Many thanks to Fred Stanback for this column.  See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/10/AR2011021006323.html

How biofuels contribute to the food crisis

The Washington Post

By Tim Searchinger

Friday, February 11, 2011

Each year, the world demands more grain, and this year the world’s farms will not produce it. World food prices have surged above the food crisis levels of 2008. Millions more people will be malnourished, and hundreds of millions who are already hungry will eat less or give up other necessities. Food riots have started again.

Nearly all assessments of the 2008 food crisis assigned biofuels a meaningful role, but much of academia and the media ultimately agreed that the scale of the crisis resulted from a “perfect storm” of causes. Yet this “perfect storm” has re-formed not three years later. We should recognize the ways in which biofuels are driving it.

Demand for biofuels is almost doubling the challenge of producing more food. Since 2004, for every additional ton of grain needed to feed a growing world population, rising government requirements for ethanol from grain have demanded a matching ton. Brazil’s reliance on sugar ethanol and Europe’s on biodiesel have comparably increased growth rates in the demand for sugar and driven up demand for vegetable oil.

Agricultural production is keeping up in general with the growing demand for food – but it keeps up with the added demand for biofuels only if growing weather is good. A good growing year in 2008 helped end that year’s crisis, but average-to-poor weather since then has stressed inventories and confidence. Higher fuel costs for farmers and a weaker dollar contribute to higher prices, but prices soar only when large consumers, fearing that production will continue to fall short, bid up prices to secure their supplies.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/mar/22/guardian-weekly-letters-25-march

Thanks to Lindsey Grant for his insightful article, Geoengineering and the Misplaced Faith in Growth.  You can download the PDF at www.npg.org or https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeMDU5MWQ5NGUtNDE5MS00ZDY4LTlmZWQtZDI4Zjc2MjI3MmI3&hl=en&authkey=CIOOv9MH

From Glamour.  See http://www.glamour.com/women-of-the-year/2011/glamour-exclusive-hillary-clinton-catches-up-with-her-hero-nujood-ali

In 2008, when Glamour honored Hillary Clinton as a Woman of the Year, we also recognized a brave Yemeni girl named Nujood Ali-who at age 10 was the first child bride in her country to demand and get a divorce-and her lawyer, Shada Nasser. Secretary Clinton was so impressed with this young honoree that she arranged to meet with Nujood and Shada in New York City the day after the ceremony, and a bond was forged. Last month, the Secretary of State traveled to Yemen, where she caught up with Nujood and Shada; she then wrote this piece for Glamour.com.

The Fight Against Child Marriage

by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

At a recent town hall meeting in Yemen, I reconnected with two of my heroes.

Nujood Ali was just nine years old when she was forced by her own family to marry a man three times her age. As is the case with so many child brides, Nujood had to drop out of school against her will, and she was physically abused. Wanting to find a way out of her misery and suffering, Nujood boarded a bus and found her way to the local courthouse.

Everyone towered above her and paid no attention to her until a judge asked the young girl why she was there. Nujood said she wanted a divorce. Female attorney Shada Nasser took Nujood’s case and others like it. Today, thanks to Shada’s work, girls across Yemen have been given their childhoods back. They are back in school, where they belong.

Child marriages like Nujood’s are tragically common in many societies. In Yemen, for example, among the poorest one-fifth of girls, more than half marry before the age of 18. Of course, every society approaches marriage differently. But all societies also agree on the need to protect children. Which is why we must help young women like Nujood to make the case in their own societies that child marriage is unjust and unwise.

Stopping child marriage is not just a must for moral or human rights reasons-it lays the foundation for so many other things we hope to achieve. Primary education. Improved child and maternal health. Sustainable economic development that includes girls.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.glamour.com/women-of-the-year/2011/glamour-exclusive-hillary-clinton-catches-up-with-her-hero-nujood-ali

Law and Custom Press Afghan Women’s Shelters

Date: Thursday, February 10, 2011
Source: The New York Times
Author: ALISSA J. RUBIN; Sangar Rahimi

After her parents threw her out of the house for refusing to marry a 52-year-old widower with five children, Sabra, 18, boarded a bus that dropped her, afraid and confused, in downtown Kabul. She slept in a mosque for days, barely eating, until a woman took pity on her and put her in touch with human rights workers, who escorted her to a women’s shelter.

