Thanks to Vicky Markham for this announcement.
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~ You’re Invited ~

When: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 from 3:30-5:30 p.m. to coincide with the United Nations MDG Summit and the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting

Where: The Church Center for the United Nations, 777 United Nations Plaza, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10017 (directly across from the UN)
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Thanks to Bob Walker for this story.
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Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Social Sector, Shahnaz Wazir Ali on Sunday said that population is the biggest challenge being faced by the country and strong political and social commitment is the only way to address this issue.Addressing the National Population Convention, organized here at Convention Centre to commemorate “World Population Day”, she said that there is a dire need to create awareness among masses and work for integration into development plans, seeking population stabilization.

The convention was chaired by Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani.
Speaking on the occasion Shahnaz Wazir Ali said that Pakistan is sixth biggest populous country of the world with 45 percent population consist of youth in reproductive age.

For full article, visit:
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=108914&Itemid=2

Thanks to Marianne Ward for this commentary by Saleem Ali, a friend and professor of environmental planning at the University of Vermont and author of “Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future.” See http://www.vpr.net/episode/48758/. You can watch a daylong seminar on Pakistan’s demographic dilemmas at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, held June 9, 2010, at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=events.event_summary&event_id=620365.

Ali: People Power

(HOST) Spring is the season for birth and rebirth. But as UVM professor and commentator Saleem Ali observes, the earth’s capacity is for renewal is being tested.

(ALI) There is one topic that has been notably absent from environmental conversations in recent years. Forty years ago, when events like Earth Day were first celebrated, the issue of population growth galvanized a generation. So, what happened in the intervening years to the high priests of population growth?

For full article, visit:
http://www.vpr.net/episode/48758/

Thanks to Lester Brown for this article.
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Estimates for this year’s global grain carryover stocks have fallen to 444 million tons, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s August 12th World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. This amount of grain remaining in the world’s silos and stockpiles when the next harvest begins is enough to meet 72 days of consumption.

“This drop in world carryover stocks of grain to 72 days of consumption is moving us uncomfortably close to the 64 days of carryover stocks in 2007 that fueled the 2007-08 spike in world food prices,” says Lester R. Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute.

For full article, visit:
www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/press_room/C68/2010_pressrelease1/

Many thanks to Tim Murray and Mark O’Connor for this article.
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Abstract: This study examines the temporal stability of the population/environment relationship. We analyze panel data from 1960 to 2005 to determine whether the national-level association between population and carbon dioxide emissions has remained stable, declined, or intensified in recent decades. Results indicate that population size has a large and stable positive association with anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The findings of temporal stability generally hold for both developed countries and less-developed countries. The authors conclude that population, in tandem with other social drivers, remains an important consideration for research that addresses the human dimensions of global environmental change.

For full article, visit:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p067178140148623/

Thanks to Sally Mattison for this OpEd by Thomas Homer-Dixon in the New York Times.

Standing on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with ice at this time of year two decades ago are now expanses of open water or vast patchworks of tiny islands of melting ice.

In 1994, the “Louie,” as the crew calls the ship, and a United States Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, smashed their way to the North Pole through thousands of miles of pack ice six- to nine-feet thick. “The sea conditions in the Arctic Ocean were rarely an issue for us in those days, because the thick continuous ice kept waves from forming,” Marc Rothwell, the Louie’s captain, told me. “Now, there’s so much open water that we have to account for heavy swells that undulate through the sea ice. It’s almost like a dream: the swells move in slow motion, like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23homer-dixon.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

This paper from WorldWatch, which you can download at https://docs.google.com/a/populationmedia.org/leaf?id=0B5F-idWfw7TeMmJmNjVjMTQtNzcyMC00ZmRmLWI2ZWMtNGQzYTZlNzJhMzc2&hl=en&authkey=CNCwlJwB is worth looking at if only for the chart showing sea level rise from 1875 to 2009. It’s quite dramatic.

The Summer 2010 issue of the Global Health Council’s magazine is devoted to the health effects of climate change and what needs to be done to address these inter-related issues.
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Many of us have prior experience of scientific skepticism and denial about the health consequences of HIV infection and tobacco use. When scientists doubted the link between HIV and AIDS, and influenced policy-makers in South Africa to delay treatment rollout, there were at least 300,000 unnecessary deaths. The link between tobacco and lung cancer was denied for nearly 50 years by tobacco companies and apologists, despite huge loss of life.

Climate skeptics had a brief respite this winter. The media had a bonanza with the e-mails leaked from the UK University of East Anglia climate research group hinting at some kind of conspiracy to withhold climate data, followed by the admission by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that there had been an error about the rate of Himalayan glacier melting in their last report.

For full article, visit:
www.globalhealthmagazine.com/top_stories/climate_skeptics_step_aside

Thanks to Charles Hall for this article from Spiegel Online.
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A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how “peak oil” might change the global economy. The internal draft document – leaked on the Internet – shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The term “peak oil” is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis – and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.

For full article, visit:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715138,00.html

Thanks to Jack Alpert for this article.
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One of the City’s most respected institutions has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.

The Lloyd’s insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for “peak oil” and disrupted energy supplies at a time of soaring fuel demand in China and India, constraints on production caused by the BP oil spill and political moves to cut CO2 to halt global warming.

For full article, visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/11/peak-oil-energy-disruption