Thanks to Lee Gatewood for this article.  See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/population-bomb-9-billion-march-to-wwiii-2011-06-28

June 28, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT

Population bomb: 9 billion march to WWIII

Commentary: Can anyone halt this economic explosive?

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – Sshh. Don’t tell anyone. But “while you are reading these words, four people will have died from starvation. Most of them children.” Seventeen words. Four deaths. That statistic is from a cover of Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 provocative “Population Bomb.”

By the time you finish this column, another five hundred will die. By starvation. Mostly kids. Dead.

But global population will just keep growing, growing, growing. Why? The math is simple: Today there are more than two births for every death worldwide. One death. Two new babies.

Bomb? Tick-tick-ticking? Or economic bubble? Population growth is a basic assumption hard-wired in traditional economic theory. Unquestioned. Yes, population is our core economic problem. Not a military problem. But the bigger this economic bubble grows, the more we all sink into denial, the closer the point of no return where bubble becomes bomb, where war is the only alternative.

Yes, folks, ultimately population growth is an economic nuclear bomb, tick-tick-ticking a silent countdown to global disaster. In denial, we march a self-destructive path to WWIII.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/population-bomb-9-billion-march-to-wwiii-2011-06-28

From Yale University.  See: http://news.yale.edu/2011/06/20/fastest-sea-level-rise-two-millennia-linked-increasing-temperatures

Fastest Sea-Level Rise in Two Millennia Linked to Increasing Temperatures

posted: June 20, 2011

An international research team has shown that the rate of sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level.

Sea level rise is one of the threats of climate change, as rising temperatures melt glaciers and ice sheets and put coastal populations at risk of flooding. “Scenarios of future rise are dependent upon understanding the response of sea level to climate changes,” said Andrew Kemp, a Yale postdoctoral associate and the lead author of the new study. “Accurate estimates of past sea-level variability provide a context for such projections.”

In the new study, researchers provided the first continuous sea-level reconstruction for the past 2,000 years and compared variations in global temperature to changes in sea level over this time period.

The team found that sea level was relatively stable from 200 B.C. to 1,000 A.D. Beginning in the 11th century, sea level rose by about 1/50 of an inch per year for 400 years, associated with a warm climate period known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly. A second period of stable sea level associated with a cooler era, called the Little Ice Age, persisted until the late 19th century. Since then, sea level has risen by nearly 1/10 of an inch per year on average – the steepest rate for more than 2,100 years.

To read the full article, please click here: http://news.yale.edu/2011/06/20/fastest-sea-level-rise-two-millennia-linked-increasing-temperatures

7 Billion People in 2011 – Award-Winning Film Shows Why We Should Care

(See the last paragraph for purchase or rental information)

http://muvi.es/425/2311

August 31, 2011 Denver, Colorado – Award-winning environmental filmmakers are releasing Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, a film on sustainability, over-consumption and population.  A winner at the Boulder International Film Festival this year, Mother inspired the progressive Boulder audience to give a standing ovation. Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us wrote “Mother is a thoughtful, visually striking treatment of one of our biggest questions, both personal and planetary.  It hooks you, holds you — and leaves you genuinely hoping.”

In the film, Beth – a mother, a child-rights activist and a member of a large American family of 12 – realizes her own family’s impact and then travels to Ethiopia and witnesses firsthand the pressures of rapid population growth in developing countries. There she meets a young woman Zinet, living in extreme poverty, who, against all odds, found the courage to break free from thousand-year-old-cultural barriers by refusing to get married young and by attending school.

“Overpopulation is just another symptom of a domination system,” says the film’s director Chris Fauchere.  “We not only need to empower women, but we also have to move away from a ‘user’ to a  ‘nurturing’ attitude towards our planet and each other.” He then adds, “It’s a win-win situation for women, the sustainability of the world economy and the health of the planet.”

Tiroir A Films Productions’ previous award-winning environmental films include The Great Squeeze (2009) and Energy Crossroads (2007).   An academic version of Mother is also available as well as the public performance rights for grassroots screenings.  This is a limited release and is available for purchase or streaming (rental) at http://muvi.es/425/2311

I am pleased to invite you to join in a live web-chat tomorrow, Wednesday, October 19th at 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT). I will be joined by Julia Whitty, environmental correspondent for Mother Jones Magazine and Bob Walker, executive vice-president of the Population Institute, as we discuss population’s complex, pervasive relationship to the most pressing issues of our time — including climate change, biodiversity losses, global equity and human rights. Click here for more information:

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-10-04/population-7-billion-its-time-talk-WEBCHAT

This web-chat has been organized as part of the Population 7 Billion: It’s Time to Talk campaign. We will:

• Touch on the environmental, social and economic implications of current UN population projections (the UN estimate a global population of 10 billion by the year 2100 – currently expanding at a rate of over 220,000 additional people per day).

• Address the complex picture of global fertility: where it is very low, where it is at replacement level and where it remains high and very high. Challenges to further fertility reductions will be explained and discussed.

Continue Reading »

Many thanks to Tim Newcomb for this cartoon, published by Vermont’s Seven Days newspaper.

