Plan B 4.0 Blog

After reading chapters 1-3 and 10 in Lester Brown’s Plan B4.0, there were a couple quotes that really caught by attention and interested me.  One of these quotes is “For farmers surrounding the city, the price of water far exceeds the value of the crops they can produce with it.”  I couldn’t believe that water for farmers costs this much.  When I think of water, I think of something that is available to everyone in the country without question.  How can it be legal for farmers in America to struggle to obtain water?!  For a world that is covered by for water than land, you would think that water would be one of the cheapest things to obtain, but this could not be farther from the truth.  

Another quote that caught my attention is “Climate change poses a threat to our civilization that has no precedent. A business-as-usual energy policy is no longer an option. At issue is whether we can quickly transition from fossil fuels to renewables. If we wait until massive climate change forces us to make the shift, it may be too late.”  Fossil fuels are running out in a hurry, so we must find another source of energy that doesn’t cost a fortune for everyone soon.  Battery-powered cars are becoming more and more prevalent every year, which is a huge step in the right direction.  Options like this are expensive now, but the longer they are out, the cheaper they will become.  With all of the increases in technology in recent years, I am very confident that even once fossil fuels completely run out, we will not have to depend on them as a primary source of energy.  

The last quote that really interested me is “As noted in Chapter 7, the additional external funding needed to achieve universal primary education in developing countries that require help, for instance, is conservatively estimated at $10 billion per year.”  It blows my mind to think that it would cost that much just to educate the whole world.  Here in the United States, we take for granted out education system and how it is almost forced on you.  Other places such as some African nations, formal education doesn’t exist.  The thought of having public education available to anyone who wants it is unheard in these kind of places.  With a cost of $10 billion a year, this is why universal primary education is almost an unattainable goal to have.