Thanks to Leta Finch for this article from Foreign Policy. You may find it thought-provoking or just plain provocative, in which case feel free to post your comments at the end of this article.
——————-

Attention Whole Foods Shoppers
Stop obsessing about arugula. Your “sustainable” mantra – organic, local, and slow – is no recipe for saving the world’s hungry millions.

BY ROBERT PAARLBERG | MAY/JUNE 2010

From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions. We want to save the planet. Help local farmers. Fight climate change — and childhood obesity, too. But though it’s certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
Continue Reading »

The world is on the brink of a serious food crisis, according to the well-known financial speculator and commodity bull Jim Rogers.

Decades of failure by governments to invest in farming during an era of low prices had led the world with insufficient capacity to deal with a likely surge in demand for commodities from both households and investors, Rogers said.

“I’m worried about the world’s agricultural situation,” he told Emerging Markets. “The world is on a knife-edge. We could have gigantic food problems worldwide.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.emergingmarkets.org/Article/2683492/Asia/Top-investor-warns-on-food-crisis-reprise.html

Thanks to Bianca Jagger, whom I met at the Peak Oil Conference for alerting me to her Huffington Post article. In her talk at the conference, she emphasized the problem of population growth, as you will see below.
———————-

Today we stand at a crossroads in history. The warnings from our most respected scientists are loud and clear, yet government leaders continue to ignore the scale of the threat. According to many scientists, we have less than a decade left to address the issue of climate change before we reach the “tipping point”, or the point of no return. The earth is perilously close to dramatic climate change that threatens to spiral way out of control. Scientists now generally accept that current pledges of 20% greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2020 are inadequate given the gravity of the current situation: we have already reached the threshold of dangerous climate change. The task now is to prevent catastrophic climate chaos. Failure to act effectively is likely to precipitate cataclysmic changes that may obliterate life on earth.

For full article, visit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bianca-jagger

Population Media Center is developing 2 radio serial dramas for broadcast in Papua New Guinea as part of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal Campaign. We’re currently in the middle of our Writers’ Workshop, and within the next couple weeks, we should be seeing the start of production.

PMC’s formative research shows a critical need to change social norms with regard to ideal family size, acceptability of family planning and self-efficacy, and to provide correct information about the safety of contraception compared to early and repeated childbearing in Papua New Guinea.

Although this video was created by UNICEF a couple of years ago, the content is still relevant today in the prevalence of violence as a social norm in PNG.

During October 7-9, I attended the International Peak Oil Conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO). I expected that the presentations would be depressing, but they exceeded my expectations. One of the speakers was Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice, Director of Strategy and Policy, U.S. Joint Forces Command. He confirmed that the military expects declining oil production starting between 2012 and 2015, with blackouts and civil unrest around much of the globe as a result. From the Chronicle of Higher Education article below, you can link to a recent military report, “Fueling the Future Force.” Below is an earlier article on the Joint Operating Environment report of the U.S. military regarding peak oil. The Joint Operating Environment report can be linked to at http://www.peakoil.net/files/JOE2010.pdf
Continue Reading »

At a meeting I convened in Washington earlier this month, Stephen Mumford gave the following talk. Thanks to Don Collins for sending this transcript to me.
———————–

INFALLIBILITY AND THE POPULATION PROBLEM

by Stephen D. Mumford, Dr. P.H.

An address to Population Strategy Meeting IV Barbara Jordan Conference Center Kaiser Family Foundation Washington, DC October 4, 2010

“The only way to solve the problem of contraception is to solve the problem of infallibility.”- Hans Küng, Catholic theologian

INTRODUCTION
I have been asked to speak about what the Catholic Church has been saying and doing in its opposition to family planning. I want to be clear from the outset that I am talking about the Vatican hierarchy and not the Catholic laity. As many of you know, studies show that American Catholic women use contraception and abortion at slightly higher rates than non-Catholic women. My research has been devoted to the Vatican’s thwarting of population initiatives, including contraceptive development. Unfortunately, I have documented that modern threats to the institutional survival of the Church drive Vatican behavior, which has condemned millions to live in poverty by denying them access to resources that could help them lift themselves out of destitution.
Continue Reading »

Raising the ante against the use of contraceptives Roman Catholic bishops yesterday warned of “civil disobedience” against the administration should President Benigno C. Aquino III fulfill a promise to hand out artificial birth control methods.

In a statement posted yesterday at the Web site of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the bishops said mass action against the government “is an option that can be considered” by the Church.

The statement quoted several bishops and priests as saying that the Church has the moral authority to teach and lead the faithful based on the religious organization’s teachings.

For full article, visit:
http://www.bworldonline.com/main/content.php?id=18851

Pop Quiz: Match the country with its government’s birth control news:

1) In Country A, the president pledges to provide birth control to poor couples who want it.

2) In Country B, the legislature hedges on making any commitments to providing low-cost birth control to women who want it, in the face of loud opposition from Catholic Bishops.

Ok, from the set-up of the question, you might already have guessed that Country B is the U.S. (come on, President Obama making pledges about birth control? Sounds like something Candidate Obama might have said…). The surprising part is that Country A is not some godless European nation, but instead the Philippines, whose population is (wait for it) 80% Catholic.

For full article, visit:
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/reader-diaries/2010/09/28/politics-birth-control

About 80% of the world’s population lives in areas where the fresh water supply is not secure, according to a new global analysis. Researchers compiled a composite index of “water threats” that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution.

The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people. Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature.

They urge developing countries not to follow the same path.

For full article, visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11435522

Sitka, Alaska, is home to one of the world’s most spectacular lakes. Nestled into a U-shaped valley of dense forests and majestic peaks, and fed by snowpack and glaciers, the reservoir, named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues, holds trillions of gallons of water so pure it requires no treatment. The city’s tiny population—fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles—makes this an embarrassment of riches. Every year, as countries around the world struggle to meet the water needs of their citizens, 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka’s reserves go unused. That could soon change. In a few months, if all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil—and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai…

For full article, visit:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/08/the-race-to-buy-up-the-world-s-water.print.html