Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization...

[ForexReviewsCentral]

Thanks for sharing this video. Its full of useful info.

[cosmoculture]

@DrCruel, Is there anything "crooked" that environmentalists done to your personally or the world that you could point out? Just curious were you are coming from.

[DrCruel]

@cosmoculture Mostly my experience in dealing with them in academia. The bait-and-switch business doesn't impress me either - for example, I remember when environmentalists were trying to tie the same causal agents to a postulated "global cooling over two decades ago. I also find these environmentalists just happen to be overwhelmingly pro-Marxist or pro-socialist.

They just have a really bad track record, given their predictions over the years, making me fairly skeptical of this "movement".

[DrCruel]

Why make it about ideologies? Ask the person who started the discourse with this leadoff:

"The western economic model will no longer work for anyone."

To be fair, I think all that Marxist nonsense is simply window dressing. No one with an inch of common sense believes in it anymore. I think the "environmental movement" is little more than a kleptocratic scam. They've been deliberately wrong, over and over and over again, and each time pull a profit because of it. I'm sick of these crooks.

[shadezofgrayfulness]

I don't know how anyone can not get at least SOMETHING of value from Brown! The signs of resource abuse are everywhere, and so very obvious. It's just a consideration of alternatives and options. It's just "Plan B", not "Plan 9 From Outer Space"!

[wineblue2]

Great information but a shame the audio/video is not sync'd.

[patrickcorliss]

@wineblue2

I think that's a YouTube problem. I've seen it many times now.

[stevengerrard871]

this man definitly deserves a novel award!! , i went to mexico's conference that he gave and it was awesome

[acuaman42]

Win and solar will never substitute oil, gas and carbon. Mr. Brown is wrong on that. What we have now to substitute them is nuclear energy, we like it or not and in the future will be ZERO POINT ENERGY. Mr. Brown wake up.

[ciceromatrix]

permaculture is the word of order. please let it be known

[Drastam]

this is a great man giving a great speech the whole world needs to hear

thank you for posting

[Drastam]

The western economic model will no longer work for anyone.

some like the commenter below say we have too many people...i wonder what solution they would offer. To continue with our current model the population will have to be adjusted down...radically. Some believe a significant 'die-back' is required.

I say we need a new economic model of production and distribution. We need to build a new integrated, rational and humane global civilisation.

If you agree tell people you know.

[DrCruel]

@Drastam I agree with one thing - if it's the intention of the environmental movement to drastically reduce the population of the planet ("for our own good"), they would be hard put to find an ideology better suited to that cause than Marxism. That might be why so many environmentalists are oriented with the Left.

Of course for the rest of us, who do not think of human beings as a form of uncontrolled vermin, environmentalists are a bunch of loonies.

[Drastam]

@DrCruel Environmentalists are not loonies. We are facing environmental catastrophe in the decades ahead unless we radically rewire how our societies function. We can do this without genocide.

It is false to equate environmentalism with genocide. Capitalism is the problem.

[DrCruel]

Environmentalists have been loonies since the first Earth Day. They have been repeatedly predicting doom and gloom - invariably with some sort of commercial behavior being named as the culprit - with the only possible solution for saving our lives being some scheme that transfers lots of wealth from the economic sector into the hands of environmentalists. Even is their theory is nutters, lots of cash has to be set aside for study grants, just in case.

Hmm. Maybe they aren't loonies after all.

[Drastam]

@DrCruel Hoe about the current transfer of wealth from the citizens of the world to the financial capitalists?

You seem to have your head in the sand re the environment. Are you of the opinion we can just keep on consuming and dumping indefinitely?

[DrCruel]

@Drastam You mean, through the mechanism of purchase? What then, of the tremendous growth of the economy of the very Marxist PRC?

I don't have my head in the sand in regards the environment. I also do not have an ideological stake in regards my opinions, which perhaps is why I can see the detrimental impact of Marxist collectivist policies on the environment, while so many environmentalists can be so deliberately blind about it.

[thisguy331]

@DrCruel You're ridiculous dude. Lester Brown knows what he's talking about and if you watch his documentary Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization you would get a better look at his ideas than this video. Even so, he's not promoting some kind of scheme to get money to environmentalists, he's calling for all of us to change our current ways of thinking and work together to stop the damage being done to the planet.

[DrCruel]

@thisguy331 Yeah, sure. I'm ridiculous. Not Paul Ehrlich. Not this new "Lester Brown" kook. Not any of the hysterical pronouncements and schemes of environmentalists over the past several decades. It is I, who dare question those who have been repeately wrong (and to their profitable benefit) that is "ridiculous".

Now I'm told that the economic policy of allowing people to own property, and the buying of stock and investment in business enterprises, is the "culprit". Of what? Prosperity?

[Psychentist]

@DrCruel :

Kook? Ok, Doc, write 50 books on why all the environmentalists are full of crap. Make sure everything you say in the books can be tested and verified, make sure all of your references are airtight, and then we will consider your opinion as equal to this "kook."

