Tuesday, 30 January 2007, 13.00-14.45
European Parliament, Brussels

During the 40 years since the birth of the modern environmental movement, there is a growing recognition that action has to be taken. Nevertheless the actions taken thus far have not succeeded in reversing the deterioration of the economy’s environmental support systems. The forests are shrinking, deserts are expanding, water tables are falling, fisheries are collapsing, temperatures are rising, ice is melting, and sea level is rising. The existing fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy simply will not sustain economic progress. The challenge now is to restructure the global economy, shifting from the old economy to a new one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles. The exiting thing is we can see glimpses of the new economy beginning to emerge here and there around the world.

In 1974 Lester Brown (Washington) founded the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org ) and became its President. In 2001 he founded as well the Earth Policy Institute (www.earthpolicy.org ). With more than 50 books (some of them translated in more than 40 languages) he became one of the world’s most widely published authors. He is one of the global thinkers who links analyses with proposals for concrete action.

As he is invited as a guest speaker at the Davos World Economic Forum, he has agreed to stop-over in Brussels to share with us his latest thinking on Plan B, his alternative to Plan 1, which is business as usual.

MEPs Hiltrud Breyer, Rebecca Harms, Marie Anne Isler Béguin, Claude Turmes

To facilitate the organisation, please confirm your participation via fax (02-284.9572) or email. If you need an entrance badge for the EP, please include your date of birth and address (required by the EP security) and be at 12.45 at the entrance Spinelli in the Rue Wiertz. During the debate, free sandwiches and drinks will be offered.