Plan A — the western fossil-fuel-based, auto-centered, throwaway economic model — is not going to work for China, India, or the 3 billion other people in developing countries, and it will not continue to work for the industrial countries either.

It’s time for Plan B — an all-out response at wartime speed proportionate to the magnitude of threats facing civilization.

The four overriding goals of PLAN B 3.0 are to stabilize climate and population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

“We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize,” says Brown. “These deadlines are set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.”

Lester Brown has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” After working with the Department of Agriculture in international agricultural development, Brown helped establish the Overseas Development Council, then founded Worldwatch Institute, publishers of annual State of the World and Vital Signs reports. In 2001, he left Worldwatch, founded Earth Policy Institute, and published Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth.

Continue reading “How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left?”

Much of what lines supermarket aisles is not food. It’s merely foodlike, and it’s making us sick.

According to Michael Pollan, most of what Americans consume isn’t food. He calls it “edible foodlike substances.” He also says that the way we consume it is not really eating. It’s something we do pretty unconsciously as we work or drive or watch TV.

We all know about the U.S. epidemic of obesity and diabetes over the past 25 years, on top of the steady rise of chronic diseases over the past hundred. Paradoxically, this happens just as Americans and the food industry are ever more aware of nutrition. What’s going on here?

Pollan claims that in the Western diet, good old food has been replaced by nutrients, mom’s good advice by nutritional experts, common sense by confusion, and for most, a relatively good diet by a bad and dangerous one. The book in which he makes all these claims and advises us simply to “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” has topped the New York Times bestseller list.

Michael Pollan’s previous books include The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post, and The Botany of Desire. Pollan is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and a Knight Professor of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley.

Continue reading “Pollan: Nutrition ‘Science’ Has Hijacked Our Meals — and Our Health”

Our excessive consumption is trashing more than just the planet. An interview with Annie Leonard.

Over the last few weeks I’ve received a number of emails encouraging me to watch The Story of Stuff, an online video that asks and answers that question. With amusing graphics and plenty of humor, host Annie Leonard delivers a complex analysis in an audience-friendly tone. It’s produced by Free Range Studios, creators of The Meatrix, the wildly popular animated short about factory farming.

An expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, Annie Leonard has spent many years investigating factories and dumps around the world. She has worked with Health Care Without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International, and is currently coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption.

Continue reading “Consuming Our Way to Unhappiness”

Marketers are targeting kids at disturbingly young ages, compromising the nation’s health, creativity and democracy. An interview with Susan Linn.

Everything has changed, and changed gradually on such a scale that we are paying an enormous price — in kids’ physical, mental and emotional health, and in the health of our families and our democracy.

From 1992 to 1997, the amount of money spent on marketing to children doubled, from $6.2 to $12.7 billion. Today they are spending over $15 billion. Children influence purchases totaling over $600 billion a year. Children spend almost 40 hours a week outside of school consuming media, most of which is commercially driven. The average child sees about 40,000 commercials each on television alone. 65 percent of children 8-18 have a television in their bedroom.

Earlier this year 11 companies agreed to voluntarily scale back their marketing to children in an effort to slow down the rise in obesity.

Susan Linn, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, weighs in on this effort and what’s at stake. Linn is the Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children’s Center and a co-founder of the coalition Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. An award winning ventriloquist, Dr. Linn created video based classroom materials Different and the Same: Helping Children Identify and Prevent Prejudice (with the producers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood). In the face of our media-saturated commercialized culture, she encourages make-believe play. She is the author of Consuming Kids.

Continue reading “Born to Shop: How Marketers Brainwash Babies”

Labor economist Robert Reich argues Americans are split between wanting low prices and opposing the corporate behaviors that make them possible.

Feeling schizophrenic, yet?

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich believes we are all suffering from this split agenda — as consumers we want low prices, while as citizens we may oppose corporate behaviors that make them possible. And he believes — at least on a national scale — our citizen selves are losing.

Shoppers are elbowing citizens out of the public arena. The last three decades have seen the emergence of a supercharged capitalism fueled by open markets and cutthroat competitiveness. According to Reich, “supercapitalism” is overwhelming government with lobbyists and money, while citizens are dazzled by the promise of previously unimaginable riches and consumer choices.

In his new book, Supercapitalism, Reich tackles the big question: Can democracy survive in this environment?

Professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Reich served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He is co-founding editor of the American Prospect, and his weekly commentaries on public radio’s “Marketplace” are heard by nearly 5 million people. He is the author of eleven books, including The Work of Nations, The Future of Success and his latest, Supercapitalism.

Continue reading “Consumer-Driven Culture Is Killing Our Democracy”