That journey — terrifying enough for a young woman who had never ventured beyond the corner bazaar — would become harder still under new rules being drafted by the Afghan government that women’s advocates say will deter the most vulnerable women and girls from seeking refuge and are placing shelters under siege.

The new rules speak to the suspicions that women’s shelters still generate in this deeply conservative society, where the shelters have come to symbolize the competition between modern values and traditional Afghan ways. Many believe their very existence at best encourages girls to run away from home and at worst are fronts for brothels.

The changes in the law would require a woman like Sabra to justify her flight to an eight-member government panel, which would determine whether she needed to be in a shelter or should be sent to jail or back home, where she would be at risk of a beating or even death. She would also have to undergo a physical exam that could include a virginity test.

Continue Reading »

Many thanks to Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center, for these three fascinating papers on irrigation with seawater.  You can link to them at

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeMjY5MTRmMTYtOWQxYy00YmFlLTllOTMtMzk4MDlhM2NkNGE5&hl=en&authkey=CJOtyKIE

and

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeMjBmZDg5MGEtNmRhOS00NzdkLTg1NDYtOGYzNmU1ZWEyYzky&hl=en&authkey=CKiYxaQM

and

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeZjc1OGYyOGMtZjQzZC00NTcyLWFlMjgtMzAyY2QyYTYyZGJj&hl=en&authkey=CKXj7IgB

Thanks to Ben Zuckerman for this article from New Scientist.  See http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927986.400-earth-economist-the-food-bubble-is-about-to-burst.html

Earth economist: The food bubble is about to burst

10 February, 2011

By Alison George

We’re fast draining the fresh water resources our farms rely on, warns Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute

What is a food bubble?

That’s when food production is inflated through the unsustainable use of water and land. It’s the water bubble we need to worry about now. The World Bank says that 15 per cent of Indians (175 million people) are fed by grain produced through overpumping – when water is pumped out of aquifers faster than they can be replenished. In China, the figure could be 130 million.

Has this bubble already burst anywhere?

Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient in wheat by using water from a fossil aquifer, which doesn’t refill. It has harvested close to 3 million tonnes a year, but in 2008 the Saudi authorities said the aquifer was largely depleted. Next year could be the last harvest. This is extreme, but about half the world’s people live in countries with falling water tables. India and China will lose grain production capacity through aquifer depletion. We don’t know when or how abruptly the bubble will burst.

With population rising, a fall in grain production would spell big trouble.

Yes. Tonight at the dinner table there will be 219,000 people who weren’t there last night. But that’s not all: we also have maybe 3 billion people moving up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock products.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927986.400-earth-economist-the-food-bubble-is-about-to-burst.html

Thanks to Paul Ehrlich for this interview with him in the Los Angeles Times.  See http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison-ehrlich-021211,0,413002.column

Patt Morrison Asks

Paul R. Ehrlich: Saving Earth

The scholar looks the planet, and humanity, in the face.

Patt Morrison

February 12, 2011

For a scholar who traffics in some of the more dispiriting elements of modern biology, ecology and demographics, Paul R. Ehrlich is a remarkably funny guy. His caption for this picture? “A living Neanderthal” contemplating the skull (a replica) of an extinct one. Maybe his humor is a coping mechanism for the parlous state of the planet; maybe it’s the result of more than 50 years as a Stanford University researcher, professor and author.

However you draw the map of this melting, freezing world, Ehrlich is on it. He got there in 1968, with the sizzlingly, and to Ehrlich’s mind now, regrettably titled book “The Population Bomb.” It is replete with “ifs” and “whens” about the catastrophic collision of population versus resources, some of which have come to pass and some of which haven’t — yet. On that score, Ehrlich is as gleeful at attacking his critics as they are at going after him.

In his latest book, “Humanity on a Tightrope,” coauthored with Robert E. Ornstein, the tightrope could still turn into a lifeline if humans choose the right balance. Before he’s off to Costa Rica to pursue his first academic love, butterflies, he’s looking the planet, and humanity, in the face.

One thing I draw from your new book is that you’re now calling on individuals to do what institutions have failed to when it comes to saving the planet and ourselves.

That’s part of it. We now know more than enough about what the hell is wrong with the world. The climate, the toxification of the planet, the epidemiological environment, the chances of plague, losing biodiversity, the rate of extinction of species — and we’re doing nothing about it. We’ve had 10 failures now on international attempts to do something about climate change. If we don’t figure out how to change human behavior toward sustainability, we’re basically … screwed, I think is the technical term.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison-ehrlich-021211,0,413002.column

Thanks to Kathlene Carney for the link to a transcript of this interview with Paul Ehrlich by Alex Smith, host of the syndicated show, Ecoshock, done as part of Population Media Center’s talk show project.  See http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/Ehrlich_interview_110211.htm.

