From the May/June issue of Foreign Policy Magazine.  See http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/09/the_myth_of_9_billion.

Why ignoring family planning overseas was the worst foreign-policy mistake of the century.

The Myth of 9 Billion

BY MALCOLM POTTS, MARTHA CAMPBELL | MAY 9, 2011

This week, the United Nations Population Division made a radical shift in its population projections. Previously, the organization had estimated that the number of people living on the planet would reach around 9 billion by 2050 — and then level off. Now everything has changed: Rather than leveling off, the population size will continue to grow, reaching 10 billion or more at century’s end.

Why is this happening? Put simply, fertility rates. Across much of the world, women are having fewer children, but in African countries, the decline is far slower than expected. Part of this shift was supposed to come from preferences about family size and better access to family planning to make that possible. Sadly, however, that access hasn’t come. Another factor, many expected, would come from the deleterious impact of high HIV/AIDS rates. But even Uganda — with one of the highest numbers of AIDS cases in sub-Saharan Africa — is projected to almost triple its population by 2050. In fact, outside a handful of countries, HIV/AIDS has only a tiny impact on overall population. Consider this: In the first five months of this year, the world population grew by enough to equal all the AIDS deaths since the epidemic began 30 years ago.

Rapid population growth is bad news for the continent, as it will likely outstrip gains in economic development. It’s also a wake-up call: If the world doesn’t begin investing far more seriously in family planning, much of our progress fighting poverty in sub-Saharan Africa over the last half-century could be lost.

Demographic projections are just that — predictions. They only tell us what can happen if we make a variety of policy decisions and investments. As is the case with these projections, they include a lower and higher estimate — and where we end up in that range depends upon what we do in the meantime. Hence, it would be a mistake to focus only on the medium U.N. projection of 9.3 billion people by 2050 as most commentators do. The high projection would take us to 10.6 billion in 2050. The low projection would mean 8.1 billion. (Just for a sense of scale: The difference between these high and low variants is equivalent to the entire global population in 1950.)

From the UN News Centre.  See http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38253&Cr=population&Cr1

3 May 2011 -

Global population to pass 10 billion by 2100, UN projections indicate

The world’s population is projected to surge past 9 billion before 2050 and then reach 10.1 billion by the end of the century if current fertility rates continue at expected levels, according to United Nations figures unveiled today.

Most of the increase will come from so-called “high fertility countries,” mainly in sub-Saharan Africa but also in some nations in Asia, Oceania and Latin America, the figures reveal.

The 2010 Revision of World Population Prospects, prepared by the Population Division at the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), shows that a small variation in fertility could lead to major long-term differences in the size of the global population.

Based on the medium projection, the number of people in the world – currently close to 7 billion – should pass 8 billion in 2023, 9 billion by 2041 and then 10 billion at some point after 2081.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38253&Cr=population&Cr1

From Foreign Policy Magazine.  See http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food. Also, see http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issues/current for a series of articles in the May/June issue on the global food situation.

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars.

BY LESTER R. BROWN | MAY/JUNE 2011

In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family’s dinner table.

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we’ve seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet’s poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute — and it has — to revolutions and upheaval.

Already in 2011, the U.N. Food Price Index has eclipsed its previous all-time global high; as of March it had climbed for eight consecutive months. With this year’s harvest predicted to fall short, with governments in the Middle East and Africa teetering as a result of the price spikes, and with anxious markets sustaining one shock after another, food has quickly become the hidden driver of world politics. And crises like these are going to become increasingly common. The new geopolitics of food looks a whole lot more volatile — and a whole lot more contentious — than it used to. Scarcity is the new norm.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_new_geopolitics_of_food

Thanks to the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development for this article.  For details, see http://bataviase.co.id/node/620475

Indonesia: Family Planner warns of population crisis unless urgent action taken

Indonesia’s population grew by 1.49 percent, or by 32.7 million people, in just a decade and at the current rate the country might have 450 million people by 2045. The National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) said the growth of the population in just a decade was equal to the population of Canada and exceeded that of Malaysia.

An uncontrolled rise in population would have a negative impact on the environment such as the ecological suicide which links population explosions to environmental problems. Indonesia’s population nearing 240 million people had caused problems related to sanitation, flooding, congestion, and access to clean water.

