Thanks to Jenny Goldie for this article.  See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/population-world-15bn-2100

Population of world ‘could grow to 15bn by 2100′

Nearly 7 billion people now inhabit planet but projections that number will double this century have shocked academics

Paul Harris in New York

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 October 2011 17.25 EDT

The United Nations will warn this week that the world’s population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century, putting a catastrophic strain on the planet’s resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates, the Observer can reveal.

That figure is likely to shock many experts as it is far higher than many current estimates. A previous UN estimate had expected the world to have more than 10 billion people by 2100; currently, there are nearly 7 billion.

The new figure is contained in a landmark study by the United Nations Population Fund (Unfpa) that will be released this week. The report -The State of World Population 2011 - is being compiled to mark the expected moment this month when somewhere on Earth a person will be born who will take the current world population over the 7 billion mark, and will be released simultaneously in cities across the globe.

Some experts reacted with shock to the figure. Roger Martin, chairman of Population Matters, which campaigns on population control, said that the Earth was entering a dangerous new phase. “Our planet is approaching a perfect storm of population growth, climate change and peak oil,” he said. “The planet is not actually sustaining 7 billion people.”

The Earth has now doubled in population since the 1960s, boosted by high birthrates in Africa, Asia and Latin America as the spread of medicine and better healthcare has seen the mortality rate for young children decline. This has easily offset the general decline in the birthrate of advanced countries. It has also been boosted by an increase in lifespans of people across the world.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/22/population-world-15bn-2100

From Population Matters.  See http://populationmatters.org/2011/blog/sex-ideology-religion-10-myths-world-population-growth/ where you can download a full copy of the paper by Richard Ottaway.

Sex, Ideology and Religion: 10 myths about world population growth

In 1804 there were 1 billion people in the world, in 1960 3 billion people and this year on the 31^st October the world population reaches 7 billion. The world population continues to grow with about 78 million people every year, more than the entire population of the UK.

This new Paper on Sex, Ideology and Religion: 10 Myths about Population Growth produced by Richard Ottaway MP and Genevieve Hutchinson challenges the key misunderstandings surrounding family planning and population growth. The myths:

• The population explosion is over; It’s far from over!
• Foreign aid is a waste of money and population growth is inevitable; Family Planning is one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the developing world
• Technology and human ingenuity will solve our problems; If our patterns of consumption are imitated, as others are striving to do, the world probably is not viable
• Development is the best contraception; No country has got itself out of poverty without first addressing population growth

Continue Reading »

From RH Reality Check.  See: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/08/29/world-seven-billion-global-milestonereflection-individual-needs

The World at Seven Billion: A Global Milestone That Reflects the Needs of Seven Billion Individuals

by Susan A. Cohen, Guttmacher Institute

October 14, 2011

According to the United Nations, the world’s population will reach seven billion later this year and, if current trends continue, will rise to more than nine billion by the middle of this century.1 This new population milestone-and the projection-prompt renewed debates about the balance between population size and consumption of natural resources, about age structure and political stability, and about the consequences of rapid population growth rates for poor countries’ ability to develop economically.

These relationships and others pertaining to population size and the rate of population growth are complex and their implications often controversial. To a large extent, however, these macro-level dilemmas reflect a micro-level problem about which there is a universal consensus and where the solution is relatively straightforward. Millions of women and couples, especially in the developing world, are still unable to control for themselves the timing, spacing and total number of their children. Recognition of this fact provides a road map for moving forward that can address the needs of the people and the planet at the same time.

That path forward must include a central focus on increasing access and eliminating barriers to voluntary contraceptive services. Responding directly to individual people’s needs and desires to determine for themselves whether and when to have a child will contribute significantly toward their ability to lead healthier, more productive lives. In turn, these benefits for individuals and families accrue to their communities and to society at large. Ultimately, the impact would be felt at the global level. Meeting the stated desires of all women around the world to space or limit births would result in the world’s population peaking within the next few decades-and then actually starting to decline.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/08/29/world-seven-billion-global-milestonereflection-individual-needs

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.  Originally published by Yale Environment360. Seehttp://e360.yale.edu/feature/how_environmental_limits_may_rein_in_soaring_populations/2453/

13 Oct 2011:Analysis

Revisiting Population Growth: The Impact of Ecological Limits

Demographers are predicting that world population will climb to 10 billion later this century. But with the planet heating up and growing numbers of people putting increasing pressure on water and food supplies and on life-sustaining ecosystems, will this projected population boom turn into a bust?

by robert engelman

The hard part about predicting the future, someone once said, is that it hasn’t happened yet. So it’s a bit curious that so few experts question the received demographic wisdom that the Earth will be home to roughly 9 billion people in 2050 and a stable 10 billion at the century’s end. Demographers seem comfortable projecting that life expectancy will keep rising while birth rates drift steadily downward, until human numbers hold steady with 3 billion more people than are alive today.

