The Pacific islands are on the front lines with regard to climate change. The region’s journalists attending the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association conference here in Tonga report many signs of global warming, including salt water intrusion into farmland, collapses in roads caused by sea water, and people’s homes being swept away by “king tides” while they are sleeping.

Many thanks to Gerry Silverstein for this article from the Economist. The last paragraph details the link to population growth.
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Human beings no longer thrive under the water from which their ancestors emerged, but their relationship with the sea remains close. Over half the world’s people live within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the coast; a tenth are within 10km. On land at least, the sea delights the senses and excites the imagination. The sight and smell of the sea inspire courage and adventure, fear and romance. Though the waves may be rippling or mountainous, the waters angry or calm, the ocean itself is eternal. Its moods pass. Its tides keep to a rhythm. It is unchanging.

For full article, visit:
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12798458

My Revised Idea for the New Administration: an Office of Special Assistant to the President on Population and Sustainability Issues

Thanks to the many people who responded to my mailing in December regarding an Office of Population in the White House. I received greater response to that mailing than any of the other daily mailings I have sent out in the last three years. Based on the numerous suggestions, I have revised the concept to that of a Special Assistant to the President on Population and Global Sustainability Issues. Please see the paper below.
Continue Reading »

Here is a paper I wrote as a graduate student in 1969 after hearing Paul Ehrlich speak on the Yale campus in late 1968. It was through his talk and this paper that I learned about demography and the economic implications of different human population age structures.

Best wishes,
Bill

Determinants and Effects of Human Population Age Structure (PDF, 2MB)

In November 2008, Naked Scientists Radio Show conducted an interview with Bill Ryerson from Population Media Center and Jennie Wetter from The Population Institute. They delivered the interview while attending the Global Media Awards in Los Angeles, CA.

Listen to the Interview:
[audio:http://www.populationmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/naked_scientists_show_081130.mp3]
Download MP3 | Subscribe to Podcast via iTunes

If you would like to hear an interview done with Bill Ryerson on Vermont Edition by Vermont Public Radio, you can download the file at: http://www.vpr.net/episode/45077/ or listen online.

This was taped on November 11 and broadcast on December 26. The segment with me begins at 8 minutes and 45 seconds into the program.

Join PMC’s award-winning e-mail service to receive daily articles on global and domestic population issues.

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Many thanks to Lester Brown for the book byte below, which discusses the work of Population Media Center.
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Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 3.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
January 21, 2009

MOVING TO A STABLE WORLD POPULATION

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch07_ss3.htm

Lester R. Brown

Some 43 countries around the world now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below. They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.
Continue Reading »

Thanks to Kathlene Carney for this article.
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The year 2009 will witness a tsunami of appeals to economists to fix, as disgraced Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan put it, the “flaw” in their thinking. Most will get it wrong.

The proposals for bailouts, regulations and government spending sprees all share one tragic flaw: they assume no physical or biological limits to human growth. Most economists cling to an 18th century mechanical universe that conjured an “invisible hand” of God, that would allegedly convert private greed into public utopia.

For full article, visit:
http://www.thetyee.ca/Views/2009/01/02/Economics/

Welcome to CUSP partners and friends, who have joined this mailing list, following the death of Alan Kuper, who founded and ran CUSP. Thanks to Jack Alpert for alerting me to this article by Alan.
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The great majority of people around the world never ask, ” Is the world overpopulated?” They don’t know what it might mean to them, any more than members of an endangered species rapidly losing habitat to human encroachment can comprehend the cause of their predicament.

That the human population of the world is over six billion, that it might double in this century, means little to most Americans. Few know the population of the world, of their nation, or of the state where they reside. They don’t know why they should. No authority has ever told them it was important to know those numbers, except to say that, in general, the more people the better. No one has ever told them that, unless people only replace themselves, unless couples on average have no more than two children, population will grow ever faster, compounding like money in the bank to unimaginably large numbers. If the U.S. population grows due to immigration, however rapidly, that has—until very recently—been regarded as beneficial as well.

For full article, visit:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kuper_24_5.htm

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Alan Kuper is the founder and president of CUSP (Comprehensive U.S. Sustainable Population) and a former professor and physicist. He was active in the Sierra Club for thirty years and was the recipient of two club awards.

Thanks to Rigmor Allback of Sweden for a link to the Swedish NGO Albaeco. See http://www.albaeco.se/en/. The following BBC article appears on their website.
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The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.

For full article, visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7662565.stm