Thanks to Don Wilkin and Fred Stanback for this article.  See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42630131/ns/world_news-world_environment/t/water-wars-thirsty-energy-short-china-stirs-fear/

Water wars? Thirsty, energy-short China stirs fear

By DENIS D. GRAY
Associated Press

BAHIR JONAI, India (AP) — The wall of water raced through narrow Himalayan gorges in northeast India, gathering speed as it raked the banks of towering trees and boulders. When the torrent struck their island in the Brahmaputra river, the villagers remember, it took only moments to obliterate their houses, possessions and livestock.

No one knows exactly how the disaster happened, but everyone knows whom to blame: neighboring China.

“We don’t trust the Chinese,” says fisherman Akshay Sarkar at the resettlement site where he has lived since the 2000 flood. “They gave us no warning. They may do it again.”

About 800 kilometers (500 miles) east, in northern Thailand, Chamlong Saengphet stands in the Mekong river, in water that comes only up to her shins. She is collecting edible river weeds from dwindling beds. A neighbor has hung up his fishing nets, his catches now too meager.

Using words bordering on curses, they point upstream, toward China.

The blame game, voiced in vulnerable river towns and Asian capitals from Pakistan to Vietnam, is rooted in fear that China’s accelerating program of damming every major river flowing from the Tibetan plateau will trigger natural disasters, degrade fragile ecologies, divert vital water supplies.

For the rest of the article, please click here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42630131/ns/world_news-world_environment/t/water-wars-thirsty-energy-short-china-stirs-fear/

From the New York Times.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/opinion/14collins.html?_r=2&ref=gailcollins

Op-Ed Columnist

Behind the Abortion War

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: April 13, 2011

Part of the price of keeping the government operating this week is another debate over the financing of Planned Parenthood. Whoopee.

At least it’ll give us a chance to reminisce about Senator Jon Kyl, who gave that speech against federal support for Planned Parenthood last week that was noted for: A) its wild inaccuracy; and B) his staff’s explanation that the remarks were “not intended to be a factual statement.”

This is the most memorable statement to come out of politics since Newt Gingrich told the world that he was driven to commit serial adultery by excessive patriotism.

The speech in question was Kyl’s rejoinder to the argument that Planned Parenthood provides a critically important national network of women’s health services.

“You don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” Kyl declared.

Planned Parenthood says that abortions, which are not paid for with federal money, constitute 3 percent of the services that the organization provides. That’s quite a gap. But only if you’re planning on going factual.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/opinion/14collins.html?_r=2&ref=gailcollins

Thanks to Eric Rimmer for this article.  See http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=2641&ArticleID=8734&l=en

Humanity Can and Must Do More with Less: UNEP Report

New York/ Nairobi, 12 May 2011 -

By 2050, humanity could consume an estimated 140 billion tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels and biomass per year – three times its current appetite – unless the economic growth rate is “decoupled” from the rate of natural resource consumption, warns a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

Developed countries citizens consume an average of 16 tons of those four key resources per capita (ranging up to 40 or more tons per person in some developed countries). By comparison, the average person in India today consumes four tons per year.

With the growth of both population and prosperity, especially in developing countries, the prospect of much higher resource consumption levels is “far beyond what is likely sustainable” if realized at all given finite world resources, warns the report by UNEP’s International Resource Panel.

Already the world is running out of cheap and high quality sources of some essential materials such as oil, copper and gold, the supplies of which, in turn, require ever-rising volumes of fossil fuels and freshwater to produce.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=2641&ArticleID=8734&l=en

In case you missed it, Glenn Beck referred to Planned Parenthood clients as “hookers.”  Here is a response from RH Reality Check.  See http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/04/11/dear-beck-hookers

Dear Mr. Beck: We Are All Hookers

by Jodi Jacobson, Editor-in-Chief, RH Reality Check. April 11, 2011.

Dear Mr. Beck,

I understand it is your contention that “only hookers go to Planned Parenthood.”

There must be a lot of hookers out here.

I am one of them.

