Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures

by Lester R. Brown

How human demands are outstripping the earth's capacities―and what we need to do about it. Ever since 9/11, many have considered al Queda to be the leading threat to global security, but falling water tables in countries that contain more than half the world's people and rising temperatures worldwide pose a far more serious threat. Spreading water shortages and crop-withering heat waves are shrinking grain harvests in more and more countries, making it difficult for the world's farmers to feed 70 million more people each year. The risk is that tightening food supplies could drive up food prices, destabilizing governments in low-income grain-importing countries and disrupting global economic progress. Future security, Brown says, now depends on raising water productivity, stabilizing climate by moving beyond fossil fuels, and stabilizing population by filling the family planning gap and educating young people everywhere.

If Osama bin Laden and his colleagues succeed in diverting our attention from the real threats to our future security, they may reach their goals for reasons that even they have not imagined.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Climate Change, Food

258 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Lester Russel Brown is an American environmentalist, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day calls him "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."

In the mid-1970s, Brown helped pioneer the concept of sustainable development, during a career that started with farming. As early as 1978, in his book The Twenty-Ninth Day, he was already warning of "the various dangers arising out of our manhandling of nature...by overfishing the oceans, stripping the forests, turning land into desert." In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources.”

He has been the recipient of many prizes and awards, including, the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his "contributions to solving global environmental problems."

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Aaron Redman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lester Brown's books are chock full of data and graphs. Outgrowing the Earth gives a good overview of the current (depending on edition) situation for food and the various threats to our capacity to feed ourselves. Yet I feel that Lester Brown has called "wolf" a few too many times for his warnings to be credible. He has for decades been suggesting we are on the edge of a food crisis which has yet to really emerge. I think the challenges to our food system are real and critical for our future, but there is a lot of unappreciated flexibility, adaptability and resilience even in the current, deeply flawed system.

Check out my reviews of Sustainability books

[The Capital Institute · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brown writes in this book that the economy is growing far too quickly for our planet to meet the economy’s natural resource demands. Most prominently, climate change coupled with unprecedented and unsustainable consumption of resources is a serious threat to food security. Brown presents three steps needed to correct this problem: raise water productivity, cut carbon emissions and stabilize the population.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Includes a smattering of statistics, which may require one to stop and process all the numbers into context but, it was educational. Bottom line: food shortage crisis is impending! He provides some of his ideas on solutions.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though this book is now a couple years old (2004 I think)I still found it to be vitally important to understanding the economic impact of climate change, growing population and falling water tables. Lester Brown writes like a teacher, and he teaches well.

[Tom Gauthier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of statistics about conventional food production world-wide, exposing some very worrisome trends.

[Joel Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

chock full of troubling stats. a little repetitive, but an informative read.