Earth Policy Institute

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Earth Policy Institute is an environmental organization based in Washington DC in the United States.

The goal of the Earth Policy Institute is to raise public awareness to the point where it will support an effective public response to the threats posed by continuing population growth, global climate change, the loss of plant and animal species, and the many other trends that are adversely affecting the Earth.

The purpose of the Earth Policy Institute is to provide a vision of what an environmentally sustainable economy will look like, a roadmap of how to get from here to there, and an ongoing assessment of this effort, of where progress is being made and where it is not.

The institute sends out articles called Eco-Economy Updates and Indicators to the media and the general public on a free low-volume e-mail listserv. It has released the following books:

Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth. The purpose of Eco-Economy is to describe the new economy, to provide a vision of what it will look like, how it will work, and how we get from here to there (See Table of Contents). The eco-economy is designed to mesh with the Earth’s ecosystem instead of destroying it. The book contains detailed descriptions of the policy instruments, such as tax shifting and eco-labeling, which will be at the center of the restructuring process. Currently being published in 18 languages, Eco-Economy is the Institute’s flagship publication. Pulitzer Prize winner, E.O. Wilson, called it "an instant classic." TheGlobalist.com named it one of the Top Ten Books (in the world) in 2001. The Japanese edition was rated the number one recommended translation by Asahi Shimbun.

The Earth Policy Reader. In scores of countries, converging ecological deficits are undermining local economies on a scale that has no precedent. In The Reader, Lester Brown, Janet Larsen, and Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts examine the economic costs of these ecological deficits and assess progress in building an eco-economy.

Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. Our modern civilization is in trouble. We have created a bubble economy, one whose output is artificially inflated by overconsuming the earth's natural capital. Nowhere is the bubble economy more evident than in the food sector where the world grain harvest has been inflated by overpumping aquifers, a practice that virtually guarantees a future drop in production when aquifers are depleted. Plan B is a way of sustaining economic progress worldwide, an alternative to continuing environmental deterioration and eventual economic decline.

Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures. Lester Brown documents the ways that human demands are outstripping the earth's natural capacities-and how the resulting environmental damage is undermining food production. He also outlines the steps needed to secure future food supplies.

Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. A major expansion and update to Brown's best-selling Plan B. Here he outlines a plan, a budget, and a timetable for rescuing our twenty-first century civilization. The plan includes eradicating poverty, stabilizing population, protecting and restoring soils, forests, rangelands, and fisheries, and conserving the earth's biological diversity.