The planet’s scarcest resource is time

In this eleventh video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, analyst, author and founder of the Earth Policy Institute Lester Brown discusses how unprepared the world really is for the growing effects of climate change. “Economists doing supply and demand projections are largely unaware” of the scale of the resource crises facing the world, Brown says, and “food is going to be the weak link for our civilization as it was for so many earlier civilizations.”

Most importantly, Brown emphasizes, is that we find a way to stabilize the Earth’s population, climate and aquifers, which help provide water to many people in the world. “Many resources are becoming scarce but none more scarce than time,” Brown says, and confronting peak oil and climate change demands immediate action. Already, eighteen countries are overpumping their aquifers, and few realize that in the event of a crisis, the US food supply would run out in three days.

“We need a mobilization at wartime speed on a wartime scale. Just fine-tuning this situation is not going to do it,” Brown says.

Go here to learn more about “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate,” and to see the other videos in the series.

—Kevin Gosztola