gifts including a baby carrier, bath toys, blankets, booties, books for the parents and the babies, and even some homemade sweaters.

The babies are due in the middle of May and we are anxiously awaiting their arrival. Our advice to Matt: get your sleep now while you can!!

Best,

Julianne

Impressed with the film version of Plan B, the Guemes Island Environmental Trust in Anacortes, Washington created an essay contest for high school aged youth. The essay challenge topic was, “What is the biggest threat to humans from climate change and how will you engage your friends to turn it around?” Contestants were also required to respond to the documentary, “Plan B, Mobilizing to Save Civilization.” Local schools and other organizations were contacted to promote responses from youths 15 to 20 years of age.  They raised funds to provide awards which were presented for the top four essays at the Anacortes Library on May 25, 2012.

Andy Kunz, President and CEO of the US High Speed Rail Association (USHSR), posted the Plan B film on the association's home page this year, sent out notifications about it, and mentioned it in major news releases.  He said, "Congratulations on making such an important film. We will do everything we can to spread the word far and wide!"

George A. Macpherson has written a novel based around Lester Brown’s Plan B. The Glebe Field is a romance centered around a young couple starting a Plan B for Action foundation and a legal fight between them and developers. Read more.

Makis Fountoulis, who publishes our books in Greece, has also been promoting them through lectures about World on the Edge and Plan B. Last year, he helped get 350 copies of World on the Edge delivered as Christmas gifts. He has given a number of lectures including one recently to a large gathering at the Athens Municipality Cultural Center. He has also been in contact with the Ministry of Education and plans to start giving lectures to high school students.

In honor of their father who unexpectedly passed away, the Sloan brothers are distributing copies of Full Planet, Empty Plates to members of Congress. In their letter accompanying the book they wrote, “The enclosed book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, contains the best analysis of what Chuck Sloan inherently knew.  The 21st century will not mirror the 20th century.  While the latter was witness to resource abundance and consumption, the former will be defined by resource scarcity.”

Doris and Lars Almstrom are busy translating Full Planet, Empty Plates into Swedish. At the same time they are spreading the Plan B movement through newsletters, organizing gatherings, giving lectures, and doing whatever else to promote action for change. (For some examples, click here).  Meanwhile, the EPI books they’ve already published are being used as textbooks in several universities in Sweden. And throughout the country people are organizing study circles to read the Plan B books.

Check out more of these inspiring stories on our People in Action page.

We are grateful to these and many others who regularly repost, reprint, excerpt, and otherwise distribute our publications. Change requires information and we work to provide carefully documented research in ways that will inspire global change.

If you have a story to share with us, we’d love to hear from you!

Best,

Julianne

The event took place on the seven floors of the Newseum in downtown Washington D.C. and featured performances by seven-time Grammy Award winner will.i.am, master trombonist Trombone Shorty, and soul singer Mayer Hawthorne with appearances by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, "Damages" actor Tate Donovan, "Breaking Bad's" Giancarlo Esposito, and Bill Nye "The Science Guy," a crowd favorite.

The highlight of the night though was a surprise appearance by Vice President Joe Biden. “I came to say thank you,” Biden said. “I also came to tell you what my green wish is: that we finally face up to climate change.” Little did we know that the President himself would reiterate the need to fix climate change the next day in his inaugural address.

Along with the celebrity appearances, EPI staff enjoyed the elevator bars—that’s right bars in the elevators—where the event’s exclusive signature cocktail, the OM-bama was served, appetizers by Wolfgang Puck, with 98% of the ingredients on the menu procured from within 300 miles, and the freedom to explore the exhibits of the Newseum. It was a truly unforgettable night for the staff, our families, and fellow environmentalists, and we are looking forward to what the next four years bring.

Best,

Julianne

p.s. There's a great Huffington Post article with their coverage of the event and more pictures.

Dr. Daly noted in his heartfelt introduction that he thought of Lester Brown as an older brother, someone to be followed (“not like on Twitter”) in the field of economics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s when academic economics were entrenched in a “sterile formalism,”he said that Lester stuck with “substance,” focusing on the importance of things that were real, like soil, water, and food.

Throughout his productive career Daly had the opportunity to visit ministries of the environment around the world, where, he recounted, he would almost always see some Worldwatch and Lester Brown books on the shelves, generally looking well-used. In true form for an economist, Daly couldn’t resist measuring Lester's efficiency, which he calculated as a ratio of valuable output over costly input.  With the output evident in citations “all over the place,” 50 books, 25 honorary degrees, and a number of apprentices mentored, divided by monetary input (looking at Lester’s institutional budgets, it’s “almost like dividing by zero!”)  He then compared Lester’s near infinite efficiency to that of the World Bank: a ratio of minor accomplishments to a massive budget, not a promising figure.

Daly concluded his remarks with a fantasy vision of a statue of Lester on the University of Maryland campus. To bookend the existing statue of alumnus Jim Henson conversing with Kermit the Frog, he envisioned the inscription reading “It’s not easy being green, especially for an economist.”

Thank you Dr. Daly, for such a thoughtful and kind introduction, and—most of all—for your tireless work in greening economics, institutions, and the world.

