Thanks to Dahr Jamail of Al Jazeera, who interviewed William Ryerson, president of Population Media Center, for this article.  See: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

Climate Change: It’s Bad and Getting Worse

Severe weather events are wracking the planet, and experts warn of even greater consequences to come.

The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland’s largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes “dead”, meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

Floods have struck Eastern and Southern China, killing at least 52 and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, followed by severe flooding that again hit Eastern China, displacing or otherwise affecting five million people.

Meanwhile in Europe, crops in the northwest are suffering the driest weather in decades.

Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth’s temperature, and the aforementioned events are a sign of what is to come.

To read the full article, please click here: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

Please see: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

The Decline of Agriculture

By Dahr Jamail

Climate change induced extreme weather events and shifting weather patterns are challenging farmer’s ability to feed us.

Wendy Johnston with Oakwyn Farms in Athens, West Virginia, is deeply concerned about how shifting weather patterns are impacting farmers’ ability to feed the global population.

“This year we’re off to a slow start,” Johnston, who farms 40 hectares, told Al Jazeera. “Last year in April we were able to plant, but this year we even had rain, cold and snow a few days in April. The weather has become very unpredictable, and that’s the real problem.”

Climate change is making farming more difficult for her, and she wonders how much worse things will become.

On March 31, The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned of “potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes that are expected to increasingly hit the developing world.

The report filed with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that food production systems and the ecosystems they depend on are highly sensitive to climate variability and change.

Changes in temperature, precipitation, and related outbreaks of pest and diseases could reduce production, the report said. Those particularly vulnerable are poor people in countries that rely on food imports, although climate change events are already driving up food costs around the globe, including in developed countries.

April broke many weather-related monthly records in the US, including 292 tornadoes and 5,400 extreme weather events, which combined to cause 337 deaths.

To read the full article, please click here: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

Thanks to SD Shantinath for this article.  See http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/04/can-the-planet-support-10-billion-people/africas-daunting-challenges

Can the Planet Support 10 Billion People?

How will countries feed and shelter populations that are expected to soar by century’s end?

Africa’s Daunting Challenges.

David E. Bloom is a professor of economics and demography and chairman of the department of global health and population at Harvard University. He spoke about population growth at the World Economic Forum meeting this week in Cape Town, South Africa:

In many respects, the figures for Africa represent the most disconcerting aspect of the United Nations report on population growth. Africa’s population today stands at 1 billion. According to the U.N., that number will increase to 2.2 billion by 2050 and 3.6 billion by 2100. It took humankind more than 50,000 years to reach 1 billion, and now Africa alone will be adding more than that number in just four decades.

No other region will come close to having such a rapid rate of population growth in the coming decades (1.9 percent per year). Africa’s billion only represents 15 percent of world population today, but Africa will account for 49 percent of global population growth over the next four decades.

High fertility rates are driving rapid population growth in Africa. Globally, women are having an average of 2.5 children over the course of their childbearing years. But the average African woman is having nearly 4.5 children (and over 6 in four countries). One consequence of Africa’s high fertility is that a preponderance of its population is young. Twenty-seven percent of the world’s population is under age 15, but in Africa, the figure is 40 percent.

These facts are troubling because population growth is clustered with, and aggravates, other major problems. If you look at all countries in terms of income poverty, water poverty, and the Failed States Index , the 14 countries that rank high on all three, all but one are in Africa (Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Uganda). And the average annual population growth rate of those countries is a whopping 2.6 percent.

To read the full articles, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/04/can-the-planet-support-10-billion-people/africas-daunting-challenges

Thanks to Chris Clugston for this introduction to his new book, Scarcity.  To download a copy of the book, link to http://www.wakeupamerika.com/

Human Misperceptions

Unfolding today among humankind is the most colossal self-inflicted tragedy in the history of the world.

During the course of human history, there have been two fundamental shocks to humanity’s prevailing worldview. The first occurred when Pythagoras discovered that the earth is not flat; the second occurred when Copernicus discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe.

The third and potentially fatal fundamental shock to humanity’s worldview is about to occur. We will soon discover that we can no longer provide continuously improving material living standards for ever-increasing numbers of our ever-expanding global human population. The earth no longer contains “enough” nonrenewable natural resources.

Scarcity is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary assessment of the realities, choices, and likely outcomes associated with ever-increasing nonrenewable natural resource scarcity.

