State of the World 1999: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society

by Lester Brown (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $4.38

  State of the World 1999 presents evidence of the birth of an entirely new economy, an Environmental Revolution that may be as sweeping as the Industrial Revolution that put us on our present unsustainable course. The authors argue that, far from being too costly to consider, the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy represents the greatest investment opportunity in history. In country after country, community after community, people are making the changes needed to shift from today's fossil fuel-based, auto-centric, throwaway economy to a solar/hydrogen-powered, bicycle/rail-centered, reuse/recycle economy--an economy that will satisfy human needs while preserving the Earth's ecosystems.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $27.60

  The Worldwatch Institute's research team tackles the great challenge of our rapidly globalizing world: how to use our political systems to manage the difficult and complex relationships between the global economy and the Earth's ecosystems. This book provides concerned citizens and national leaders with an analysis of threatening environmental trends - from the growing pollution of groundwater to the increasing toll of unnatural disasters to the effects of the developing world's staggering 2 trillion dollar debt - and emerging solutions to turn those trends around.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.28

  The most difficult challenge the world faces is: how to build an environmentally sustainable economy before we do permanent damage to the natural systems that support our global civilization. From the thinning of the Arctic sea ice to the invasion of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, State of the World 2001 shows how the economic boom of the 1990s has damaged natural systems. The increasingly visible evidence of environmental deterioration is only the tip of a much more dangerous problem: the growing inequities in wealth and income between countries and within countries, inequities that will generate enormous social unrest and pressure for change. The award-winning researchers of the Worldwatch Institute argue that to solve the earth's environmental problems, we must simultaneously address the problems of the world's poor peoples. The book demonstrates that there are ways of rapidly improving the environment and meeting the material needs of the 6 billion individuals on earth. More than 10 million people have already benefited from small loans from micro-credit programmes like those pioneered by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and BancSol in Bolivia, and farmers in developing countries are converting to organic agriculture to grow organic foods for export to industrial countries.