Thanks to Jane Roberts for this OpEd.  See http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/reader-diaries/2011/02/23/fantasy-testimony-republican-house-representatives-about-unfpa-funding

My Fantasy Testimony to the Republican House of Representatives about UNFPA.

Reader diary posted by Jane Roberts, 34 Million Friends of UNFPA

February 23, 2011 – 2:43pm

I wrote this in my head at 4 a.m. this morning. I’d love to see it in the Congressional Record. It should blow if not change a few minds.

Quite honestly, your vote to disallow a U.S. allocation to the United Nations Population Fund shows your utter lack of discernment, your ignorance about the function of UNFPA, and your willingness to believe the lies of Chris Smith over the consensus in the world that women’s health, education, and human rights are at the core of any chance in the future for people, the planet and peace. (Nothing like starting with a bang!)

Did you know that UNFPA is the humanitarian agency of the United Nations to which the greatest number of countries contribute? All of our allies and long time “friends” contribute. They are quite frankly baffled and appalled by your short sighted politically motivated mean spiritedness.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article by Lisa Hymas at Grist. http://www.grist.org/population/2011-02-21-yo-congress-you-need-to-pony-up-1b-for-global-family-planning

Yo, Congress, you need to pony up $1B for global family planning

by Lisa Hymas

21 Feb 2011 3:20 PM

We’re surging toward a world population of 7 billion this year-and we still haven’t even made contraception available to everyone who wants it.

The new “Million for a Billion” campaign aims to bridge that gap. Here’s a video to set the scene. [See http://www.grist.org/article/2011-02-21-yo-congress-you-need-to-pony-up-1b-for-global-family-planning]

Right now, 215 million women who want to avoid getting pregnant are not using modern birth control. The U.N. has a goal to remedy that problem by 2015 (one of its Millennium Development Goals), but it needs a chunk of change to do so: $3.6 billion a year, $1 billion of which should come from the U.S., according to the International Family Planning Coalition. That would be a jump up from the $648 million the U.S. contributed last year. (Sounds like a lot of money-until you consider that the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is well north of $3 trillion. That’s trillion with a T.)

Tell your members of Congress to fund global family planning.

Hence the launch of a campaign to get a million people asking Congress for $1 billion. You can sign a petition, join the campaign on Facebook, and, most importantly, demand action from your U.S. senators and rep.

Is a campaign like this unrealistic in the current political climate, when Republicans in Congress are engaged in a war on women and don’t even want to fund domestic family-planning programs, let alone international ones? Perhaps. Is that all the more reason to push this issue loudly and aggressively, making it clear to those in power that the American people overwhelmingly support family planning? Yes.

This is the latest in a series of GINK videos about population and reproduction (or a lack thereof)-usually appearing on Saturdays, but today you get a special Presidents’ Day edition.

In case you missed this story on NPR two years ago, here it is.  Thanks to Leon Kolankiewicz.  The link is http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062.

In Quiverfill Movement, Birth Control Is Shunned

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

March 25, 2009

Among some conservative Christians, a movement is giving new meaning to the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.”

The movement, called Quiverfull, is based on Psalm 127, which says, “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”

Those in the Quiverfull movement shun birth control, believing that God will give them the right number of children. It turns out, that’s a lot of kids.

‘We Actually Didn’t Want Children’

While cooking a typical predawn breakfast in the Swanson household in Shelby, Mich., 10-year-old Lydia Swanson cracks a dozen eggs laid by the family chickens. Her mother, Kelly, fries 3 pounds of sausage from the family’s own pig and toasts a 12-inch loaf of homemade bread.

If they didn’t raise their own food, Kelly Swanson says, they’d spend $1,000 a month on groceries for her gaggle of growing children, including 15-year-old Josiah and 13-year-old Elisha. But in listing their ages, Kelly gets Elisha’s age wrong.

“At least I remembered your name,” she says.

Kelly can perhaps be forgiven the lapse. The 40-year-old mom has seven children; the youngest is 6 months. And she’d like to have more.

The Swansons subscribe to the Quiverfull movement.

“When we first got married, we actually didn’t want children,” Kelly’s husband, Jeff Swanson, says.

