Lester Brown Puts Cost of Saving Planet at $190 Billion

What would it cost to wipe out world poverty, guarantee universal health care, stabilise population growth and roll back the ravages of global warming?

About $190 billion a year, or the equivalent of a third of US annual military expenditure, a prominent environmental economist says in a new book.
“Once you accept that climate change, population growth, spreading water shortages, rising food prices etcetera are threats to our security, it changes your whole way of thinking about how you use public resources,” Lester Brown told Reuters in an interview.

From eradicating adult illiteracy to restoring fisheries and stabilising water tables, the head of the Earth Policy Institute think tank in Washington calculates the cost of saving civilisation in a new edition of his best-selling “Plan B”.

The $190 billion price tag compares with $1.2 trillion that world governments spent on military budgets in 2006. The United States splurged the most with $560 billion.

Describing a planet on the brink of environmental meltdown, Brown calls for a “great mobilisation” to fight climate change, equivalent to the Allied wartime effort to beat Nazi Germany.

Planet Ark