Programs: Earth policy institute (epi) works to provide a roadmap for saving civilization, which it calls plan b. It continues to refine this plan and to support it with the latest scientific data. Human behavior changes either in response to new information or new experience. Epi disseminates information to guide the process of change. Its goal is to generate visibility and to build public support for global action to stabilize climate, stabilize population, and rebuild the economy's natural support systems. The research agendathe research team has been mindful of environmental trends throughout the year. The first part of the year was dedicated to two plan b updates on plastic bags. The first, "plastic bag bans spreading in the united states," detailed that more than 20 million americans live in communities with plastic bag bans or fees. Along with a timeline on the short history of the plastic bag and selected dates of note, the team created a live google map of the 133 cities and counties around the united states with anti-plastic bag legislation. The second update, "the downfall of the plastic bag: a global picture," discussed some of the major initiatives around the world to reduce plastic bag use. It too included a timeline and live map. The pieces were referenced by numerous news sources including scientific american, salon. Com, ecowatch, native american times, emagazine, the portland press herald, north denver news, and investor ideas. Voice of america interviewed janet larsen in september on plastic bag ordinances in the u. S. And world. Another update that generated media coverage was lester's piece "can the world feed china" china has become a leading world grain importer, set to buy a staggering 22 million tons in the 2013-14 trade year. With lester's controversial history writing about china's food situation, the piece made waves in china and was picked up by a number of news services there. In the u. S. , it was redistributed on population media center's email list and posted on their website. It was also translated into hungarian. It also resulted in a speaking invitation at the woodrow wilson center in d. C. Subjects covered by data highlights included arctic sea ice in freefall, wind opening a lead over nuclear in china, solar panel production in china doubling, and geothermal power approaching 12,000 megawatts worldwide. Three eco-economy indicators were released on global temperature, wind power, and solar power. The indicator on solar power by j. Matthew roney was referenced in a post on the sinosphere blog of the new york times titled "china's solar panel production comes at a dirty cost. " also released were a number of fact sheets on the institute's main areas of interest. (see appendix a. ) in addition, epi's bike-sharing pieces from 2013 continued to attract attention. For instance, it was highlighted in the bloomberg article "china races ahead of the pack as bike sharing goes viral" and was also featured on the front page of the wall street journal in the article "city bike-sharing programs hit speed bumps. " our research was also referenced in the new york post article "bill could allow riders to pay for bike shares with pre-tax dollars. " the research team focused most of the second half of the year on completing the great transition: shifting from fossil fuels to solar and wind energy discussing the energy transition is complex undertaking, especially as new data are released almost daily. The great transition details many of the achievements being made by countries to a greater reliance on renewable energy, especially solar and wind energy. Plans are to deliver the book by the research team to the epi's publishers by the end of december with publication of the u. S. Edition in early march. The outreach effort it will take an enormous dissemination effort to guide the global transition to a plan b economy. Thus, epi promotes its analyses through its worldwide network of media contacts, publishers, and the internet. Additional outreach efforts go into speaking engagements, direct mail and electronic sales promotions, social networking, and the institute's website. Publishing contracts epi's books are the foundation for reaching its global constituency. Thus far, the institute's books have been published in 34 languages. Major languages (more than 50 million speakers) include english, arabic, chinese, farsi, french, german, hindi, indonesian, italian, japanese, korean, marathi (india), polish, portuguese, russian, spanish, thai, turkish, and ukrainian. Other languages include bengali, bulgarian, catalan, czech, croatian, danish, dutch, esperanto, greek, hungarian, malayalam, norwegian, romanian, slovenian, swedish, and vietnamese for a total of 144 contracts. (see appendix b. ) contracts for publishing the great transition have thus far been signed for italian and japanese, in addition to english. Media outreach epi works closely with the world's major news organizations. Since it began operation in may 2001, epi has generated over 46,500 news clips and institute researchers have given some 600 interviews for radio and television, including national and international networks such as abc, nbc, bloomberg, the bbc world service, voice of america, cnn international, al jazeera, cctv (china), nhk tv (japan). The main topics of interest to the media this year have been china's meat consumption, plastic bag bans, and bike-sharing. Websiteepi utilizes social media in its outreach and communications marketing strategy to disseminate releases, data, and any information that the research team releases for the public. Included in these tools are blogs, rss feeds, public and media listservs (containing some 13,390 and 1,823 addresses respectively), networking sites, podcasts, twitter, and a micro-blogging site. Epi now has some 5,870 twitter followers, 8,650 facebook fans, and 445 linkedin followers. Twitter and facebook are consistently among the top referrals to epi's website, along with international google search engines and epi's wikipedia page. When googling for issues on which epi works, the institute is often at the top of the list due in large measure to the over 340,000 links to its website. On average, epi's website has 19,000 unique visitors per day spending about 13 minutes per session. Epi tweets out news stories, research, blogs, and details on upcoming speaking events, providing an easily accessible channel for journalists, bloggers, and fans. Prominent reporters and their affiliated news organizations repost epi content, creating a multiplier effect. Notable reporters include stefanie spear of ecowatch, who posts direct links to epi's website regularly, and john vidal of the guardian. Other notables who retweet and re-post include daryl hannah, ted turner, clark seydel, word affairs council, greenpeace, pbs newshour, permaculture, 350. Org, world future society, alternet, and sustainablog. Epi's podcasts of its releases and book chapter introductions generate an average of 280 monthly downloads. So far this year they have been downloaded 2,500 times. The most downloaded podcasts were "can the world feed china? ," "wind opens big lead over nuclear in china," "many countries reaching diminishing returns in fertilizer use," and "the downfall of the plastic bag. "
