Soap Operas – A New Front in HIV/AIDS Prevention

Love…Sex…Romance…Betrayal… are just a few of the key elements that have made Soap Operas one of the most riveting and captivating entertainment formats around the world.

But what do soap operas have to do with HIV/AIDS?
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Thanks to Kathleen Mogelgaard for informing me about this article from Population Action International’s website. See http://www.populationaction.org/Issues/Population_and_Climate_Change to download the full report. Also see an article by Kathleen below.
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Strong evidence exists showing that demographic change is closely associated with greenhouse gas emissions, and that population dynamics will play a key role in attempts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of changes in the climate system in the future. It is clear that analyzing the compositional change of populations, specifically the age composition, the distribution of people in urban and rural areas, and household size and composition, is very important for understanding future needs and potential for mitigating carbon emissions and climate change. The analysis presented in this paper shows that by including only population size as the demographic variable in climate models, the contribution of “population” to climate change has been underestimated.

For full article, visit:
http://www.populationaction.org/Publications/Working_Papers

Thanks to Bob Walker for this article from the American Prospect. Michelle Goldberg, author of the new book, The Means of Reproduction, wrote this article (“Hillary’s Challenge”) about the speech that Secretary Clinton gave when she accepted the Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood. In the article pasted below, Bob highlighted some of the sections relating specifically to family planning.
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On March 27, at a ceremony in Houston, Texas, Hillary Clinton accepted the Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood. In her speech, she expressed her “awe” for the family-planning pioneer and then laid out the connections between reproductive rights and global security. Calling the reproductive-rights movement “one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race,” she argued that Sanger’s work isn’t done, in the United States or abroad.

For full article, visit:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=hillarys_challenge

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article from CNS News.
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Urging India not to emulate America’s “mistakes,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the weekend accepted responsibility on behalf of the U.S. and other developed nations for contributing towards climate change.

“We acknowledge – now with President Obama – that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem that we face with climate change,” Clinton said in Mumbai, India.

“We are hoping a great country like India will not make the same mistakes,” she added.

For full article, visit:
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51260

Many thanks to Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute for this paper. I expect you will find much in this paper with which you identify personally. See http://www.postcarbon.org/somebodys_gotta_do_it where you can read comments and leave your own. Also see the Post Carbon Institute’s homepage at http://www.postcarbon.org/.

A relevant statement is “All causes are hopeless and pathetic – until they win.”

Richard Heinberg Muse 207 (Word doc., 60 KB)

From ONEARTH Magazine of NRDC.
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A Man, A Plan, and the Dawn of America’s Solar Future
“I am a capitalist,” announces Jigar Shah, the 34-year-old founder of SunEdison. We have just sat down for dinner at a bustling noodle joint in Washington, D.C. Upon hearing Shah, who is wearing pressed khakis and a crisp blue oxford shirt, the couple at the next table nearly choke on their pad thai. A brash entrepreneur banging the capitalist drum isn’t going to win many friends here, especially now. It’s December, and a few blocks away congressional leaders are debating whether to give foundering automakers billions of dollars in bailout money. Ineptitude has ruined Detroit, greed has soiled Wall Street, and Democrats on Capitol Hill are counting the days until their guy steps into the White House.

For full article, visit:
http://www.onearth.org/article/selling-the-sun

In case you missed this here’s an article from ONEARTH Magazine of NRDC.
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When Peter Kelemen started his fieldwork in the Omani desert several years ago, he wasn’t looking for a solution to global warming. His research, which concerned the geology of the earth’s mantle-the 1,800-mile-thick layer beneath the crust-was something only his rock-obsessed colleagues could appreciate.

To study ancient volcanism, Kelemen frequently collected a common mantle rock called peridotite, large tracts of which can be found in Oman, forced to the surface over many ages by tectonic collisions. When peridotite is exposed to the air, it reacts with carbon dioxide, and its outer layers are transformed into carbonate rock. For Kelemen, a geologist at Columbia University, this seemed to be bad news. “When the rock is all weathered and turned into carbonate, that obscures the high-temperature history,” he says. “So my main response over the years when I would see these carbonate deposits was to run the other way.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.onearth.org/article/the-rock-that-ate-co2

Thanks to Evan Craig for bringing this PBS WBEZ Worldview program to my attention. Listen to the program at: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/climate-wars/index.html

Program Excerpt

About 2 years ago I noticed that the military in various countries, and especially in the Pentagon, were beginning to take climate change seriously. Now, it’s the business of the military to find new security threats. It’s also in their own self-interest, since they need a constant supply of threats in order to justify their demands on the taxpayers’ money, so you should always take the new threats that the soldiers discover with a grain of salt. You know, never ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
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The Fall 2009 newsletter features stories about PMC’s programs in Mali, Rwanda and the Unites States.

Fall 2009 Newsletter (PDF, 639 KB)

Thanks to Marianne Ward for this article.
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The East Antarctic icesheet, once seen as largely unaffected by global warming, has lost billions of tonnes of ice since 2006 and could boost sea levels in the future, according to a new study.

Published Sunday in Nature Geoscience, the same study shows that the smaller but less stable West Antarctic icesheet is also shedding significant mass.

Scientists worry that rising global temperatures could trigger a rapid disintegration of West Antarctica, which holds enough frozen water to push up the global ocean watermark by about five metres (16 feet).

For full article, visit:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-0