Thanks to Fred Stanback for sending this copy of Jeremy Grantham’s latest stock market letter. In the second part, he makes interesting comments about population growth and running out of resources.

Running out of Resources (PDF, 67 KB)

If all pregnant women have the right to live, why are so many dying in childbirth? Share your opinion and join Conversations for a Better World http://www.conversationsforabetterworld.com, a blog, where you can discuss gender and health issues.

For online viewing, see the instructions below.

Please join the Environmental Change and Security Program, the International Reporting Project, and the Society of Environmental Journalists for a Journalist Roundtable discussion of

Covering Climate: What’s Population Got to Do With It?

Featuring:
Dennis Dimick, Executive Editor, National Geographic Magazine
Emily Douglas, Web Editor, The Nation
Andrew Revkin, Environmental Reporter, The New York Times (via video)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Reception Follows
6th Floor Flom Auditorium
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20004 USA Webcast live at www.wilsoncenter.org

Please RSVP to ecsp@wilsoncenter.org with your name and affiliation.
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Thanks to Linda Schuck of the Stanford Precourt Institute for this announcement.
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Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) Conference: Nov 15-18, Washington, DC
Register now: Rates increase Oct. 14

The 2009 Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference is an international conference focused on accelerating our transition to an energy-efficient and low carbon economy through an improved understanding and application of social and behavioral research insights. The 2009 BECC will be held November 15-18, 2009 at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. The conference aims to catalyze collaboration across government, utilities, businesses, and researchers and to share recent research and program results with the goal of achieving viable solutions for meeting long-term energy and GHG reduction targets.
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On April 20, I sent out an article by Jonathon Porritt with a link to a 107-page report (plus appendices) by Professor Tim Jackson, Economics Commissioner of the Sustainable Development Commission, entitled Prosperity without Growth (www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914). In case you haven’t had time to read the entire report, you will find the attached four-page summary by John Bermingham very interesting. Many thanks to John for summarizing this important document.

Prosperity without growth – Summary (PDF, 48 KB)

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article from the New York Society of Security Analysts. Steve points out, the article does not mention one growth issue, namely, population.
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When he resigned his post as a senior economist with the World Bank in January 1994, Herman Daly delivered a farewell speech to his colleagues in the style of the Dutch uncle. Prescribing “a few remedies for the Bank’s middle-aged infirmities,” he spoke of the bank’s “unrealistic vision of development as the generalization of northern overconsumption to the rapidly multiplying masses of the south.” He warned that the depletion of natural capital could no longer be left out of the economic equation. It was time, he said, to assign a monetary value to the negative environmental impacts of throughput and to factor them in as opportunity costs of production.

For full article, visit:
http://www.theinvestmentprofessional.com/vol_2_no_3/rock-steady.html

Thanks to Rob Dietz for this article from Earth Island Institute
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It’s highly unlikely that life as we know it – or want it — can continue for long unless we rein in population growth. Too many measures indicate that the great mass of us burning fossil fuels, gobbling up renewable resources, and generating toxic trash is overloading our life support ecosystems. In the central North Pacific Ocean gyre, swirling plastic fragments now outweigh plankton 46 to one. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is far higher today than at any point in the past 650,000 years, and climbing. Nearly one in four mammals is threatened with extinction, as is one in three amphibians and a quarter of all conifers. In many parts of the world, including the High Plains of North America, human water use exceeds annual average water replenishment; the United Nations predicts that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity. Unsustainable farming practices cause the destruction and abandonment of almost 30 million acres of arable land each year. The list runs far too long.

For full article, visit:
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/hold_steady/

Many thanks to Paul Ehrlich for the attached paper by Tom Turner. Thanks to Peter Seidel, Paul and I will speak at a panel on population at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin on October 9. Paul is also giving another talk in Madison this week, and I am speaking at the University of Wisconsin on the afternoon of October 8 and at another venue in Madison the evening of October 9.

Paul Ehrlich’s Vindication 2009 by Tom Turner (Word doc., 112 KB)

PMC’s Jamaica program, Outta Road (“What’s Happening out in the Streets”), was featured in the Communication Initiative.

Outta Road is the story of Jamaican teens and young adults from different social strata whose lives are interconnected. The drama is designed for 10-19 year olds across Jamaica, who through identification with transitional characters could vicariously experience the repercussions of their life choices. The social ills identified through nationwide formative research conducted by PMC in January 2006 helped guide the development of characters and plot lines. The characters grapple with conflicts ranging from love, friendship, peer pressure, violence, sex, drugs, HIV/AIDS, and more. Interspersed amongst dramatic conflicts and natural dialogue was popular reggae music. Outta Road also used epilogues to provide listeners with more information about the topics addressed and issues raised, such as where to access adolescent-friendly centres offering services like substance abuse counseling, HIV testing and contraception, and dispute resolution.

For full article, visit:
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/301281/347

My connection with Herman Daly began several years before I met him. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida studying under Howard T. Odum, I was introduced to Herman’s 1968 article on “economics as a life science” (Daly 1968) and his path-breaking books on steady state economics (Daly 1972, 1977). Daly was held in high esteem by Odum as the only economist he knew who understood the basic interconnections between humans and the ecological systems that supported them and which they were embedded within. It seemed obvious that the human economy, as a subsystem of the larger global ecosystem, could not continue to grow indefinitely. Obvious to everyone, that is, except mainstream economists.

For full article, visit:
http://www.eoearth.org/article