Humanity On A Tightrope — Dr. Paul Ehrlich on EcoShock

Radio Ecoshock interview with Alex Smith, February 11, 2011

When it comes to population, the name Paul Ehrlich inevitably comes up.  In 1968, Dr. Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb”.  About 40 years, and 40 books later, this distinguished scientist comes to us with a new book called “Humanity On A Tightrope.”

Dr. Erhlich, it’s an honor to welcome you to Radio Ecoshock.

Paul R. Ehrlich: Great to be with you.

Alex Smith: First off, you have an authoritative co-author for this project.  Can you tell us a bit about Robert E. Ornstein, and how you two came to write this book?

PRE: Well, Bob and I have been friends for years.  And he’s a very distinguished psychologist, noted for some of his early work in split brains, for a number of great books explaining what we know about how the brain works.

We’re both very, very concerned about human behavior, in various dimensions.  So we decided that it was time to write a second book together.  We wrote one about twenty years ago called “New World New Mind”.  So this is in a sense a follow-up.

AS: Listeners and readers may be surprised, to find your new book is not specifically about population.  Instead, you propose a common tool we’ll need to face the many threats to civilization.  Things like climate change, polluted oceans, and so on.

Dr. Ehrlich, what is the common human ability we need to develop?

PRE: We already have one that allows us to put us in each others’ shoes.  That’s a very unusual trait for an animal, but we have it.  It’s a critical one, and we do it automatically when in small groups.  Because, as you know, for most of our evolutionary history we’ve been a small group animal.  We lived for hundreds of thousands of years as homo-sapiens, and before that as other species in groups of 50 to 150 people where we could easily tell, often, what was going on in the minds of other individuals and in a sense feel what they were feeling.

We actually have nerves that are designed, in our brain, to let us put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes.  That’s a really crucial thing which we need to spread much further these days.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Joe Bish for this editorial, which was distributed to 800 U.S. newspapers and magazines by the Cagle Syndication Service.  See http://www.caglecartoons.com/column.asp?columnID={7C8F77B4-9C6E-43E0-BCFD-0E4A514B885D} for the editorial cartoons that accompanied this editorial.

In the Year of 7 Billion, 8 Is Enough
By Joe Bish

This fall, probably in late October, human population will exceed 7 billion people. Yet, on this score, the young adults of today’s world have an unprecedented hope. For the first time in modern history global population stabilization is possible within our lifetimes.

United Nations calculations show that if global fertility settles at 1.4 children per women within a few decades, down from today’s average of 2.6, our planet’s rapid population growth could completely halt by 2045, at just over 8 billion. That is only 34 years away.

Yes, those are cries of joy you hear. They come from the multitude of species on the brink of human-induced extinction, from the atmosphere our expanding civilizations are force-feeding mass quantities of carbon and other pollutants, and from oceans choked with plastic.

More importantly, though, listen to the sighs of hope coming from women and young girls all over the planet.

Continue Reading »

From the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Climate Economics Group.  Scanning the main report, it does not seem that the authors considered the alternative of limiting population growth.

Three-report package

The Last Drop: Climate Change and the Southwest Water Crisis

Water is already a major concern in the Southwest, where homes, businesses and farms use far more water than is produced by rain and snowfall, and groundwater reserves are shrinking.
In this study, funded by a grant from the Kresge Foundation, Frank Ackerman and Liz Stanton quantified the impact of climate change on the Southwest’s water supply.
Without prompt action, they found, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah will face a combined shortfall over the next century of 1,815 million acre feet from population and income growth alone, plus an additional 282 million to 439 million acre feet of shortfall due to climate change.
Based on current water prices, meeting the baseline shortfall alone would cost $2.3 trillion to $4 trillion, and climate change could increase that by a quarter, adding as much as $1 trillion to the costs of 21st-century water supply in the Southwest.

To read the main policy report, click here.
A second piece of this package, California Water Supply and Demand: Technical Report, describes our CWSD model, created to analyze urban and agricultural water use.
A third piece, The Water-Energy Nexus in the Western States: Projections to 2100, describes an analysis of water use for energy production, conducted by Synapse Energy Economics Inc.