Friday, May 07, 2010

Stockholm. The capital of Sweden and a city of which 30 percent is comprised of waterways and 30 percent of parks and green spaces. Just 40 percent for buildings, motorways, etc. What a lovely balance.

Lester Brown has now landed in this lovely city where Lars and Doris Almström have planned a few days of outreach for the Swedish edition of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

Lars and Doris are an indefatigable team. A few years ago, like a number of other people, they answered Lester’s call in Plan B to become active. Inspired by the book and wanting to get a Plan B economy moving in Sweden, they translated Plan B 2.0 into Swedish and posted it online for free electronic downloading on a Web site they established to promote the Earth Policy Institute’s work. 

While they were busy translating Plan B 3.0, they partnered with an excellent publisher, Addera Förlag AB. By this time, they had both retired from their full time jobs and were now engaged full time in disseminating Plan B. They revamped their website and offered Plan B 3.0 for free downloading.   

As mentioned in the previous blog, the Norwegian publisher, Olav Randen of Boksmia, contracted to publish Plan B 3.0 mere months before Lester was scheduled to launch the Swedish edition. Doris and Lars sent him their manuscript, which he was able to use to quickly produce his excellent Norwegian translation. 

With Plan B 4.0, Doris and Lars once again provided an excellent translation and have made the book available for free electronic downloading and for sale. They have also set up a program of activities while Lester is in Stockholm that is designed to reach as broad an audience as possible, having already made inroads into getting the book into classrooms.

With more people like Doris and Lars, we know a Plan B world is close at hand.

Sincerely,

Reah Janise Kauffman
Vice President

P.S.  Next ... Rotterdam and Italy!

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!