Lester Brown’s recent (2011) book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, contains a number of unexpected “facts” (observations?). I selected a few of them: how many surprised you? Don’t believe him? You can download the entire book free here. Click here for his online documentation of everything he claims below.

• The actual cost of gasoline in the United States is $15 per gallon
• In 2009 the number of cars in the US declined for the first time in a century (except for WWII period when cars were not produced)
• China now has 459 “cancer villages”
• Between 1994 and 1999 China’s Gobi Desert grew by an area equal to half the state of Pennsylvania
• If the Greenland ice sheet melts entirely, sea level could rise 23 feet; if the West Antarctic Ice sheet breaks up, seal level would rise another 16 feet
• Of the one million Hurricane Katrina refugees from New Orleans, 300,000 did not return to their homes
• The summer 2010 heat wave in Russia was the most intense in 130 years of record keeping; the wheat harvest shrank from 100 million tons to 60 million tons
• 90% of the original forests of the Indus River Basin are gone
• Pakistan has 185 million people living on an area equal to 8% of the US land area
• From 1950 to the present, per person income worldwide increased 4 times while the world economy grew 10 times
• In October 2010 world grain prices were double their historical levels
• 219,000 people are added to the world population each day
• In January of 2008 Saudi Arabia’s underground fossil water aquifer dried up and the country’s wheat output has dropped by 2/3
• In California the irrigated crop area dropped from 9 million acres in 1997 to 7.5 million acres in 2010, owing to competition for water by city users
• In the Mexican state of Guanajuato, the water table is falling by 6 feet or more per year
• It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain
• The number of “dust event” days in Seoul, Korea rose from 23 days annually in the 1970s to 70 days annually in the 1990s
• Haiti was largely self-sufficient in grain 40 years ago; it now imports over half its grain
• At 95 degrees Fahrenheit photosynthesis begins to decline; at 104 it ceases entirely
• In 1910 Glacier National Park in Montana had 150 glaciers; in 2010 it had 25
• In Ethiopia an acre of land can be leased for $1 per year; Saudi Arabia is importing rice from land it has leased there even while the World Food Program is feeding 5 million starving Ethiopians
• Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, has more than 1 million people sharing a water supply from an aquifer soon to be depleted; no other immediate water source has been identified
• In 2009 Afghanistan supplied 89% of the world’s opium
• Los Angeles has almost completed putting LED’s in its 140,000 street lights, slated to save the city $48 million
• Europeans on average use about ½ the electricity per household as Americans
• In 2009 owners of the Empire State Building began a 3-year retrofit that will save 40% on energy
• Paris now has 24,000 bicycles available at 1,750 docking stations for $1 per day or $40 per year
• In The Netherlands 24% of all trips are by bike
• New York City recycles 25% of its garbage; San Francisco recycles 77%; the US avg is 33%
• 28 billion plastic bottles are manufactured in the US annually to hold bottled water
• Between 2007 and 2010 oil and coal consumption in the US both fell by 8%
• In Iowa one acre planted in corn can yield $1,000; if planted in wind turbines it could yield $300,000
• China now has 5,000 companies producing thermal solar installations and up to 120 million houses already have them; in Austria 15% of houses use thermal solar
• Governments around the world currently provide a total of $500 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry
• Since 2000 the earth’s forest cover has shrunk by 13 million acres each year: 32 million lost and 19 million replanted – the forest cover loss accounts for ¼ as much CO₂ in the atmosphere as does burning fossil fuel
• South Korea recycles 91% of its paper; the US recycles 59%
• Marine reserves have led to rebirth of snapper and scallop populations off the coast of Maine
• In 2005 nearly 1.4 billion people were living on $1.25 or less per day
• Since 1999 malnourishment has increased, reversing an earlier several decades trend
• The Brazilian government pays mothers up to $35 per month per child as long as the child is kept in school, gets vaccinations on time and gets regular physical checkups
• School lunch programs in poor countries improve attendance, academic performance, and help keep girls in school longer, tending to reduce population growth
• The world grain harvest doubled between 1950 and 1973
• From 1950 to 1990 world grain productivity increased 2.2% per year; from 1990 to 2010 it increased 1.2% annually
• 35% of the world grain harvest is used to produce animal protein; Meat consumption worldwide increased from 44 million tons in 1950 to 272 million tons in 1990 – or, 90 pounds per person
• With cattle in feedlots it takes 7 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat;  for herbivorous fish such as carp, catfish or tilapia, it takes less than 2
• Between 2002 and 2007 the number of farms in the US increased by 80,000; the number of organic farms increased from 12,000 to 18,200
• Farmers markets in the US increased from 1,755 in 1994 to over 6,100 in 2010
• During World War 2, Americans produced 40% of our fresh produce on “victory gardens”
• California now has 6,000 school gardens
• 2,500 economists including nine Nobel Prize winners have publicly endorsed the carbon tax
• Emissions from US coal plants are estimated to cause 13,200 deaths annually in the US
• The Sierra Club claims that 139 new coal fired plans have been defeated recently in the US
• Coal ash landfills and holding ponds are laced with arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxic materials; the coal industry has no known plan to dispose of these chemicals
• If the efficiency level of the other 49 states were raised to that of New York, the nation’s most energy-efficient state – the energy saved would be enough to close 80% of the nations coal-fired power plants
• Lester Brown claims that his Plan B would save the earth, eradicate poverty and put us on a path to sustainability for a cost equal to 12% of the world’s current military budget