But then the Swansons began to notice that the Bible was very high on big families. And Kelly says that she and Jeff decided that God knew how many children they could handle.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062

Thanks to co-author Michael Kugelman for this paper from the Wilson Center published in 2009.  It is highly relevant to the situation confronting the developing world today because of the escalation in food prices.  To download a copy, see:

https://docs.google.com/a/populationmedia.org/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeYmQ1ZjllYmEtZDMwNy00ZmE4LWI0M2EtZDYxYWNhYmVlY2Yz&hl=en&authkey=CJyPsPcH&pli=1

Thanks to Jack Alpert for this article.  For those of you with a Facebook account, see here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/bodhisantra-paul-chefurka/is-peak-population-almost-here/10150188483007589

Is Peak Population Almost Here?

by Bodhisantra Paul Chefurka on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 3:59pm

After 40 years of beating the drum of overpopulation, I have stopped.

I no longer think that overpopulation or the ecological devastation that comes from overconsumption are going to be problems for much longer. I now expect world population to peak between 7.5 and 8 billion people by 2025 or 2030, and then start declining. I also think that the human activity that is currently damaging the natural world is going to start diminishing at the same time.

But I haven’t changed my mind for the reasons you might think.  It’s not that I believe that after all this time, after all this human growth and planetary mutilation, we are finally getting a handle on our behaviour.  Instead, the reason I believe this “good news” is about to unfold is that we are already in the throes of a collision between climate change and world oil supply limits (aka Peak Oil) that from this moment on is going to progressively destabilize the global food supply.

As our food and energy supplies tighten and then begin to shrink, the engine of population growth will shudder to a halt and our ability to wreak havoc on the world will be drastically curtailed.  Whether this will be a good or bad thing is entirely a question of your perspective.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article: http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/54230-population-predictions-could-be-wildly-wrong

Population predictions could be wildly wrong

Posted on Mon, 02/21/2011 – 08:07 by Kate Taylor

Population predictions are often bandied about as fact – but are actually ‘highly uncertain’, a population scientist has told the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

United Nations figures suggest that the total number of people in the world will climb to nine billion in 2050, peak at nine and a half billion, stabilize temporarily and then decline.

But the Population Council’s John Bongaarts – who’s researched  fertility, population-environment relationships, the demographic impact of AIDS, population aging and population policy options in the developing world – says that these figures are actually highly unreliable.

With respect to fertility, he says, some analysts assume that the low levels of childbearing now prevailing in Southern and Eastern Europe – currently less than two children per woman – will continue and spread to other parts of the world.

But this is far from certain, says, Bongaarts, and if fertility remains higher than the UN projects, the world population could exceed 10 billion in 2100.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/54230-population-predictions-could-be-wildly-wrong

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1359217/An-unrecognisable-world-Global-population-9-billion-compete-food-supplies-2050.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:36 PM on 22nd February 2011

Mankind will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as in the last 8,000

The earth’s population could top nine billion by 2050, leading to an ‘unrecognisable’ world as people compete for scarcer resources a U.S. science conference heard yesterday.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) heard how the world’s population’s will increase rapidly in poorer countries resulting in the need to produce the same amount of food in a 40 year period as had been produced in the previous 8,000 years.

Population growth is expected to be highest in African and South Asian states, while incomes are also expected to rise in these countries by up to four times.

This will lead to further strain as research has shown that people earning higher wages consume more food.

“More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet,’  Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund told the AFP news agency.

‘By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognisable,’

Mr Clay urged scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1359217/An-unrecognisable-world-Global-population-9-billion-compete-food-supplies-2050.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Thanks to Bryna Gallagher for this article. Originally posted at http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220/ts_afp/scienceuspopulationfood but now expired.

Planet could be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050, experts say

- Sun Feb 20, 3:05 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia,” said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

To feed all those mouths, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,” said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable” if current trends continue, Clay said.

The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

Continue Reading »

From Le Monde diplomatique.  See: http://mondediplo.com/openpage/the-year-of-living-dangerously

The year of living dangerously

Rising commodity prices and extreme weather events threaten global stability

25 January, by Michael Klare

Get ready for a rocky year. From now on, rising prices, powerful storms, severe droughts and floods, and other unexpected events are likely to play havoc with the fabric of global society, producing chaos and political unrest. Start with a simple fact: the prices of basic food staples are already approaching or exceeding their 2008 peaks, that year when deadly riots erupted in dozens of countries around the world.

