Green Options

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/presentation.htm

Earth Policy Institute (EPI) has created a PowerPoint presentation that summarizes Lester Brown’s latest book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. It quickly reviews the book’s key concepts using data, facts, and figures, including the Plan B blueprint for reducing net carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions 80 percent by 2020 to stabilize climate.

All are welcome to use this presentation and modify it to suit their needs. It is designed to be shared, so feel free to pass along the link to others who might be interested. We ask only that users appropriately credit EPI and the photographers, notably Yann Arthus-Bertrand, eminent French photographer and friend of EPI, whose works appear within.

The Brooklyn-based Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) has just announced its call for entries to the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. So if you’ve got a solution to the U.S. and global financial meltdowns, accelerating climate change, collapsing ecosystems and/or world poverty, the institute wants to hear it.

“We’re looking for comprehensive anticipatory design solutions that address multiple problems without creating new ones down the road — integrated strategies dealing with key social, economic, environmental, and cultural issues,” says Elizabeth Thompson, BFI’s executive director.

For many people, the world exists as a separate, objective whole to be exploited or polluted without any expense at the personal level. If anything, people wall themselves from the consequences of their actions.

Take for example, people dump trash everywhere without a trifle to the conscience. Or big corporate engage in activities aimed at boosting bottom lines without concern of damage inflicted to the earth.

The idea that the earth is an objectively existing place, separate from ourselves lies at the very heart of the environmental challenges that we face.

Humans might have ushered Earth into the Anthropocene, but we’d be unwise to ignore the fact that we’re always going to be living in the Age of Microbes, according to a new article in Microbiology Today. “Microbes will continue as climate engineers long after humans have burned that [...]