Scarcity is also the story of a species, Homo sapiens, whose superior intellect should have caused it to eschew natural resource utilization behavior through which lower order species often experience population “irruptions” followed by “die-offs”. No such luck…

Industrialism and NNRs

It is understandable that we human beings would seek to improve our societal wellbeing-the material living standards enjoyed by our human populations-through industrialism. The material living standards associated with industrialized lifestyles such as those enjoyed by Americans and Western Europeans are far superior to the living standards afforded by pre-industrial agrarian and hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

Continue Reading »

By Dahr Jamail

Aljazeera – July 4, 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

Wendy Johnston with Oakwyn Farms in Athens, West Virginia, is deeply concerned about how shifting weather patterns are impacting farmers’ ability to feed the global population.

“This year we’re off to a slow start,” Johnston, who farms 40 hectares, told Al Jazeera. “Last year in April we were able to plant, but this year we even had rain, cold and snow a few days in April. The weather has become very unpredictable, and that’s the real problem.”

Climate change is making farming more difficult for her, and she wonders how much worse things will become.

On March 31, The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned of “potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes that are expected to increasingly hit the developing world.

The report filed with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that food production systems and the ecosystems they depend on are highly sensitive to climate variability and change.

Changes in temperature, precipitation, and related outbreaks of pest and diseases could reduce production, the report said. Those particularly vulnerable are poor people in countries that rely on food imports, although climate change events are already driving up food costs around the globe, including in developed countries.

April broke many weather-related monthly records in the US, including 292 tornadoes and 5,400 extreme weather events, which combined to cause 337 deaths.

The US National Climatic Data Center announced in June that April’s weather extremes were “unprecedented” and “never before” seen in a single month. The center also noted drought across the southern plains, wildfires in the southwest, and record floods along the Mississippi River.

“Severe weather events around the world will increase, even parts of the globe that don’t normally see extreme weather events,” said Steff Gaulter, Al Jazeera’s senior weather presenter. “Those parts of the world that already struggle with water shortages will find matters worsening, including Australia, Mexico, the southwest United States, and parts of Africa.”

Gaulter agrees with the FAO that poorer countries are likely to be the worst affected because they have less resources to cope with disasters.

“With worsening water-shortages, there will be more crop-failures, which means an increase in malnutrition,” she added. “There is also likely to be an increase in disease as people drink water that is unsuitable for consumption. All of this is an added expense that will be particularly punishing for poorer regions to endure, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Approximately 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa currently lack access to clean drinking water.

“It is also estimated that by 2020, an additional 75 to 250 million people there will also face water shortages,” said Gaulter. “That’s in less than ten years.”

For the full article, visit: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

By Dahr Jamail

Aljazeera – June 23, 2011

http://aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland’s largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes “dead”, meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

Floods have struck Eastern and Southern China, killing at least 52 and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, followed by severe flooding that again hit Eastern China, displacing or otherwise affecting five million people.

Meanwhile in Europe, crops in the northwest are suffering the driest weather in decades.

Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth’s temperature, and the aforementioned events are a sign of what is to come.

“If you had a satellite view of the planet in the summer, there is about 40 per cent less ice in the Arctic than when Apollo 8 [in 1968] first sent back those photos [of Earth],” Bill McKibben, world renowned environmentalist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences told Al Jazeera, “Oceans are 30 per cent more acidic than they were 40 years ago. The atmosphere is four per cent more wet than 40 years ago because warm air holds more water than cold air. That means more deluge and downpour in wet areas and more dryness in dry areas. So we’re seeing more destructive mega floods and storms, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing lightning strikes.”

So far human greenhouse gas emissions have raised the temperature of the planet by one degree Celsius.

“Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century,” said McKibben, “If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we’d be best not to hit four degrees.”

For the full article, visit: http://aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

By Jeff Gomez

Tribecafilm.com – May 9, 2011

http://www.tribecafilm.com/tribecaonline/future-of-film/Reawakening-the-Grand-Narrative.html

While traveling a few weeks back I had the good fortune to meet an Egyptian scholar. “Isn’t it wonderful,” I said, “how the Internet and social media were used by your people to free themselves from an oppressive regime?”