It’s not surprising then that food and energy experts are beginning to warn that 2011 could be the year of living dangerously – and so could 2012, 2013, and on into the future. Add to the soaring cost of the grains that keep so many impoverished people alive a comparable rise in oil prices – again nearing levels not seen since the peak months of 2008 – and you can already hear the first rumblings about the tenuous economic recovery being in danger of imminent collapse. Think of those rising energy prices as adding further fuel to global discontent.

Already, combined with staggering levels of youth unemployment and a deep mistrust of autocratic, repressive governments, food prices have sparked riots in Algeria and mass protests in Tunisia that, to the surprise of the world, ousted long-time dictator President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his corrupt extended family. And many of the social stresses evident in those two countries are present across the Middle East and elsewhere. No one can predict where the next explosion will occur, but with food prices still climbing and other economic pressures mounting, more upheavals appear inevitable. These may be the first resource revolts to catch our attention, but they won’t be the last.

To read the full article, please click here: http://mondediplo.com/openpage/the-year-of-living-dangerously

Thanks to Jack Martin for alerting me to the second in this year’s series of National Geographic articles on population.  You can see the full article and illustrations at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/age-of-man/kolbert-text The text is pasted below.  As I mentioned on December 31, when I distributed the first article, this is a year-long partnership between the PBS NewsHour (the Lehrer Report), National Geographic magazine, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting examining population issues.  If you were partying when I did the December 31 distribution, you can find it at http://www.populationmedia.org/2010/12/31/national-geographic-by-2045-global-population-is-projected-to-reach-nine-billion-can-the-planet-take-the-strain/

Enter the Anthropocene-Age of Man

It’s a new name for a new geologic epoch-one defined by our own massive impact on the planet. That mark will endure in the geologic record long after our cities have crumbled.

By Elizabeth Kolbert

Photograph by Jens Neumann/Edgar Rodtmann

The path leads up a hill, across a fast-moving stream, back across the stream, and then past the carcass of a sheep. In my view it’s raining, but here in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, I’m told, this counts as only a light drizzle, or smirr. Just beyond the final switchback, there’s a waterfall, half shrouded in mist, and an outcropping of jagged rock. The rock has bands that run vertically, like a layer cake that’s been tipped on its side. My guide, Jan Zalasiewicz, a British stratigrapher, points to a wide stripe of gray. “Bad things happened in here,” he says.

The stripe was laid down some 445 million years ago, as sediments slowly piled up on the bottom of an ancient ocean. In those days life was still confined mostly to the water, and it was undergoing a crisis. Between one edge of the three-foot-thick gray band and the other, some 80 percent of marine species died out, many of them the sorts of creatures, like graptolites, that no longer exist. The extinction event, known as the end-Ordovician, was one of the five biggest of the past half billion years. It coincided with extreme changes in climate, in global sea levels, and in ocean chemistry-all caused, perhaps, by a supercontinent drifting over the South Pole.

Stratigraphers like Zalasiewicz are, as a rule, hard to impress. Their job is to piece together Earth’s history from clues that can be coaxed out of layers of rock millions of years after the fact. They take the long view-the extremely long view-of events, only the most violent of which are likely to leave behind clear, lasting signals. It’s those events that mark the crucial episodes in the planet’s 4.5-billion-year story, the turning points that divide it into comprehensible chapters.

So it’s disconcerting to learn that many stratigraphers have come to believe that we are such an event-that human beings have so altered the planet in just the past century or two that we’ve ushered in a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Standing in the smirr, I ask Zalasiewicz what he thinks this epoch will look like to the geologists of the distant future, whoever or whatever they may be. Will the transition be a moderate one, like dozens of others that appear in the record, or will it show up as a sharp band in which very bad things happened-like the mass extinction at the end of the Ordovician?

That, Zalasiewicz says, is what we are in the process of determining.

To read the full article, please click here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/age-of-man/kolbert-text