More than 200 people attended the standing-room only lecture. In his remarks, Lester spoke about his most recent book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. He warned of the tightening margin between food production and fast-growing demand, noting that the major threats to security in the world today are not armed aggression or advanced military technologies, but climate change, population growth, food shortages, rising food prices, and spreading instability. He concluded by asking people to pick an issue that they felt strongly about—from the movement to close coal-fired power plants, to banning bottled water on college campuses—and get to work. “Saving civilization is not a spectator sport!”

Here’s hoping that more people take that message to heart.

Best,

Janet Larsen

Herman Daly’s article, “From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady State Economy,” can be read in Solutions Journal.

As we said last week, we at Earth Policy Institute like to offer an array of options for our research to reach as wide an audience as possible. Here are a few quick facts to get you thinking about the global food crisis:

• There will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night—many of them with empty plates.

• As a result of chronic hunger, 48 percent of all children in India are undersized, underweight, and likely to have IQs that are on average 10-15 points lower than those of well-nourished children.

• Food prices are rising dramatically. The U.N. Food Price Index in June 2012 was twice the base level of 2002-04.

• More than half the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling as aquifers are being depleted.

• A startling 80 percent of oceanic fisheries are being fished at or beyond their sustainable yield.

• Between 2005 and 2011, the amount of grain used to produce fuel for cars in the United States climbed from 41 million to 127 million tons—nearly a third of the U.S. grain harvest.

• In 2011, China consumed 70 million tons of soybeans, 56 million of which had to be imported. Almost all went into livestock feed.

• Today, with incomes rising fast in emerging economies, there are at least 3 billion people moving up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock and poultry products.

• Data for India indicate that 175 million people are being fed with grain produced by overpumping. For China, there are 130 million in the same boat.

• In Ethiopia, a prime target for foreign land acquisitions yet also a major food aid recipient, an acre of land can be leased for less than $1 per year.

• The 464 land acquisitions identified by the World Bank in 2010 totaled some 140 million acres—more than is planted in corn and wheat combined in the United States.

• It’s not all bad news: 44 countries have reached population stability as a result of gradual fertility decline over the last several generations.

Even quicker is the video of Brown himself discussing the main issues raised in the book.

Enjoy!

Julianne

Take a look at this five-minute video where Lester Brown speaks on some of the major topics covered in Full Planet, Empty Plates.

We have also uploaded two Power Point presentations providing graphic and textual highlights from the book.

And we are working on short video clips on some of the specific issues raised in the book.

Happy viewing!

Cheers,

Reah Janise Kauffman

On an ironically hot 106-degree July afternoon, the staff at Earth Policy Institute attended a special preview screening of the film sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring Lester Brown, Tim Egan, and Clay Pope, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts and a sixth generation Oklahoma farmer. The panel was moderated by Ann Yonkers, FRESHFARM Markets Co-Executive Director.

Since news of the extent and degree of the Midwestern American drought was just reaching mass media, the discussion was both lively and at times a bit frightening. The audience had many questions for the panelists.

Lester spoke of the food unrest that lay ahead, of overpumping aquifers, and of moving down the food chain, topics that are discussed in his new book Full Planet, Empty Plates. Tim spoke about the people he met while writing his book, the factors that led to the Dust Bowl, and how we are making similar mistakes with soil erosion and overplowing. Clay gave a firsthand account of the effects of the drought in his home state and discussed other challenges farmers are now facing in the wake of climate change.

Those of us fortunate to be at the screening are now looking forward to seeing the documentary in its entirety. Burns believes the film should be taken as a cautionary tale for more contemporary environmental issues. A preview is available at pbs.org/dustbowl.

For information on dust bowls forming in other countries, see Chapter 3 of World on the Edge: Eroding Soils and Expanding Deserts, and the Plan B Updates: Dust Bowl Threatening China’s Future and Deserts Advancing, Civilization Retreating.

Best,

Julianne

The party came after months of researching, fact checking, and editing and weeks of promotion that included a mail promo and teleconference. The researchers also developed two summary presentations to go along with the book, which have been viewed over 10,000 times thus far and are available for free downloading.

Friday was also the end of a busy week for Lester. First he was in New York City where he was interviewed on the Leonard Lopate show and later with Matt Miller on Rewind Bloomberg TV. Then he was off to Columbus, Ohio where he joined other environmental leaders for EcoSummit. He was the plenary speaker on Wednesday and a panelist for the Food Security and Climate Change Forum on Thursday. The week rounded out with the release of his interview on Yahoo Finance.

We are thrilled that people are so excited about the new book and are loving all the action on Twitter.

The Globalist tweeted: What we're reading: Lester Brown's "Full Planet, Empty Plates." Cogent and fact-based as ever. @earthpolicy

Journalist Dennis Dimick tweeted: "Full Planet, Empty Plates" by @EarthPolicy: I gave one to my @JMU college student @claudiaeleni http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpep_presentation #foodsecurity #educate

Sean Ono Lennon tweeted: Land and Food will be 'Oil' of tomorrow. Read up! Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity By Lester Brown.

News of Lester’s latest book has also reached other important outlets like the Daily Beast and Mother Earth News. Permaculture Australia and EcoWatch have shared the summary presentations on their websites.

We think the release of the book couldn’t have come at a better time. With the extent of the Great Drought of 2012 still being reported on daily and the effects of climate change being felt more than ever before, Full Planet, Empty Plates is a quick, yet important read for the times.

Best,

Julianne