b. lester brown uses scientific and economic studies together with data from the world bank the united states government and the united nations to draft a global budget for restoring the earth we look at the two sort of major components of what we think it's going to take to create a sustainable future one is poverty eradication and population stabilization and then we treat those as one because we think they're closely related when we put the budgets together for eradicating poverty stabilizing population plus what we call the earth restoration budget it comes to a total of one hundred sixty one billion dollars now that's a lot of money it's a third of the u.s. military budget. it's a third of the u.s. military budget and the u.s. military budget is half of the global military budget which is now about a trillion dollars and if you asked the question could we reduce the u.s. military budget by a third. and shift those expenditures into poverty eradication population stabilization earth restoration i think it's clear that we would do far more to insure our future than if we just stay with a h