Earth Policy Institute

"The purpose of the Earth Policy Institute is to provide a vision of what a sustainable economy will look like and a plan for how to get from here to there."

As a librarian, I'm excited to see that their methods include the distribution of free information. For instance, they've made books such as Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester Brown available for download. I haven't had a chance to dig too deeply into the book, but I can already see that it's going to be an interesting and relevant read:

In agriculture we often look at how climate affects the food supply but not at how what we eat affects climate. While we understand rather well the link between climate change and the fuel efficiency of the cars we buy, we do not have a comparable understanding of the climate effect of various dietary options. Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin of the University of Chicago have addressed this issue. They begin by noting that the energy used in the food economy to provide the typical American diet and that used for personal transportation are roughly the same. In fact, the range between the more and less carbon-intensive transportation options and dietary options is each about 4 to 1. With cars, the Toyota Prius, a gas-electric hybrid, uses scarcely one fourth as much fuel as a Chevrolet Suburban SUV. Similarly with diets, a plant-based diet requires roughly one fourth as much energy as a diet rich in red meat. Shifting from a diet rich in red meat to a plant-based diet cuts greenhouse gas emissions as much as shifting from a Suburban SUV to a Prius.

Of course, this kind of thinking makes the Motor City uncomfortable. (In Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, Brown defines "the manufacture of internal combustion engines" as a "sunset industry.") But it's the kind of thinking Detroit will need in order to move forward into a sustainable future.