Monday, May 03, 2010

Lester Brown has begun an epic journey this week to launch various editions of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization in Berlin, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; Oslo, Norway; Stockholm, Sweden; Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Trento, Torino, and Milan, Italy; Bucharest; Tokyo, Japan; and Shanghai and Beijing, China. Whew! And in between Bucharest and Tokyo, he will touch down in Denver to receive the Hero of Sustainability Award from the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado.

The first leg has begun in Berlin. The German publication of Plan B began through Bernd Hamm, a professor at the University of Trier, who was so inspired by Plan B that he sought out and found a publisher. This will be the third book that Kai Homilius Verlag, the publishing house, has released in German. Verena Gajewski has done a remarkable job of translating each edition, checking numbers and facts with our researchers to make sure everything is correct.

For launching the book, Kai Homilius has turned to GTZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit) to arrange some events. Following a press conference to formally launch the German edition of Plan B 4.0, there will be a public lecture at GTZ Haus where Lester will discuss the environmental threats to food security. The following morning, he will have breakfast with about two dozen German political leaders. And for lunch he will be meeting with Jochen Flasbarth, the head of the German Federal Environment Agency.

One of the delights for Lester when he is in Germany is catching up with a distant cousin who he discovered after the fall of the Berlin wall, as she lived in East Germany.

From Berlin, Lester heads to Brussels where he will be giving a public address at the European Parliament, co-hosted by Estonian MEP Indrek Tarand, whom Lester met a few years ago at a conference on the environment in the Baltic states. The extraordinary person we rely on in Brussels is Frank Schwalba-Hoth, who has known Lester since he was an MEP for the German environment party. Frank, who is an unrivaled networker, sets up exceptional meetings for Lester with both parliamentarians and the media.

Lester will then touch down in Oslo to pre-launch the Norwegian edition of Plan B 4.0. The publisher, Boksmia, is headed by Olav Randen. For Plan B 3.0, Olav arranged a television interview between Lester and Erick Solheim, Norway’s Minister of the Environment. Of note was that Olav contacted us just two months before Lester was scheduled to launch the Swedish edition of Plan B 3.0 in September 2008. With a Herculean effort, he translated and published the book so that Lester could launch his edition the day after the Swedish edition came out. Look for the Norwegian edition of Plan B 4.0 in June.

To see where Lester Brown will be next, go to our Events page, which will be updated as new information arrives. You can also follow him on Google Maps.

Sincerely,

Reah Janise Kauffman
Vice President

P.S.  Next ... Stockholm!