Summary Of Plan B 4.0 By Lester R Brown

Dr James Hansen’s argumentative essay, “A Solution to the Climate Problem,” discusses his premise that it is imperative for humankind to deal with carbon dioxide emissions, which he believes needs to be phased out by the mid-21st century. He begins with the current paradigm in government efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and claims that so far it has been a lot of talk and action in the other direction. Dr Hansen argues that while governments pay lip service to agreements such as the Kyoto Accord, they are going full steam ahead with projects that will result in increased carbon dioxide emissions, such as going forth with coal-fired power plants, coal-to-liquids, hydraulic fracturing, and tar sands oil extraction. Dr Hansen believes

By raising the animals, they seem to release more methane gas into the environment than what scientists thought. One way to fix this situation is to be a vegetarian, but only for about five days a month. We don’t have to be a full time vegetarian, but at the same time, this way of consuming meat can also improve our environment. We will be able to force the livestock industries to reduce their products, and therefore, we can reduce the amount of methane gas released into our environment. This practice is easy to do, and Thay also mentioned in his book that a lot of people have been practicing to be a vegetarian, and some of them claim that they will cut off at least 50 % of the meat they eat.

Scientist have proven that global climate change is a direct result of mankind and is not in fact caused by natural occurrences. In addition, Walsh agrees with recent studies that the raising of livestock might be the biggest impact humans have on the planet today. Nonetheless, this impact is nothing to be proud of when animal agriculture takes up 40 percent of our earth’s land alone, is the cause of the world’s methane emissions by up to 40 percent and even 66

Lester Browns Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization is one of a few books published that reveals in depth planning to ecological sustainability. Lester Brown is the President of a non-profit research organization titled “Earth Policy Institute,” which he founded in May of 2001. Mr. Brown has developed a four step plan to make the Earth a cleaner and better place. Throughout this paper we will be weighing the pros and cons of Lester Browns four step plan. Lester Brown’s plan has lots of upside but remember; nothing is free, everything produced has an opportunity cost. Mr. Brown is an intelligent human being, but fails to recognize the damage that can be made in producing “environmental-friendly” objects such as electric cars and windmills. It is also important to understand that every plan created for achieving ecological sustainability will have tremendous downsides. It is a good start, but humans are still decades, maybe even centuries away from creating the correct plan to achieve ecological sustainability. To understand the entirety of Lester Brown’s plan, you must break down each step individually. It is also important to comprehend that Lester’s results from each step could very well be correct but the process of each could do more harm than good.

Raising and consuming livestock is destroying our planet with animal agriculture accounting for over 19% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide generated from the production of meat is the biggest contributor, generating 30 kilograms of carbon dioxide for one kilogram of beef made.

Since climate change unfolds over long periods of time, we tend to overlook the dangerous outcomes; we focus and react to immediate, urgent events instead like our kids or bills. Although scientists have agreed that climate change has significantly altered the atmosphere, we still don’t have a majority of the population taking action. We need to restraint ourselves from using fossil-fuels and fracking before we reach an irreversible tipping point and to protect our way of life, our children, and future generations (Keya Chatterjee, Disruption video). Global warming is determining every aspect of our lives, and if we don’t acknowledge this environmental issue and take action, we will not live, we will die. Alternatively, a post-carbon environment is definitely within our grasp, with 100% renewable energy sources. A change to friendly energy doesn’t mean economic instability; we’ll still have job opportunities installing solar panels and wind turbines, for example. Although we need political will from world leaders, in order to establish this transition, we as individuals must take action and get

Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change; however, this fact goes unacknowledged by most people. Livestock and their byproducts produce monstrous amounts

It’s often argued that cows are the main source of our Methane emission, giving a strong argument to reduce, or even stop, our consumption of meat. In all actuality, only about six percent to seven percent of all greenhouse

The article Plan B written by Lester R. Brown, informs the readers the great effect of pollution on the earth. Lester goes into great detail on how humanity is using earth’s resources faster than earth can replenish it. One of the big issues Brown highlights in the article is the lack of food resource the humanity could face. The increase of CO2 gas released into the environment has caused the earth to grow much warmer causing lands and water resources to dry out. Causing the earth’s soil to no be able to grow food, this could become a great problem since the earth’s population keeps increasing. Leaving humanity with more people to feed but not enough resources to feed them with. The second part of the article is Brown’s “Plan

Brought up in the southern of China, I often heard about that people from there “eat anything with four limbs except tables, anything that flies except aero planes, and anything that swims except ships”. Nevertheless, I eat more fruit, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains but less meat to make careful choices for environmental protection. Similarly, Kathy Freston argues that animal agriculture is one of the top contributors to global warming. In her Huffington Post selection “Vegetarian Is the New Prius,” Freston lists how many emissions of greenhouse gases people make when they eat meat and illustrates the consumption of tree in animal agriculture. She effectively convinces her audiences that the livestock results in the most serious environmental problems and encourages people to lead a greener diet to protect our environment. However, ardent craving, poor health, and perpetual hassle and cost prevent all Americans from being vegetarian.

Introduction (Attention Step): What do you think is the greatest cause of emission pollution? What do you believe is harming our planet? Well if you guessed that fossil fuel emissions are the biggest emission polluters, then you are completely wrong (attention getter). Animal Agriculture is actually the number one Greenhouse Gas emitter in the planet. Yes, cow farts are destroying the environment. It sounds crazy, but ever since the mid 60’s, agriculture associations have been spreading across the Americas and dominated the industry. The most destructive of all Ag corps are Livestock Corporation. These associations include IBP, Conagra, Perdue, Farmland National Beef, Cargill, etc … Animal Agriculture is effecting every single person in this room because we all breathe in the same air, drink the same water, and eat the same (credibility). The buildup of Animal Agriculture is a great destruction to our planet and our species because it is creating

Anna Lappé’s book, Diet for a Hot Planet, discusses the impact that meat consumption has on the planet and our environment. It discusses how the global food system is a major contributor to climate change, producing as much as one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. She writes about how the way we farm, what we eat, and how our food gets to our tables all

Meat and dairy productions’ livestock is responsible for over 51% of the greenhouse gas emissions, that could be cut by over 70% if we changed our diets to vegan or vegetarian. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the animals on the farms produce over 500 million ton of manure each

One of the biggest controversies with livestock production is that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that get released into the atmosphere. Its assumed that cars produce most if not all the greenhouse gas emissions however livestock has a big say in air pollution. According to Cassandra Brooks, writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, 18 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock production. This is nearly 20% and can be greatly reduced if people reduced their demand for meat. The Environmental Working Group used a tangible variable for Americans stating “if everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million

The impacts of livestock on global climate change are important to the health of the ecosystem because it causes the average global temperature to increase. Livestock contributes to the majority of methane emitted into the atmosphere because of the feces it produces. The growing population increase is not helpful to this matter because as a result, a demand of food arises. This demand for food also includes the demand for livestock because it is appropriate for the human diet. “Meat production is to double from 229 million tonnes in [2000] to 465 million tonnes in 2050” (McMichael et al. 1259). The methane emission rate is bound to increase because it is “dependent upon the population size of the [livestock], their productivity, and [handling system]” (Jose et al. 3).