Eco-guru
Lester Brown sounds a water warning
by Pamela
Polston
(09.28.05)
It's easy to
understand why the Vermont Council on World Affairs would invite Lester Brown to
be the keynote speaker for a symposium entitled "The Global Water Crisis." The
puzzle is how Brown managed to squeeze it into his schedule. World-renowned as
the founder of the Washington, D.C.-based Earth Policy Institute -- a nonprofit
aimed at providing a vision and road map for achieving an environmentally
sustainable economy -- he also travels the Earth. A lot. A critical part of the
message he delivers worldwide is essentially this: You think we have an oil
crisis? Look at what's happening to water.
Brown does more than just
sound the alarm, however; he's got real ideas about how to address the
staggering depletion of water tables, rivers and lakes. He's written some 50
books on this and related eco-topics. And he does something that a number of
scientists and "sky-is-falling" activists often fail to do: step back and look
at the big picture.
For example, in his latest book, Outgrowing the Earth, Brown delineates how
human demands are surpassing available natural resources, including water, and
how this in turn leads to diminished food production. "There are substitutes for
oil, but there are no substitutes for water," Brown points out. Then he takes it
a step further, outlining what policymakers should do to ward off worldwide food
shortages -- a.k.a., famine. The most politically unpopular suggestion is that
whatever degrades natural resources should be heavily taxed, while
Earth-friendly enterprises such as wind power should get substantial tax breaks.
In other words, the prices of our goods and services should reflect
their true environmental cost to the planet we inhabit. It's a logical idea, but
flies in the face of the way markets, and governments, now work. Consider all
the grumbling at the gas stations recently, and imagine if the price of fuel was
$11 a gallon -- as Brown says it should be. What would happen to a politician
who dared suggest as much?
Brown understands the economics of food
production firsthand: He grew tomatoes in southern New
Jersey while in high school and college.
The latter was Rutgers
University, where he
graduated in 1955 with a degree in agricultural science. But rather than go back
to the farm, Brown went to India, where he got an
eye-opening education about the effects of population on food production.
After returning to the U.S. to earn Master's
degrees in agricultural economics and public administration, Brown then became
an advisor, in 1964, to Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman on foreign ag
policy. He spent five years in government, then left to found the Overseas
Development Council. In 1974, he founded the Worldwatch Institute; the first
organization devoted to analyzing global environmental issues, it issued an
annual "State of the World" report, a magazine and a series of "environmental
alert" books. In 2001 Brown launched the Earth Policy Institute.
Throughout this career, he has continued to write, in a straightforward,
accessible style, and to traverse the planet for speaking engagements. And along
the way, he's collected numerous prizes, awards, fellowships and honorary
degrees. Nearly everything published about Brown makes reference to a Washington Post assessment that he is "one
of the world's most influential thinkers." On deadline for yet another book, the
grandfather of the environmental movement took the time to speak with Seven Days last week. He proved to be as
gracious as he is serious.
SEVEN
DAYS: The symposium at St. Michael's is called "The Global Water Crisis." Could
you start by giving me a little preview of what your talk will address there?
LESTER BROWN: I haven't thought about it yet (chuckles). No,
we've been concerned about population over the last century; the population is
doubling, but the water demand is
tripling. The results are: lower water tables, rivers running dry before they
reach the sea, disappearing lakes. As water tables fall, the seed lakes
disappear -- we've seen thousands of lakes disappear around the globe.
And I will talk about the connection between water and food. I don't
think most people realize how water-intensive food production is. We drink 4 to
8 liters a day in one form or another -- water, juice, beer, pop and so on. But
the food we consume requires 2000 liters a day to produce.
I did an
article on this many months ago, and the editor circled "2000 liters a day." He
said, "Don't you mean 2000 liters a year?" I find that a typical reaction.
Most of us who read The New York
Times know we're facing water shortages, but not everyone has
connected the dots, that water shortages will lead to food shortages. Seventy
percent of the water we use worldwide is for irrigation.
SD: What are the biggest causes of dwindling Earth
resources?
LB: Aside from population? Rising incomes. To stay
with the food and water analogy: In India the average grain consumption is
roughly a pound a day . . . here it's four times as much -- therefore the
average American requires four times as much water.