Thanks to Laurie Mazur for this article from RH Reality Check.  See: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/08/02/rights-resilience-women-rights-thriving-black-swan%E2%80%9D

Of Rights and Resilience: Why Women’s Rights are Key to Thriving in the Age of the “Black Swan”

by Laurie Mazur

August 11, 2011 – 9:20am

This fall, world population will reach 7 billion people at a time of accelerated environmental disruption. This article is the first in a multi-part series comissioned by RH Reality Check to examine the causes and consequences of population and environmental change from various perspectives and the policies and actions that need to be put in place to both avoid and mitigate the inevitable impacts of these changes.

Welcome to the age of the Black Swan.

The tornado that nearly leveled the city of Joplin, Missouri in May was a Black Swan; so was the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan in March; and the “hundred-year floods” that now take place every couple of years in the American Midwest.

A Black Swan is a low-probability, high-impact event that tears at the very fabric of civilization. And they are becoming more common: weather-related disasters spiked in 2010, killing nearly 300,000 people and costing $130 billion.

Black Swan events are proliferating for many reasons-notably climate change and the growing scale and interconnectedness of the human enterprise.  World population doubled in the last half-century to just under seven billion people, so there are simply more people living in harm’s way, on geologic faults and along vulnerable coastlines. As the human enterprise has grown, we have reshaped natural systems to meet human needs, weakening resilience of ecosystems, and by extension our own. In effect, we have re-engineered the planet and ushered in a new era of radical instability.

Continue Reading »

Richard Ottaway informed me that Dr. Devendra Kothari, a  Professor of Population Program Management started a blog to discuss population and development issues in India on July 10, 2011.  The main aim of the BLOG is to argue that the population issue should not be allowed to become a “stumbling block” to socio-economic progress of India.  Every Monday, Dr. Kothari will discuss some new issue.  You can follow the blog at: kotharionindia.blogspot.com.  Dr. Kothari’s email is: dkothari42 @ gmail.com.

Thanks to Jane Roberts for this piece. See (pdf): http://www.ladybugflights.com/pdf/featured.pdf

Different Aspects of Poverty

from Jane Roberts

Poverty is a relative concept. I would feel deprived if in my 70th year, I couldn’t go out and play golf twice a week at a total cost of about $70.

In Somalia suffering both from a long drought and from an Islamist insurgent movement hindering humanitarian aid, women are leaving their too weak children by the roadside as they walk for days with their stronger children to reach United Nations refugee camps. Some American families can’t put enough food on the table and others, if they put food on the table, can’t pay for music lessons for their child.

My son, his girlfriend and her 5 year old son, whom we adore, absolutely couldn’t survive without our financial support. They would be very poor even though our son has a low paying job. She is disabled with epilepsy and can’t work.

Children in India dumpster dive for a usable or saleable “anything”. Of the 7 billion people on earth 1.5 billion live in extreme poverty, (on less than $1.25 per day) as defined by the United Nations. An equal number lack access to adequate clean water and sanitation. Most of these people are hungry. Forty percent of African children are undernourished. This is POVERTY in capital letters.

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Thanks to the Center for Biological Diversity for this article.  See: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2011/science-daily-08-30-2011.html

Science Daily, August 30, 2011

Preserving 4 Percent of the Ocean Could Protect Most Marine Mammal Species, Study Finds

Preserving just 4 percent of the ocean could protect crucial habitat for the vast majority of marine mammal species, from sea otters to blue whales, according to researchers at Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Their findings were published in the Aug. 16 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of the 129 species of marine mammals on Earth, including seals, dolphins and polar bears, approximately one-quarter are facing extinction, the study said.

“It’s important to protect marine mammals if you want to keep the ocean’s ecosystems functional,” said study co-author Paul Ehrlich, professor of biology and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. “Many of them are top predators and have impacts all the way through the ecosystem. And they’re also beautiful and interesting.”

Mapping marine mammals

To pinpoint areas of the ocean where conservation could protect the maximum number of species and the ones most vulnerable to extinction, the researchers overlaid maps of where each marine mammal species is found. Their composite map revealed locations with the highest “species richness” — the highest number of different species.

Click here to read the full article: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2011/science-daily-08-30-2011.html

Thanks to Richard Grossman for this OpEd.

Consume Less

© Richard Grossman MD, 2011

There is something you can do that is likely to make you happier, healthier, save money and lessen your impact on the planet. What is it? Consume less by practicing simpler living.

I usually focus on human population growth, but consumption is an issue that affects our impact on the planet just as much.

A child born in a developing country will have only a fraction of the impact that a child would have in the United States. This illustrates that it is not just the numbers of people but also the resources they use (and the pollution they cause) that really matters. Furthermore, consumption is growing faster than population growth. Worldwide our numbers are increasing by 1 % per year while consumption is skyrocketing at 2 to 4 %.

Costa Rica is a good example of a nation that approaches sustainability. We lived in Monteverde for three months recently, giving us personal experience with the differencesfrom the USA.

Continue Reading »