When I was in college, I went to a Planned Parenthood for a pelvic exam, and for my first contraceptive method.  I didn’t know then I was a hooker since I was in a serious relationship and it didn’t involve an exchange of money for sex, but I guess I must have been.  Young adults ages 18 to 24 years old make up more than 50 percent of the clientele of some Planned Parenthood clinics, such as those run by Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania.  You may be surprised to know that even the members and leadership of College Republicans at Pitt’s college use the services provided and felt that cutting funding for Planned Parenthood was and is “counterintuitive.”  But I guess by your definition, all of the hundreds of thousands of college students who receive affordable gynecological and reproductive health care, contraceptive supplies and expert medical advice every year at Planned Parenthood clinics are hookers.  Including those young Republicans.

Those college students, and millions of other men and women get access to affordable contraception every year through Planned Parenthood, without which there would be countless numbers of additional unintended pregnancies and abortions. I guess denying them those services by ridiculing both the providers and the clients would give you more to laugh about when talking on air about people’s very real need to manage their reproductive lives.  But then, they don’t deserve your respect, do they….because they are all “hookers.”

My aunt, who worked for years as a waitress to support three children after becoming a  widow at a young age, sought gynecological and related health services at a Planned Parenthood clinic.  I didn’t realize she was a hooker either.  If she were, she’d probably have made a lot more money than waiting tables for people, kinda like you, who thought they were better than struggling waitresses.  She never had the chance to make (a reported) $25 million per year using broadcast media acting like an undisciplined child, spreading lies and innuendo, and making fun of people who struggle for a living.  Then again, she had too much integrity to do the kinds of things you do.

To read the full article, please click here:

Many thanks to Oren Lyons, professor at State University of New York at Buffalo and Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs – and a chief with the Iroquois Nation – for this paper he gave me when we met on May 6, which he had delivered in a talk at a Department of Energy’s Tribal Summit the day before.  The Native American tribes are natural allies in environmental and population concerns, since they are among those who know the most about the harmful effects of population growth.

“First, Do No Harm to the Earth,” A luncheon address by Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper Onondaga Council of Chiefs

US Department of Energy Tribal Summit

Winning  Our Energy Future

May 5, 2011

Marriot Crystal Gateway, Arlington

Nyawenha Scanno

Greetings from the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee (The Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy).  The chiefs, clan mothers, faithkeepers, men and women send their greetings to you as well as our children to your children.  Even those crawling about and those on cradle boards; we send our greetings and wishes of good health and peace to all assembled and to your families at home.

We thank you for this opportunity to speak to the issues that we face as peoples.  Context and parameters are important.  I shall try to be concise, yet inclusive, since the issues touch all aspects of our lives in all parts of the world.  The discussion here is energy.

Water is the first law of life.  This law prevails over all beings of flesh, bone and blood.  It is the law of nature and all living things; and, therefore, a governing principle.  It provides energy for life.

The air we breathe contains the oxygen necessary for our lives, health and well being.  The soft winds bring the seasons, plant the seeds of life and provide another fundamental principle of life.

The earth we call our mother is alive and provides us with all the life giving forces that sustain life as we know it today.  It is the wellspring of energy – a primary principle of life.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Jack Martin for this article.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/earth/12water.html?_r=2&scp=7sq=water&st=cse This article is the first in a series about struggles over dwindling water supplies across the United States.

Precious Waters

Indians Join Fight for an Oklahoma Lake’s Flow

By Felicity Barringer

Published: April 11, 2011

TUSKAHOMA, Okla. – Sardis Lake, a reservoir in southeastern Oklahoma young enough to have drowned saplings still poking through its surface and old enough to have become a renowned bass fishery, is not wanting for suitors.

Oklahoma City and fast-growing suburbs like Edmond want to see the water flowing through their shower heads someday. So do the water masters of Tarrant County, Tex., 200 miles to the south, who are looking to supply new subdivisions around Fort Worth and are suing for access.

Now another rival has arrived: the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes, who were exiled to southeastern Oklahoma 175 years ago and given land in the area.

Gregory Pyle, chief of the Choctaw nation, said his tribe would sue to win some of the water if necessary. “All this water was controlled originally by the Indian tribes in this area,” Mr. Pyle said. “It is all Choctaw and Chickasaw water.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/earth/12water.html?_r=3&scp=7sq=water&st=cse