Center to host presentation by founder of Earth Policy Institute

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Center for the Environment at Catawba College will host a special presentation Nov. 10 by the founder of Worldwatch Institute and current founder and president of Earth Policy Institute.
Lester Brown, called “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” by the Washington Post, will speak at 7 p.m. in Omwake-Dearborn Chapel on the Catawba campus. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Special seating will be reserved for Friends of the Center.
The presentation, “Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” is based on Brown’s latest book by the same name. He notes that civilization is in trouble and “business-as-usual is no longer a viable option.”
His plan calls for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its goals include stabilizing the climate, eradicating poverty and restoring the earth’s damaged ecosystems.
“It’s decision time,” Brown says. “Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we have to make a choice. We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that mobilizes to save civilization. Our generation will make the decision, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”
Brown began his agricultural career growing tomatoes in southern New Jersey during high school and college. After earning a degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University in 1955, he lived six months in rural India where he learned about the food/population issue. He joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service in 1959.
In 1974 Brown founded Worldwatch Institute, the first research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental issues. He has authored or co-authored 50 books, and his works have been translated into 40 languages. He founded the Earth Policy Institute in 2001 to provide “a vision and a road map for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy,” according to his biography. The same year he published Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, which the renowned E. O. Wilson called “an instant classic.”
Brown has received a host of awards, including 23 honorary degrees, a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1987 United Nations’ Environmental Prize, and the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his “exceptional contributions to solving global environmental problems.”In recent years, he received the Presidential Medal of Italy and the Borgstrom Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. He holds degrees from Rutgers University, the University of Maryland and Harvard University.
To register, contact Amanda Lanier at alhooker@catawba.edu or call 704-637-4295.