Brown has authored or co-authored 50 books. One of the world's most widely published authors, his books have appeared in some 40 languages. Among his earlier books are
Man, Land and Food,
World Without Borders, and
Building a Sustainable Society. His 1995 book
Who Will Feed China? challenged the official view of China’s food prospect, spawning hundreds of conferences and seminars. Over the years his books have influenced the thinking and actions of many world leaders.
For example, when asked by
Wired magazine about CNN founder Ted Turner's involvement with his ideas, he replied, "Ted is one of the world's most committed environmentalists. After he read the original
Plan B in 2003, he called and said he wanted to distribute it to the world's key decision makers -- heads of state, cabinet members, Fortune 500 CEOs. He distributed ... 3,569 copies ... with a note saying 'I read this. It's important stuff. You need to read it too.' "
In May 2001, he founded the Earth Policy Institute to provide a vision and a road map for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy. In November 2001, he published
Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, which was hailed by E.O. Wilson as “an instant classic.” His most recent book is
Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2009).
Who Will Feed China?
In writing this book which was published in 1995. He highlights the pressure on world resources as more countries, especially China, become developed. He writes, "To feed its 1.2 billion people, China may soon have to import so much grain that this action could trigger unprecedented rises in world food prices." He explains some of the dilemmas they face: water is becoming scarce; 80 percent of their grain crop requires irrigation; growing cities are erasing cropland for industrialization; food production is stagnating; yet China's population increases "the equivalent of a new Beijing each year."
He describes China's growth and its effect on the world economy: "China's rising food prices will become the world's rising food prices. China's land scarcity will become everyone's land scarcity. And water will affect the entire world. China's dependence on massive imports, like the collapse of the world's fisheries, will be a wake-up call that we are colliding with the earth's capacity to feed us." One of his conclusions is that the new age of food scarcity "could well lead us to redefine national security away from military preparedness and toward maintaining adequate food supplies."
In the book's foreword, he writes, "Although I was aware that the Chinese were sensitive to the notion that they might need to import large amounts of grain, I had not realized just how sensitive the issue is. All the leaders of China today are survivors of the massive famine that occurred in 1959-1961 in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward -- a famine that claimed a staggering 30 million lives. If this many died, then as many as a couple hundred million more people could have been on the edge of starvation."
Outgrowing the Earth
This book, published in 2004, is a more current description of "the ways in which human demands are outstripping the earth's natural capacities, and how the resulting environmental damage is undermining food production on a global scale." He documents a number of vital changes that are affecting civilization today:
- Crop production is suffering "due to global warming" and describes how just a few degrees of increased average temperature will lead to a 10 percent decline in grain yields.
- Water scarcity and shortages, such as from "aquifer depletion" may be as important as oil depletion. He states, "There are substitutes for oil, but none for water."
- Decreasing cropland in key countries like China create serious dilemmas, "as densely populated countries extend their reliance on automobiles, they pave scarce cropland for roads, highways, and parking lots."
- Population growth rates, while slowing mostly in the developed countries, is still increasing by 76 million each year. Again, he presents another dilemma: "In a world where the historical rise in land productivity has slowed by half since 1990, grain production is falling behind population."
His conclusion is that our "ability to provide enough food is at stake, and depends not only on efforts within agriculture but also having an energy policy that stabilizes climate, a worldwide effort to raise water productivity, the evolution of land-efficient transport systems, and population policies..."
Plan B 4.0
Plan B 4.0 - Mobilizing to Save Civilization, published in 2009, is a continuation of the critical themes covered by his earlier books. The book is written as a final warning call for the leaders of the world to begin "mobilizing to save civilization" and stresses even more that time is of the essence.
At California State University, Chico, Plan B has become "required reading for all incoming freshmen." The university says that it is being used in many courses in History, English, Philosophy, Communications, Political and Social Science.