“The world now has the technologies and financial resources to
stabilize climate, eradicate poverty, stabilize population, restore the
economy’s natural support systems, and, above all, restore hope. The
United States, the wealthiest society that has ever existed, has the
resources and leadership to lead this effort.” -Lester Brown

World on the Edge, a just-released, 200-page book by Lester Brown, is important for many reasons.

For those who still don’t understand the depth, immediacy and urgency
of the climate crisis, World on the Edge makes that case clearly and
understandably with a wealth of hard information.

World makes the connections between that crisis and the other
civilizational crises that confront humankind today. The titles of the
book’s chapters dealing with these crises summarize them: Falling water
tables and shrinking harvests; Eroding soils and expanding deserts;
Rising temperatures, melting ice and food security; Environmental
refugees: the rising tide; and Mounting stresses, failing states.

For those who appreciate these realities, Brown’s latest book
contains a great deal of useful statistics and short summaries of
important reports and recent developments.

And perhaps most importantly, Brown explains how the world’s
governments and social movements can still avoid the looming threat of
worldwide catastrophe, on every continent, this century, if we act in
this decade with the degree of urgency required by our situation.

The Causes

Brown understands why we have reached this point of worldwide crisis:
“The vested interests of the fossil fuel and defense industries in
maintaining the status quo are strong.”

Elsewhere he writes about a large number of organizations which
“argue that what the world needs is not large corporations bringing
large-scale, highly mechanized, capital-intensive agriculture into these
countries, but international support for community-based farming,
centered around labor-intensive family farms that produce for local and
regional markets and that create desperately needed jobs.”

Regarding immigration, he writes that “maybe it is time for
governments to consider whether it might not be cheaper and far less
painful in human terms to treat the causes of migration rather than
merely respond to it. This means working with developing countries to
restore their economy’s natural support systems-the soils, the
grasslands, the forests-and it means accelerating the shift to smaller
families to help people break out of poverty. Treating symptoms instead
of causes is not good medicine. Nor is it good public policy.”