Mark Satin, former editor of the prestigious political newsletter, New Options, described the Worldwatch Institute in 1978, only four years after the organization's founding. In New Age Politics, he said that Worldwatch Institute is an :

Independent, nonprofit research organization created to analyze and focus attention on global problems. Research is written up in occasional "Worldwatch Papers" (pamphlets) and in occasional Worldwatch books; for example, The Twenty-Ninth Day by the president of Worldwatch. Papers and books are "written for a worldwide audience of decision makers (and scholars)" as well as for the general public. Some topics discussed: new sources of inflation; women in politics; redefining "national security" (some new factors: growing dependence on the North American breadbasket, possible climate modification); and how could most of the world's energy come from the sun by the year 2025?

In 1978, any harbingers of "possible climate modification" were dismissed as alarmist or fantasy-oriented. Less than a score of years have proved otherwise, however, and in the interim, Worldwatch Institute has passed from an undeserved obscurity into an appreciative recognition by many of the planet's foremost governmental, scientific, commercial and journalistic witnesses.

Its reports on toxic emissions, overpopulation, dwindling food supplies, appropriate energy sources, ozone depletion, natural habitat preservation, chronic diseases, climate change, and other issues generally kept under cover by a commercially-influenced media, are now celebrated regularly by publications like The New York Times, and are printed non-commercially in Sweden. Sweden annually publishes the Institute's State of the World (Report) through the auspices of The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Society for the Protection of Nature.

The 1996 edition of Worldwatch Institute's State of the World (Report) was used by Sweden's environmentalists as an occasion to organize a conference on agricultural sustainability in the Baltic region, inviting delegates from countries such as Poland, Estonia, and Russia.

In late March Romanian President Ion Iliescu convened a conference entitled "Workshop Worldwatch: Sustainable Development and International Cooperation," and a Romanian edition of State of the World was launched. Thus, from obscure "new age" beginnings, Worldwatch Institute, which has now become a major information source for GayToday's coverage of health and technology issues, has, through its balanced, non-alarmist alarmism, succeeded in making its influence felt far and wide.

Worldwatch founder, Lester R. Brown, writes:

For the first time, in 1996, a private company, the Ikari Corporation of Japan, has invested $5,000 in subscriptions to Worldwatch publications for key individuals in East and Southeast Asia.

This is money well spent toward the creation of the kind of future hoped for by all people of good will. This reviewer is convinced that the current paperback copy of State of the World 1997 effectively introduces its readers of every persuasion to the primary issues that spell prospects for life or death across planet Earth.

TO ORDER:
Telephone: (202) 452-1999
Fax: (202) 296-7365
E-mail: wwpub@worldwatch.org
Website: www.worldwide.org