What’s odd about this demographic forecast is how little it seems to square with environmental ones. There’s little scientific dispute that the world is heading toward a warmer and harsher climate, less dependable water and energy supplies, less intact ecosystems with fewer species, more acidic oceans, and less naturally productive soils. Are we so smart and inventive that not one of these trends will have any impact on the number of human beings the planet sustains? When you put demographic projections side by side with environmental ones, the former actually mock the latter, suggesting that nothing in store for us will be more than an irritant. Human life will be less pleasant, perhaps, but it will never actually be threatened.

Some analysts, ranging from scientists David Pimentel of Cornell University to financial advisor and philanthropist Jeremy Grantham, dare to underline the possibility of a darker alternative future. Defying the optimistic majority, they suggest that humanity long ago overshot a truly sustainable world population, implying that apocalyptic horsemen old and new could cause widespread death as the environment unravels. Most writers on environment and population are loathe to touch such predictions. But we should be asking, at least, whether such possibilities are real enough to temper the usual demographic confidence about future population projections.

To read the full article, please click here: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/how_environmental_limits_may_rein_in_soaring_populations/2453/

Thanks to Sam Hopkins for this review of Craig Dilworth’s new book, Too Smart for Our Own Good, which you can find on Amazon.  See http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/052176436X/ref=cm_cr_dp_syn_footer/189-9913030-4310908?showViewpoints=1&k=Too%20Smart%20for%20our%20Own%20Good%3A%20The%20Ecological%20Predicament%20of%20Humankind

Too Smart for Our Own Good

The book was published by Cambridge University Press.    Craig has a M.A. in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Philosophy and, as described in Sam’s review, has schooled himself in many disciplines, in order to write this book.

“This book calmly explains the ecological predicament of humankind without ranting, hand wringing or polemics. And unlike most books on our predicament, it includes all the elements – human overpopulation, the many kinds of depletion of renewable as well as non-renewable resources, toxic waste, and the overwhelming of the environment’s capacity of absorb even non-toxic waste, e.g. CO2 (climate change) and nitrogen (dead zones in oceans, bays & other waterways).

The importance the book gives to overpopulation is especially important to me, because in 1966 I began a career in what we could then call international “birth control” (now “family planning”). At that time, the world population was only a fraction over 3 billion (vs. 7 billion today). I abandoned the career after 10 years, because no nation was willing to try to stop its population growth. And ever since I have been looking for a book that explains humankind’s recurrent problem of overpopulation, and why China appears still to be the only nation that is trying to stop its population growth as quickly as is humanely possible. After all these years, I have finally found the explanation I have been looking for. Dr. Dilworth has provided it in both a short and a long form.

The short form of the explanation is encapsulated in Dr. Dilworth’s presentation of his elegantly simple but profound vicious circle principle. The long form consists of his multidisciplinary theory of the development of humankind, in which the principle is applied to the entire 200,000 years of Homo sapiens’ existence. The book references work in such diverse fields as public health, geology, climatology, genetics, biology, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, evolution, economics, agronomy, engineering and the hard sciences. The long form of the explanation, of course, illustrates the vicious circle principle at work. The book explains not only humankind’s failure to control the size of its population, but also its failure to limit its use of resources, and to limit, process or otherwise control its pollution and other waste.

Dr. Dilworth has done as much, I believe, as any one person can be expected to do in this kind of project, especially considering that he worked on it over a 15-year period without any funding or staff support. Moreover, it is possible that this invaluable kind of multidisciplinary, broad thinking can only be done by one person working alone, as was the case with Charles Darwin.

I invited Dr. Dilworth to come to the U.S. from Sweden, stay as my house guest, and let me help him find opportunities to speak about this book. I have never done this before for any author and probably will never again be so motivated to promote a book.”

Thanks to Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer of Mumbai for his article on Islam and family planning.

