We asked Lester Brown
Thursday, September 11th, 2008…two questions. The first was, after hearing him talk about the greatness of alternative energies, coming up with a lot of numbers and mentioning over and over again that we have to learn to think in a new way - referring to his new book Plan B 3.0 - Mobilizing to save Civilization:
‘Mr.Brown, what is your position towards the term Anthropocentrism?’
After a short circle about our impact on the planet and admitting that his argueing stems from an anthropocentic viewpoint, he summed up: ‘I don’t know anything else.’
(Well: …: Ecocentrism is the alternative world view to anthropocentrism….)
The second question we were able to ask after the open discussion, first enquiring if there were certain points he would not like to discuss in public, upon which he assured us that there would be nothing he would hold back. And so we asked:
‘Mr.Brown, why don’t you mention the current money system as one of the key factors we would have to investigate and change? It is neither talked about in your book, nor do you address this issue in public.’
Lester Brown, after a short circle of talk: ‘I don’t know enough about it.’
(There we go again….: ‘One of the world’s most influential thinkers’ doesn’t know enough about the money system. Interesting. Here is a quote from Henry Ford: “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.“)
Please read an excerpt of Lester Browns’ biography, posted on the website of the Earth Policy Institute, which he is one of the founders of:
The Washington Post called Lester Brown “one of the world’s most influential thinkers.” The Telegraph of Calcutta refers to him as “the guru of the environmental movement.” In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources.”
Brown started his career as a farmer, growing tomatoes in southern New Jersey with his younger brother during high school and college. Shortly after earning a degree in agricultural science from Rutgers University in 1955, he spent six months living in rural India where he became intimately familiar with the food/population issue. In 1959 Brown joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service as an international agricultural analyst.
Brown earned masters degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland and in public administration from Harvard. In 1964, he became an adviser to Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman on foreign agricultural policy. In 1966, the Secretary appointed him Administrator of the department’s International Agricultural Development Service. In early 1969, he left government to help establish the Overseas Development Council….
I am writing this, because I would like to encourage you to make your own Plan B 3.0. Mr. Brown is doing his job and I’m sure he is a very important dynamic in his environment. But in my book he is not proposing a new way of thinking. As he said: His viewpoint is man-centered. And that is what brought us where we are at. Also: if a person working for governmental institutions and who is called ‘one of the most influential thinkers of our time’, claims that he does not know enough about the monetary system, we should get suspicious, I think.
We met Mr. Brown on the 1st of September at the GTZ in Berlin.
