Q: How do you maintain your optimism?
Social change comes rapidly and unexpectedly sometimes.
The Berlin wall coming down was essentially a bloodless political revolution in Eastern Europe. There were no articles in political science journals in the '80s that said, hey, keep an eye on Eastern Europe, big change is coming there. But one morning people woke up and realized the great socialist experiment was over.
What if we'd been sitting at this table 10 years ago and I had said, "I think that the tobacco industry is going to cave"? It was the most powerful lobby in Washington. It controlled committee chairs. But there was a steady flow of articles on smoking and health over a period of a few decades, along with persistent denial. The industry just lost its credibility.
The two things looming large are oil -- security of supply, disruptions around the world, a vague notion that China's out there now competing for it, the price of gasoline, the price of home heating oil -- and the climate issue, the steady drumbeat. Every week or two another major study comes out, nailing down another piece of the climate puzzle. People are beginning to feel uncertain now.
Q: Is it frustrating to you that people seem to need human enemies, human bogeymen?
To a very substantial degree that's a cultivated anxiety. It doesn't exist in Europe, or elsewhere, the way it does here. They're concerned, but they're not preoccupied with it. And if I had to make a list of the top 10 threats to our future in the world, terrorism would be on the list, but it would be in the lower part of the list.
All this leads me to sense that we're moving toward one of those thresholds that are hard to define, at least until you cross them. Among the manifestations are the 100 mayors -- maybe more than that now -- who've signed on to the Kyoto Protocol. This is a grassroots political revolution.
I don't think we realize yet what Katrina is. Most of us had assumed the first climate refugees would be from Tuvalu and the Maldive Islands. But it's the U.S. Gulf Coast. There are a few hundred thousand environmental refugees there -- climate refugees.
One of the lessons of Katrina is how grossly unprepared we were for something that could easily be worse next time, or happen two places simultaneously next time.
The interesting thing about this current administration is they don't seem to be interested in governing, in trying to make things work. FEMA's a classic case, symbolic of this entire government.
Q: Plan B seems deliberately apolitical.
I didn't want it to be a political tract. But I could happily have weighed in on [politics]. When societies are in trouble, sometimes they have a Nero and sometimes they have a Churchill. One of the questions is how this administration will respond to the mounting pressure to do something about these issues.
However little competence they've shown in other areas, they've certainly demonstrated an amazing talent for avoiding moments of accountability. It's like performance art.
It's a public-relations operation with a hidden agenda.
Q: Does anybody know the concrete political, media, and advocacy steps needed to pull off a fundamental transition to a sustainable economy?
In order for these changes to occur, we have to cross a social threshold, and societies don't cross those easily or quickly. Things have to build up enough steam ... and then suddenly it just goes.
And when you cross them, it's not always clear what the response will be; there's enough energy driving things that it can go in many directions. You can't plan that change. You can offer a new model for an automotive fuel economy, and these sorts of things, so when the time comes there'll be some sense of what to do.
Q: It's at least as possible that Americans will react with retrenchment, defensiveness, trade barriers, and military buildup -- an island mentality.
Right. It could happen that way. The reason for doing a book like Plan B is to make it clear that we're all in this together. If our civilization goes down, it's not going to be pieces of it here and there -- the whole thing's going to go down.
What's happening with environmental issues in the growing nation of China? What actions does Brown suggest for individuals who are concerned about the environment? And how have environmental issues affected the political climate in the United States? See page 4.