ISLAM AND FAMILY PLANNING

Asghar Ali Engineer

Many people, especially women, ask me if family planning is permissible in Islam. They say the imams and ulama say Qur’an prohibits family planning and quote a verse which says, “And kill not your children for fear of poverty – We provide for them and for you. Surely the killing of them is a great wrong.” (17:31). In no way this verse refers to family planning because it is talking of ‘killing’ and you kill one who exists. No law in the world will permit killing one who is already born and hence Qur’an rightly condemns killing of children.

Some people suggest that it refers to the practice of burying the girl child alive and when asked they would say we cannot provide for them and hence Allah says We provide for them and for you. But, as Imam Razi suggests it refers to both male and female children being kept ignorant. Thus killing them has not been used killing the body but mind which is as bad as killing the body. The word used here is ‘awlad’ i.e. children which include both male as well as female and not only female.

Continue Reading »

Happy Thanksgiving.

With 7 billion on earth, a huge task before us

Date: Monday, October 17, 2011
Source: CNN (U.S.)
Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs

Editor’s note: Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of The Earth Institute, Columbia University. He and colleagues will discuss the 7 billion mark in a free live webcast Monday, October 17. He is the author of “The Price of Civilization,” published this month.

(CNN) — Just 12 years after the arrival of the 6 billionth individual on the planet in 1999, humanity will greet the 7 billionth arrival this month. The world population continues its rapid ascent, with roughly 75 million more births than deaths each year. The consequences of a world crowded with 7 billion people are enormous. And unless the world population stabilizes during the 21st century, the consequences for humanity could be grim.

A rising population puts enormous pressures on a planet already plunging into environmental catastrophe. Providing food, clothing, shelter, and energy for 7 billion people is a task of startling complexity.

The world’s agricultural systems are already dangerously overstretched. Rainforests are being cut down to make way for new farms; groundwater used for irrigation is being depleted; greenhouse gases emitted from agricultural activities are a major factor in global climate change; fertilizers are poisoning estuaries; and countless species are threatened with extinction as we grab their land and water and destroy their habitats.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Roger Martin of Population Matters in the UK for this list of questions, which you can adapt to use in your country.

UK Population Growth:  Draft PQs

1.      To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many new jobs he estimates need to be created each year simply to keep pace with current population growth.

2.      To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer for his estimate of the cost of providing the additional public infrastructure at current standards for the additional 10 million UK residents projected for 2033.

3.      To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change for his estimate of the additional CO2 emissions likely to be generated by the additional 10 million UK residents projected for 2033, or the additional renewable energy capacity needed to abate them and maintain current total emissions.

4.      To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what long-term estimates she has made of the prospects for UK food security in 2050 at the extremes of the population range ONS currently project (64-82 million -ie an increase of 2-20 million).

5.      To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether she will instruct water companies to factor into their long-term investment plans the upper and lower limits of ONS population projections (eg an increase of 2-20 million by 2050).

Continue Reading »

See Marketwatch: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-big-money-men-ignore-worlds-biggest-problem-2011-10-11

Why big-money men ignore world’s biggest problem

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Last year Bill Gates said if he had “one wish to improve humanity’s lot over the next 50 years” he would pick an “energy miracle,” some magical “new technology that produced energy at half the price of coal with no carbon-dioxide emissions,” says CNN editor Fareed Zakaria in the New York Times.

And he said “he’d rather have this wish than a new vaccine or medicine or even choose the next several American presidents.”

Energy miracle? But that’s not where he’s giving his billions. In fact, since 1994 the Gates Foundation has spent over $26 billion on philanthropic projects, ventures and innovations, lots in vaccines and medicines that extend life, increase mortality rates and encourage population growth.

Yes, all good stuff, but ultimately undermining the possibility of discovering a magical energy miracle.

Worse, if that energy miracle is discovered anywhere its value could easily be wiped out by the world’s out-of-control population growth, forecast to reach 10 billion by 2050 from 7 billion today, one brief generation.

So why is Gates not focusing solely in his energy miracle? Better yet, why is he ignoring what he agrees is the world’s biggest problem? Even undermining the solution?

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-big-money-men-ignore-worlds-biggest-problem-2011-10-11

Many thanks to Kelvin Thomson (MP from Australia) and Tim Hamilton for this paper delivered by Kelvin at meetings in Washington, DC on October 3 and 4.  To download the talk, see https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeODI0OWRjMWItNmRhZi00NmNlLWEwMTAtOWY2NTdhZTU4MzIz&hl=en_US