In many discussions about the environment, population growth is the last thing anyone wants to talk about. For one thing, family size is a subject that quickly becomes very personal. And when you consider that one of the most important decisions that people make is whether to have children — and if so, when, how many and with whom — it’s no surprise that even theoretical discussions about population concerns and family planning can turn into awkward conversations.

Nonetheless, global population growth is an issue that begs to be discussed. After all, population size is directly tied to many other issues that affect everyone on the planet — access to clean air and water, wealth and poverty, and global supplies of food and energy.

For full article, visit:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-And-Community

The U.S. population is approximately 300 million, and if it keeps increasing at the current rate, we’ll reach 400 million by 2043. As Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute points out, this is not a good trend. “Population growth is the ever expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie,” Brown says. “It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, a growing dependence on imported oil and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community

Thanks to Kenneth Smail for the following article.
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Editor’s note: One can run into a good report on a critical subject, only to find the author has a deficit of understanding on peak oil, for example. Or one may encounter the delusion that population growth is a problem basically in “Third World” countries. Not with this new essay for Culture Change. Professor Ken Smail has put together the best argument for facing depopulation.

Its full title was Acknowledging and Confronting the Inevitable: A Significant Shrinkage in Global Human Numbers, and Other Inconvenient Truths. Some readers may find Ken’s timing-scenario for depopulation optimistic — picturing it further off into the future than the 21st century — but he acknowledges its possibly being played out earlier due to today’s “toxic brew” of crises.- JL

For full article, visit:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php

Thanks to Bob Walker for this report from the UN Population Commission. Pasted below is one paragraph that looks at the role family planning has played in helping to avert what could have been a much worse population situation in the world today.

See http://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global

Today the global population growth rate is estimated to be even lower, at 1.17 per cent annually, and its continued decline is largely taken for granted. Yet, consideration of the population explosion that did not occur is instructive to underscore that there is still no time for complacency (see table 1). If fertility had remained constant in Asia at the level it had around 1970, its population in 2005 would have been 6.1 billion, close to the current population of the whole world. Because of the rapid reductions in fertility achieved by most countries in Asia, especially the most populous, the population of Asia in 2005 was instead 3.9 billion, 54 per cent lower than it would have been without a fertility decline. Continue Reading »

I recently viewed the documentary, The Great Squeeze. Below is a review of the film. To get your own copy, visit http://www.thegreatsqueeze.com/index.html.
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A Green Renaissance
By Christophe Fauchere, The Great Squeeze: Surviving the Human Project
March 4th, 2009

We are at a decisive time in human history poised to fight battles on many fronts. The enemies are not extremists in a foreign country but within us. The economic downturn today is a sad, but logical addition to the shortsighted decision making that has also resulted in the degradation of our environment and mismanagement of our natural resources for the last 150 years.
Continue Reading »

Many thanks to O.J. Sikes for his paper, “Reconceptualization of Population Education,” written about 20 years ago. There remains a great need for effective population education worldwide. See http://www.un.org/popin/books/pop.html

Thanks to Alex Szczech for this article from the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin.
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If we managed to dodge a devastating global pandemic with the big swine flu scare, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still be scared.

H1N1 may be reduced to crude jokes by the time Memorial Day parties roll around and the brats are on the grill, but the world health community isn’t laughing, and we shouldn’t be either.

On the epidemiological front, health authorities know the clock is ticking, and one of these days a big bomb is likely to go off.

For full article, visit:
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/berry/450708

Your response is needed to David Harsanyi’s article below from the Denver Post, in which he attacks White House Science Advisor John Holdren for believing in “an imaginary population catastrophe.” It deserves a thoughtful, but forceful rebuttal. In your letter be sure to reference the article (Harsanyi, Science Fiction Czar, July 15, 2009). Send your Letters to the Editor via e-mail: openforum@denverpost.com or

Letter to the Editor
The Denver Post
101 W. Colfax Ave.
Denver, CO 80202

You can also post your response online below the article at http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12837799?source=rss

(Letters to the editor – to be considered, letters must include full name, home town and daytime phone number)

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Rigmor Allbäck for this report of a meeting of 42 scientists at the University of California Berkeley in January.
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THE WORLD IN 2050: A Scientific Investigation of the Impact of Global Population Growth on a Divided Planet
Written by Berkeley Conference Participants
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 00:10

An international group of 42 scientists met at the University of California, Berkeley on January 23-24, 2009 to discuss The World in 2050, and how global changes in the human population might change our future. The meeting was organized by the Bixby Centers at the University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The participants all spoke as individuals and not as representatives of governments or organizations. The proceedings are web-cast (see www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/worldin2050/worldin2050-overview.aspx), and the papers prepared for the Forum will be published as a theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. This statement, prepared by the organizers, summarizes some conclusions of the meeting without committing every participant to support of every detail.
Continue Reading »

Faced with the challenge of designing an educational video game that would hold the attention of the world’s youth, student designers at Champlain College came up with a motif they can run with: Soccer.

Nearly one year into a three-year project to create an electronic game to discourage violence against women, students in the college’s Emerging Media Center have begun fleshing out their ideas for a theme with universal appeal among the target audience, Third World boys ages 10-13. That theme is what most of the world knows as football — an activity with sure-fire entertainment value. Entertainment value is a prerequisite for any game that seeks to influence behavior, the students say.

For full article, visit:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090715/NEWS02/90714034

The author of this article, Tim Johnson, also wrote about our electronic game project in his recent blog
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll