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12 Books That Could Save The World – Pt 3

High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them - Jean-francois Rischard
You may not have come across Jean-francois Rischard before, he is an economist and former vice-president of the World Bank for Europe. Rischard sees two forces - population and the new world economy, running ahead of our capacity to respond to and manage them.
Population and economics have fueled or exacerbated what in High Noon Rischard calls twenty “inherently global issues” (IGIs)—he makes clear the issues are really unsolvable nation-state by nation-state. Those he covers in the book he considers the absolute priority “and what’s terrifying about them is that they are all failures.”
To give you some  idea of the scope of this deeply intelligent book I  will list the 20 Problems.
1. Global warming; 2. Biodiversity and ecosystem losses; 3. Fisheries depletion; 4. Deforestation; 5. Water deficits;  6. Maritime safety and pollution; 7. Massive step-up in the fight against poverty; 8. Peacekeeping, conflict prevention, combating terrorism; 9. Education for all; 10. Global infectious diseases; 11. Digital divide; 12. Natural disaster prevention and mitigation; 13. Reinventing taxation for the 21st Century
14. Biotechnology rules; 15. Global financial architecture; 16. Illegal drugs; 17. Trade, investment, and competition rules; 18. Intellectual property rights; 19. E-commerce rules; 20. International labor and migration rules.
Like all the authors here, Rischard while being clear and unequivocal on the magnitude of the issues, he sees in them the potential and opportunity to remake the way we live and create a sustainable future.

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World - Paul Hawken
Hawken’s central theme in Blessed Unrest is the emergence, interaction and merging of three developments in American culture and history, an environmental movement, a movement for social justice, and specifically a movement for social and environmental justice for indigenous peoples and cultures. Thi sis a book of great inspiration, an affirmation of the inherent goodness of human beings. In his own words…
“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”
“Everyone on earth will be an environmentalist in the not too distant future, driven there by necessity and experience… The world is a system, and it will soon be a very different world, driven by millions of communities who believe that democracy and restoration are grassroots movements that connect us to values that we hold in common.”
Hawken ends with four quadrants, the quadrants of commerce, of culture, of governance, and of nature, and details blessed unrest as the Nation’s immune system. If Silent Spring was the first call to action, this book is not just a renewed call to action, but a roadmap as well.

The Future of Life – Edward O Wilson
Edward O Wilson is an accomplished author of great renown. Two of his books, On Human Nature and The Ants, won Pulitzer Prizes. The Future of Life is his 20th book.
The central problem of the new century, Wilson writes, is how to raise the poor to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible. He expresses hope that his book justifies a conviction that the problem can be solved. Over the last two decades, scientists and conservation professionals have put together a strategy for protection of most remaining ecosystems and species, each elaborated in the book. Wilson makes plain from every angle, the necessity for maintaining biodiversity, Wilson describes exactly what treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever and what we can do right now to save them. Going deeper, Wilson explores the ethical and religious base of the conservation movement and deflates the myth that environmental policy is antithetical to economic growth by illustrating how new methods of conservation can ensure long-term economic well-being.

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization - Lester R. Brown
This is the latest book by another prolific author Lester R. Brown, the founder and President of the Earth Policy Institute, and a well-known environmentalist and thinker. The book is an update of his previous two Plan B books, which gives a summary of the environmental problems that we faced and outlines the response needed to save our civilization. He describes what we need to do:
“The challenge for our generation is to build a new economy, one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a highly diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. And to do it with unprecedented speed.”
“Continuing with business as usual (Plan A), which is destroying the economy’s eco-supports and setting the stage for dangerous climate change, is no longer a viable option. It is time for Plan B.”
Plan B 3.0 gives a blueprint for stabilizing population and eradicating poverty, restoring the earth’s ecosystems, and stabilizing climate. It describes the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80% before 2020, through raising energy efficiency, developing renewable energy sources, and increasing the earth’s forest cover. We already have the resources to adopt Plan B and save civilization. No more business as usual.
“Saving civilization is not a spectator sport,” says Brown. “We have reached a point in the deteriorating relationship between us and the earth’s natural systems where we all have to become political activists. Every day counts. We all have a stake in civilization’s survival.”
We all need to educate ourselves on environmental issues. For its part, the Earth Policy Institute is making Plan B 3.0 available for downloading free of charge from its Web site.

Part 1 Books 1 - 4

Part 2 Books 5 - 8