Thanks to Tim Murray for this essay.
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Despite our best efforts, there are persistent and common misunderstandings about the rudiments of overshoot and sustainability. Four come to mind:

1. The exponential function. Albert Bartlett is right about that. I can’t get people alarmed by lets say, a 2-3% annual growth rate. Like the magic of compound interest, your town can double in population in a mere generation at this deceptively incremental pace.

2. Efficiency paradoxes. People don’t understand that efficiencies, outside the context of a steady state economy, by making things cheaper only provoke more consumption and growth. (eg. Jevons Paradox, Khazoom-Brooks postulate).

For full article, visit:
http://candobetter.org/node/1819

Thanks to Jack Alpert for this article by Peter Goodchild.
http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild090510.htm
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The collapse of modern industrial society has 14 parts, each with a somewhat causal relationship to the next. (1) Fossil fuels, (2) metals, and (3) electricity are a tightly-knit group, and no industrial civilization can have one without the others. The decline in fossil-fuel production is the most critical aspect of the collapse, and most of the following text will be devoted to that topic. As those three disappear, (4) food and (5) fresh water become scarce; grain and wild fish supplies per capita have been declining for years, water tables are falling everywhere, rivers are not reaching the sea. Matters of infrastructure then follow: (6) transportation and (7) communication ? no paved roads, no telephones, no computers. After that, the social structure begins to fail: (8) government, (9) education, and (10) the large-scale division of labor that makes complex technology possible.
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Thanks to Population Institute for this blog post.
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This month marks the start of the World Cup, an international quadrennial competition for the world’s most popular sport, soccer (which is known everywhere else in the world as football.) During the World Cup our partner organization Population Media Center (PMC), along with Champlain College’s Emergent Media Center (EMC) in Vermont, will be launching the first three chapters of an electronic game called Breakaway, which uses the game of soccer to help combat violence against women.

According to UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), up to 70% of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime, and among women 15-44 years old, acts of violence cause more death and disability than malaria, cancer, traffic accidents, and war combined. In South Africa, home of this year’s World Cup, a woman is killed every 6 hours by an intimate partner. It’s a violation of human rights that is deeply rooted in many cultures.

For full article, visit:
http://blog.populationinstitute.org/2010/06/23/breakaway-during-the-world-cup/

Where are oil prices headed in 2010? Forecasts for the end of the year are all over the map, from over $100 a barrel to under $50. The difference hinges mostly on assumptions about whether the economy will recover or relapse. But it may be that price volatility has become an inherent feature of the oil market-and fossil fuel markets in general-for reasons that can perhaps best be explained with the help of a little history and an old children’s story.

Once upon a time (about a dozen years past), oil sold for $12 a barrel and a lot of people thought it would get even cheaper because the market was glutted. But instead the price rose: many big oilfields were aging and yielding less, and it was getting harder to find new ones-especially in places easy and cheap to drill. So the glut eroded and petroleum prices rose. Seeing a perfect opportunity (a necessary commodity with stagnating supply and growing demand), speculators drove the price up even further.

For full article, visit:
http://richardheinberg.com/214-life-after-growth

In 2008 the U.S. economy tripped down a steep, rocky slope. Employment levels plummeted; so did purchases of autos and other consumer goods. Property values crashed; foreclosure and bankruptcy rates bled. For states, counties, cities, and towns; for manufacturers, retailers, and middle- and low-income families, the consequences were-and continue to be-catastrophic. Other nations were soon caught up in the undertow.

In late 2009 and early 2010, the economy showed some signs of renewed vigor. Understandably, everyone wants it to get “back to normal.” But here’s a disturbing thought: What if that is not possible? What if the goalposts have been moved, the rules rewritten, the game changed? What if the decades-long era of economic growth based on ever-increasing rates of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption is over, finished, and done? What if the economic conditions that all of us grew up expecting to continue practically forever were merely a blip on history’s timeline?

For full article, visit:
http://richardheinberg.com/214-life-after-growth

Thanks to Richard Heinberg for this February Museletter article on China and the U.S. Below this article is the March Museletter, with an autobiographical sketch by Richard Heinberg and an article, “Goldilocks and the Three Fuels.”
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Silly me. Here I had thought that world leaders would want to keep their nations from collapsing. They must be working hard to prevent currency collapse, financial system collapse, food system collapse, social collapse, environmental collapse, and the onset of general, overwhelming misery-right? But no, that’s not what the evidence suggests. Increasingly I am forced to conclude that the object of the game that world leaders are actually playing is not to avoid collapse; it’s simply to postpone it a while so as to be the last nation to go down, so yours can have the chance to pick the others’ carcasses before it meets the same fate.

For full article, visit:
http://heinberg.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/museletter-213.pdf

Thanks to Kent Welton for this piece, which he notes as “more nonsense from Steve Forbes and co.”

There are additional articles in this edition on immigration found at http://www.forbes.com
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Eight years ago Oscar risked his life to reach America–illegally. Now he works 17 hours a day, 6 days a week in a bar in Miami’s South Beach. He earns $3.85 an hour plus up to $100 a night in tips, sending home $400 a month to his family in Honduras. That funds his three kids’ education, supports his mother and has enabled his wife to open a small store.

Oscar’s life is tough. Now 30, he hasn’t seen his family since he left Honduras. “Not having documents is suffocating. Businesses exploit you. You’re always hiding,” he says. “We need immigration reform. I sent an e-mail to our President.” Your President? “Yes, he’s my President. I love this country. If I could, I’d help this country get back on its feet.” Oscar seems like the kind of guy America would want to hang on to. “I’m afraid of being deported, so my money is hidden,” he says. “Otherwise I could put it in the bank to invest.”

For full article,visit:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0628/special-report

Thanks to Dave Kruse for alerting me to this article in the Wall Street Journal on June 19 calling on people to have more children. The paper needs to hear your response.
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The Breeders’ Cup

Amid the Father’s Day festivities, many of us are privately asking a Scroogely question: “Having kids-what’s in it for me?” An economic perspective on happiness, nature and nurture provides an answer: Parents’ sacrifice is much smaller than it looks, and much larger than it has to be.

Most of us believe that kids used to be a valuable economic asset. They worked the farm, and supported you in retirement. In the modern world, the story goes, the economic benefits of having kids seem to have faded away. While parents today make massive personal and financial sacrifices, children barely reciprocate. When they’re young, kids monopolize the remote and complain about the food, but do little to help around the house; when you’re old, kids forget to return your calls and ignore your advice, but take it for granted that you’ll continue to pay your own bills.

For full article, visit:
http://online.wsj.com/article

The following article about our electronic game project, Breakaway, appeared in the Shelburne News weekly newspaper.
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http://www.shelburnenews.com

A two-year project with Population Media Center (PMC) in Shelburne and Champlain College, with the support of the United Nations, made its worldwide debut this week during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. PMC, an organization with expertise in behavior change, and Champlain College designed an online game, entitled “Breakaway,” a tactical and narrative soccer (football) game that has been under development and testing since 2008. The game has been developed to tackle issues such as gender equality, fair team play, and racial stereotypes all within the constructs of a fun and interactive online experience.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2010

Contact: Katie Elmore
Director of Communications
Tel: 802-985-8156 ext. 205
elmore@populationmedia.org

Online Football Game Launches June 22 to Global Audience
World Cup Soccer Star Samuel Eto’o Joins United Nations ‘Breakaway’ Team

Breakaway, a new narrative-driven online football (soccer) game, endorsed by world-famous football star, Samuel Eto’o, hits the global gaming field of play at noon Tuesday, June 22 during the 2010 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in South Africa.
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