[DrCruel]

@Psychentist Tell you what. After I've been bone-headedly (and often deliberately) wrong, over and over and over again, for over half a century, after then hypocritically pretending to never have been wrong while cloaking myself with the mystique of pseudo-science, after I try to dress up the corpse of Marxism in green, tehn you can call me a "kook" all you like - and I'll even be happy about it.

"Airtight" he says. What a laugh. Do you really think we all have a memory of less than a decade?

[shadezofgrayfulness]

@DrCruel Name-calling & certitude make me wonder. And whenever, in the back-and-forth of rhetoric, I see strawmen trotted out (like turning the environmental debate into one about Marxism) it discredits the dissenter. Why make it about ideologies? In "Eco-economics", Brown quotes former Esso North Sea & Norway V.P, Øystien Dahle: "Socialism collapsed because it didn't allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it doesn't allow prices to tell the ecological truth."

[thisguy331]

@DrCruel If you would do some actual research on what he's saying you might learn something. He criticizes these things in the way they're currently being done. Big business doesn't care much about the environment or using and getting resources in a sustainable way, they waste a lot and harm the environment. That's what he's criticizing and he wants us to do it in a more sustainable way. You can believe he's doing this for personal profit, but he's not. Look at his past you'll see.

[DrCruel]

@thisguy331 So now it's my "ignorance" that makes me skeptical of environmentalists. I need to uncritically accept their flawed reasoning if I want to get "educated".

Oh boy. Here we go again.

These eco-scares change every generation, with old ones being quickly forgotten. I won't likely be alive when the next eco-scare comes around. The damage to the West's industrial economy has already been done, so do what you like.

Good luck with trying to convince the Chinese Marxists. Have fun.

[Sleeko11]

"Rescuing a planet under stress and civilization"....ahhh NO! More like ..Rescuing a planet under stress FROM civilization...

There's just way too many people.

[p0procket]

A very scary individual in a very scary time. Here is another of the long list of people using environment politics to gather power for global govermental control of the economy and the people. Interesting that he uses the fall of the Berlin wall and discrediting of the planned economies in the Eastern bloc - yet he is advocating we can plan the whole world economy through governent. It's dangerous and its B.S. but I'm afraid it is likely inevitable.

[robdeschutter]

Really, this guy look like a power-hungry manipulative dictator to you...?

How about discrediting any of the statistics or analysis he makes through rational argument. That would be refreshing.

[Drastam]

@p0procket Of course its inevitable. Unregulated capitalism will destroy the planet if let.

[DrCruel]

@Drastam Right. And regulation invariably means taking lots of money away from them, and transferring those funds into the hands of "proper people" to sort it all out for us. By force if necessary.

Coinicidence, that the countries with the absolute worst problems with industrial pollution and environmental degradation are ones that had or still have Marxist governments in charge.

[Drastam]

@DrCruel Does that mean America has a Marxist government? After all it is one of the top environmental degraders.

[DrCruel]

@Drastam It is not, but is billed as such. For example, there is nothing in the West to compare with the ruin of the Caspian Sea, or Chernobyl.

In fact, in part because of strict envirnomental alws in the US, much of the US manufacturing industry has moved to mainland China, where the PRC has virtually no environmental laws. The US steel, jewelry and textile industry, for example, have virtually disappeared in the US.

[loverofmudkip]

Brown, blows your mind away. I have to thank my macroeconomics teacher for introducing me to him, this vid is awesome thanks so much for posting it. It should have millions of views.

[blueguntwo]

Yes we can! Each awakened person awaken at least ten people each year. Those who love marketing awaken a hundred or more. The awakening is being more and more content with less and less. The key is contentedness. Integrating the rational mind with the divine happiness felt by ascetics. Physician heal thyself! Use networking to create the ecomodel society. Working together makes it happen. Yes we can. Pass it on.

[BWBookWorm]

It may be unfair to judge Brown on this one-hour lecture. While he is right in pointing out the primary and paramount problem is energy and paints a clear link between oil and corn, I am disturbed by his singling out wind energy as the primary remedy. He cited isolated examples which cannot be practically replicated all over the globe. It helps, but hardly the ultimate solution.

[postpeakman]

There is not going to be a "one size fits all" solution, the answer will be whatever works for each region.

The world is getting bigger again.

[EchosideProductions]

The people who are looking for authoritative info without having to pay for college tuition appreciate it immensely! ;-)

[namutsa]

Made my account especially to thank you for the video.

Inspiring, dramatically truthful and represents important ideas for the future.

Thanks for sharing again!

[esaman]

number of views is inversely proportional to the importance of a video.

It makes me sad.

[postpeakman]

I have made this same comment on one of the Hubbert lecture videos.

Have patience, "peak everything" [props Richard Heinberg] is still under the radar, most people are still more concerned about America's Next Top Model...

People who looked at me like I was talking about the invaders from Venus a year ago when I brought up resource depletion - have a lot more patience for me now.