Placing civilization on a diet.

• Author: Brown, Lester R.
• Position: EYE ON ECOLOGY

GIVEN THE ENORMOUS environmental and social challenges faced by our early 21st-century civilization, one of the questions I hear most frequently is, "What can I do?" People often expect me to talk about lifestyle changes, recycling newspapers, or conserving on light bulbs. These are essential, but they are not nearly enough. We now need to restructure the global economy--and quickly. This means becoming politically active to work for the needed changes. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.

Inform yourself; read about the issues. If you want to know what happened to earlier civilizations that found themselves in environmental trouble, read Collapse by Jared Diamond, or A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright, or The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. If you find these materials useful in helping you think about what to do, share them with others.

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Pick an issue that is meaningful to you, such as tax restructuring, banning inefficient light bulbs, phasing out coal-fired power plants, or advocating for streets in your community that are pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly--or join a group that is committed to stabilizing world population. What could be more exciting and rewarding than getting involved personally in frying to save civilization?

You may want to proceed on your own, but you also could organize a group of like-minded individuals. You might begin by talking with others to help select an issue or issues--and, by all means, communicate with your elected representatives on the city council or the national legislature. Aside from the particular issue that you choose to work on, there are two overriding policy challenges: restructuring taxes and reordering fiscal priorities. Write or e-mail your congressmen about the need to restructure by reducing income taxes and raising environmental taxes. Remind them that leaving costs off the books may offer a false sense of prosperity in the short run, but that it leads to collapse in the long run.

Let your political representatives know that a word spending more than one trillion dollars a year for military purposes simply is out of sync with reality--that the potential of a world at war is not the most serious threat to our future. Ask them if my proposed Plan B budget--an additional $187,000,000,000 a year for eradicating poverty, stabilizing population, and restoring the Earth--is an unreasonable expenditure to save civilization. Ask them if...