The twenty-ninth day : accommodating human needs and numbers to the earth's resources /

In terse reportorial style, Lester Brown has painted a stark and panoramic picture of the major global issues of soaring population and pollution rates, diminishing returns in agriculture and energy, and the hard choices these intractable facts demand. Brown, author of several books on global problems and president of the Worldwatch Institute, makes a well-documented case for worldwide belt-tightening and, particularly, for a radical change in the profligate lifestyle of the wealthy West. Technology must focus on alternate sources of energy; nations must rein population growth; fisheries, forests, and farmlands must be conserved before we exceed nature's ""carrying capacities."" Brown is neither optimist nor pessimist: he is a realist who, having marshalled his facts, maintains that we are knocking our heads against global limits to growth. If we neglect global planning, more drastic Malthusian solutions will be forced upon us. Our only choice, then, is the form this ""inevitable accommodation"" will take. The book is an excellent survey; each chapter serves as a summary of a particular issue, from an analysis of our obsolete economic theories to an assessment of the impact of the ""Green Revolution."" Although it breaks no new ground--and its entrenched position is not unassailable--the book's collective presentation of global problems clarifies the interconnections among them, and the bibliography is a valuable guide for a reader's special area of concern. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.