His response surprised me: “Oh no, Facebook and Twitter didn’t free us. Yes, they were tools we used along with diligent housewives, copy machines and handwritten flyers. The true tipping point happened late last year when our parliament retained power with the usual brazen wave of election fraud, corruption and thievery. The difference this time is that they didn’t even bother to lie to us about it. They didn’t even tell us a story.”
As someone who has spent the last decade advising the entertainment industry on how best to extend big movie and videogame properties across an array of strange new media platforms, I’ve had to think about story from any number of perspectives. What I’m coming to understand is this: Story is more powerful than any weapon. More than warriors, storytellers have influenced the way we’ve evolved as a race.

For the rest of this article, visit: http://www.tribecafilm.com/tribecaonline/future-of-film/Reawakening-the-Grand-Narrative.htmlFor

Many thanks to Bernard Gilland of Denmark for sending this paper of his.  You can download it at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeNWIxY2RlMWMtNTZiYS00OTRhLTk2ZDYtZGNmOWU3M2YyYWFk&hl=en_US&authkey=CKOiyIkL.

Incidentally, it appears that this paper does not consider that current grain production is in part achieved by overpumping of aquifers, so the measure of overpopulation is conservative.

On May 19^th, The United Nations Papua New Guinea hosted a press conference featuring Dr. Zoanne Clack who was visiting the writers, producers, and actors of PMC’s two radio drama series in Papua New Guinea (PNG) as part of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals Radio Campaign. Zoanne, who is a Co-Executive Producer and Writer for Grey’s Anatomy, was joined by Mr. David MacLachlan-Karr, UN Resident Coordinator in Papua New Guinea, and Ms. Betty Oala, PMC Papua New Guinea (PMC-PNG) Project Director. The three discussed Zoanne’s visit and also answered questions about PMC-PNG’s new and exciting set of dramas: Echoes of Change and Nau em Taim, both of which use highly entertaining and culturally-sensitive storylines to tackle tough issues like domestic violence, environmental conservation, maternal and child health, and HIV/AIDS to directly empower women, men, youth, and entire PNG communities. Mr. MacLachaln-Karr described the radio campaign as a way to inform remote and rural populations about what the Millennium Development Goals mean for them, but more importantly, he suggested that with the aid of these campaigns “they will demand from their elected representatives in government that the government invest more in the health and education services in this country, for the benefit of all Papua New Guineans.”

Dr. Zoanne Clack, Co-Executive Producer and Writer for Grey’s Anatomy, and Mr. David MacLachlan-Karr, UN Resident Coordinator in Papua New Guinea

In support of this objective, Zoanne was visiting PNG to work with the writers and actors of PMC’s programs and, as put by Project Director Oala, “add that bit of spice in their writing.” Zoanne’s advice on how to keep the dramas entertaining and meaningful went far beyond storylines, characters, and health facts. She admitted: “they have wonderful stories already, so I’m basically trying to deepen the writing and have it come from a different place…it’s not just all social issues and facts and figures and what I learned intellectually. It’s how to bring the humanity into the story.”

Her work with the creative team ranged from critiques of scripts and overviews of health issues to improvisation activities that forced actors and writers to be in the moment. Zoanne highlighted that these sorts of activities reminded writers of how to create real emotion in real time, just as they must do to keep the audience engaged in their stories. Zoanne’s own writing stems from her experience both as a trained public health specialist with the CDC, an emergency room doctor, and a television writer. Switching from the medicine to entertainment, Zoanne admits that people question why she has turned from saving lives directly to writing for a television show. But she cites that entertainment television has incredible potential for effecting social change. Contrasting with her ability to only reach a limited number of people in one shift in the ER, Clack says she can reach millions on one issue by writing it into a single episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and that power to be a catalyst for change is “an amazing responsibility and chance.”

Her exuberance for social change through entertainment was equally matched by the PMC team’s enthusiasm for having a Hollywood writer visit the PNG program. In contrast to Hollywood, Zoanne noticed one marked distinction. “It’s been a really interesting experience,” she said, “to come from Hollywood where people study for years and years [to act], and to have it just come from the soul here. I mean, there are some trained people here, but people are doing [this program] because they want to do it and because it’s important and because it’s their people. And so that’s just a beautiful thing. It’s not about money and it’s not about power.”

This experience has been much more than a one-way mentoring and advising project. As reporters filled the press conference with questions about how the show would address sensitive issues like contraception and maternal health, one also asked Zoanne if she would be taking her experience with PMC-PNG and putting it into the stories she will write in the future.  The answer: “Absolutely.”

Find out more about our Papua New Guinea program.