President Clinton and the Clinton Foundation are looking for input on their new climate initiative. Enter your request (in the form of a question) that population issues be included at http://clintonfoundation.org/what-we-do/clinton-climate-initiative/contact/. The deadline for your input is Thursday, May 21. Bill Clinton will answer four questions in a video on their website.
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Thanks to Katie Elmore and Henry Barbaro for bringing to my attention the Earth Day special of National Public Radio’s The Diane Rehm Show titled “World Population.”

Speakers on the segment included:
William Butz, president and CEO, Population Reference Bureau,
Paul Ehrlich, president, Center for Conservation Biology, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University and author of “The Dominant Animal” and “The Population Bomb,” and
Hania Zlotnik, Director, Population Division, United Nations.
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Thanks to John Rowley of People & the Planet for this editorial.
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More than a decade after the world agreed a progressive agenda on population and development at the 1994 Cairo conference on the subject, today’s leaders are waking up to the reality of 15 wasted years. Cairo was almost unique in costing the money needed to tackle the developing world’s scandalously high maternal mortality and morbidity rates, setting out the spending needed on reproductive health and family planning, alongside other priorities for the health, status and education of girls and women in particular.

For full article, visit:
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/

The population clock on Population Media Center’s home page (www.populationmedia.org) rolled over to 6.8 billion people today.

Thanks to Bill Butz and Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau for pointing me to the 2007 data set provided by the UN Population Division, showing the results of the biennial survey of countries’ stated population policies. As Carl points out, translating statements into action is another thing. The data set can be downloaded at: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2007/WPPdownload.htm

On March 11, the UN Population Division released this press advisory about their updated global projections. See their homepage at http://www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm

PRESS RELEASE
Embargoed until 12:00 PM, 11 March, 2009
WORLD POPULATION TO EXCEED 9 BILLION BY 2050:
Developing Countries to Add 2.3 Billion Inhabitants with 1.1 Billion Aged
Over 60 and 1.2 Billion of Working Age

NEW YORK, 11 March (UN Population Division/DESA) – World population is projected to
reach 7 billion early in 2012, up from the current 6.8 billion, and surpass 9 billion people by
2050, reveals the 2008 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and
projections, released today.
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Thanks to Kurt Dahl for this article.

Incidentally, the opinions expressed below are those of Kurt Dahl. While I share some of his concerns, I do think that the problem of population growth can be solved without any form of coercion, with respect for the rights of women and men to choose the number and spacing of their children, and in the context of increasing per capita economic welfare as the number of capitas begins to decline. There are also many donors that recognize population growth as a concern, although there is no doubt that funding in the field of population remains insufficient to meet the needs for family planning information and services globally.
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Some things are so preeminent within their context that they need no adjectives or explanation. Ask any American football fan what is referred to by “The Play” and they will tell you about the final play in the 1982 Cal/Stanford game when, after several laterals and a mad dash through the Stanford band, Cal scored the winning touchdown as time expired (do a Google search on “the play” and see for yourself). Likewise, “The Open” refers only to the British Open golf tournament, even though there are dozens of other “Open” athletic events.

For full article, visit:
http://www.populationelephant.com/PEtheproblemarticle.html

Many thanks to Kurt Dahl for this article. Also see Kurt’s home page http://www.populationelephant.com/ for a lot of useful information on population issues.
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Ask any population activist, or any journalist who has ever written a story about world population, and they will tell you that by the year 2050 world population will grow to 9.2 billion people. This singularly quoted 9.2 billion number comes from the United Nations – specifically; the 2006 revision of the World Population Prospects done by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division – and it is accepted by all as the only authentic projection of world population.

Well…maybe not by all, because I believe that the real number, when we arrive at 2050, will be much higher, more likely in the 11 – 13 billion range.

For full article, visit:
http://www.populationelephant.com/PEnumbersarticle.html

Thanks to Jim Brous and others for sending me this editorial. Below the Kristof OpEd, see the response letters the New York Times published. Also see John Bermingham’s response to the New York Times.
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For all the American and international efforts to fight global poverty, one thing is clear: Those efforts won’t get far as long as women like Nahomie Nercure continue to have 10 children.

Global family-planning efforts have stalled over the last couple of decades, and Nahomie is emblematic both of the lost momentum and of the poverty that results. She is an intelligent 30-year-old woman who wanted only two children, yet now she is eight months pregnant with her 10th.

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/opinion/05kristof.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

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April 12, 2009
LETTERS
Multiplier Effect: Help Women First

To the Editor:
Re “Pregnant (Again) and Poor,” by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, April 5):
In 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the world recognized “the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so.”
This pledge has been honored more in the breach than in the implementation.
You have to look at the small print of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 5, “Improve Maternal Health,” under Target 2, to find this language: “An unmet need for family planning undermines achievement of several other goals.”
These “several other” goals include reducing poverty, providing universal access to education, reducing infant and child mortality, empowering women, attaining environmental sustainability, and developing in such a way that improvement is not eaten up by population growth.
Giving women choices and access to education and health is the key to any acceptable future.
Jane Roberts
Redlands, Calif., April 5, 2009
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Below is a link featuring several letters in response to Laura Vanderkam’s column in the May 6 edition of USA Today entitled, “Bring on the Baby Boom.”

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/05/baby-bulge-would-further-sap-our-limited-resources.html?csp=34

Thanks to Eric Rimmer for this article from the Greenpeace website.
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In 1972, Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe from the budding Greenpeace Foundation in Canada attended the world’s first UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm, where they succeeded in putting nuclear bomb tests on the agenda with the help of Australia and Japan. However, one critical issue failed to make the agenda of this historic meeting: human population.

For full article, visit:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/deep-green/deep-green-september-2008#