SD: Solutions to nonsustainability and other
ecological issues are obviously mitigated by both political and corporate
policies. Do you direct your influence toward those arenas?
LB: Yes, I do this quite a bit in Plan B [Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in
Trouble, 2003]. The big problem we face in the world -- this is
another set of issues -- is that the market does not tell the ecological truth.
It doesn't include all the indirect costs; that is, the environmental costs far
exceed the costs of the products we use. The challenge is to get the market to
tell the truth by changing the tax system. We should increase taxes on
destructive [carbon-based] products and lower income taxes. We should lower
taxes for initiatives such as wind power . . .
SD: Wind energy is a controversial topic in
Vermont. A lot of people
don't want to see turbines on mountains. Is it just people who live in pretty
places who have this view, or do you encounter this elsewhere?
LB: People who live in pretty places
-- it's probably people who've moved up from New
York and want to protect
Vermont (chuckles).
The NIMBY response is out there, but there's also a PIMBY response -- "put it in my backyard" . . . When the
local utility near the southern Wyoming/ northern Colorado border announced it
wanted to build wind farms, there was a scramble [by local ranchers] to get them
-- they generate a lot of income. They can contribute to the tax base, the
school budgets . . . A lot of ranchers on the Great
Plains will someday be making a lot more
money from selling wind power than from selling beef.
When I look at a
wind turbine, I see something that can contribute a lot of energy without
destroying the environment. It will last as long as Earth itself. I also think
they look rather elegant.
SD:
What should government's role be, in your view, to arrest and, one could hope,
reverse environmental devastation?
LB: The government's role
should be to get the market to tell the truth; a gallon of gasoline should cost
$11.
SD: The Earth Policy
Institute has as a goal -- I'm paraphrasing here -- to raise public awareness to
the point where it will support an effective public response to trends that are
adversely affecting the Earth. How are you raising that awareness? How do you
disseminate information to the public?
LB: By talking with
people like you. Recently I did three interviews on programs on Chinese
television.
SD: Certainly a lot
of information comes directly from your lips: Two weeks ago you were in
China; next week
you're in Vermont; next month
you're speaking in Florida; and the one
after that in Japan. Do you find
yourself needing to deliver much the same message to people worldwide?
LB: More or less. I adapt it
sometimes to local conditions. The basic message is the same
. . . In
China I met Premier Wen
Jaibao at a reception. He had read my book Who Will Feed China? [Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet, 1995] and
considered it a very positive contribution. I've been told most political
leaders there have read it. Books do sometimes reach people. Bill Clinton was
asked a few weeks back what his top five books were this summer, or something
like that; he said Plan B was one
of them.
SD: Do we have to be in
crisis to pay attention?
LB: We may be closer to that than
people think.
SD: The Buddhist --
and quantum physics' -- view is that we are all interconnected. Yet the problems
we humans face are not distributed equally, and therein lies a challenge in
terms of environmental consciousness. For example, we have fairly abundant water
here in Vermont, and so we may
not pay any attention to the declining water table in the
Midwest, or soil erosion
in India. Is it necessary
for people to think globally, or is it enough to simply address the ecological
issues in our own back yards?
LB: We have to think globally. Vermonters may not
see a water problem, but we have to keep in mind that water scarcity crosses
boundaries. Water scarcity would drive up food prices for everyone. So a
shortage of water in Africa is a problem in
Vermont.
SD: The weight of the issues you're
addressing is enormous. What inspires you to keep up the fight, and to not get
depressed?
LB: I think because I know that social change
comes very quickly sometimes. I can remember World War II. If one had taken a
poll on December 6, 1941, on whether
we should get involved in the war, my guess is that 85 percent would have said,
"Nothing doing." But 24 hours later that ratio would have been reversed.
SD: What is your most personally
satisfying accomplishment?
LB: Finishing third in my age
group [70-74] in the Cherry Blossom 10-mile race. I'm now a seeded runner . . .
SD: What does that mean?
LB: I get to line up out front with the Kenyans (chuckles).
You know, I'm being somewhat facetious . . . But the difference between this and
the other awards I get is, I had to work for this
one.
