Lester Brown Interview  

Dave Roberts at Grist has a good interview with "Plan B 2.0" man Lester Brown.

Question: How do you maintain your optimism?

Answer: Social change comes rapidly and unexpectedly sometimes.

The Berlin wall coming down was essentially a bloodless political revolution in Eastern Europe. There were no articles in political science journals in the '80s that said, hey, keep an eye on Eastern Europe, big change is coming there. But one morning people woke up and realized the great socialist experiment was over.

What if we'd been sitting at this table 10 years ago and I had said, "I think that the tobacco industry is going to cave"? It was the most powerful lobby in Washington. It controlled committee chairs. But there was a steady flow of articles on smoking and health over a period of a few decades, along with persistent denial. The industry just lost its credibility.

The two things looming large are oil -- security of supply, disruptions around the world, a vague notion that China's out there now competing for it, the price of gasoline, the price of home heating oil -- and the climate issue, the steady drumbeat. Every week or two another major study comes out, nailing down another piece of the climate puzzle. People are beginning to feel uncertain now.

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Question: Does it concern you that many of your book's exemplary solutions come out of semi-authoritarian political situations?

Answer: I was looking for success stories, whether it's breakthroughs in fish farming in China or dairy production in India overtaking the U.S. Wind energy in Western Europe. Solar-cell manufacturing in Japan. Reforestation in South Korea. I didn't look at the form of government to sort out what would work. Carp polyculture's roots go back 2,000 years; it doesn't require a one-party dictatorship.

I remember when the Soviets beat us into space with Sputnik. A lot of Americans were despairing, and said the Soviets have a command economy, they can beat us at anything they want. But what that system lacked was a free flow of information and ideas, and in the end that's what really weakened them. We were on the moon 10 years later, and now it's been almost half a century and the Russians still haven't gotten there.

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Question: What should I do? Talk to congressfolk? Write a letter to the editor? Buy a hybrid?

Answer: Most of the people in audiences I'm talking with have been asking themselves that question. Recycle paper, buy a Prius, whatever -- lifestyle changes. But we've reached the point where we have to go beyond that. We now have to go for systemic change; otherwise we're not going to make it. That's why tax restructuring is so important. (Incidentally, the Chinese authorities are studying and working on a major tax restructuring just for this purpose.)

That means becoming politically active. Each of us is going to have to define that in our own terms. Maybe it's lobbying city council or representatives in Washington, letting them know what we think, what we want them to do. If enough of us do that, change will begin.

We're seeing signs that Republicans are beginning to cross over on some of these issues, because of the concerns of their constituents. We're getting some major corporate crossovers. GE is now a major player in wind energy. They are cranking up 300 turbines year before last, 600 last year, 1,200 this year -- they're just going. And Goldman Sachs is beginning to invest heavily. When I talk about Goldman Sachs, it changes the way people think about wind energy.

Things may be starting to change.