Many thanks to Randolph Femmer for these links to various population materials and power points that you can freely download.  They can be found at these links:

http://www.scribd.com/TheWecskaopProject

http://www.scribd.com/Math_Resources

http://www.calameo.com/accounts/676519

http://www.scribd.com/full/25205868?access_key=key-185oi1iak3v0apsejby0

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/55268052?access_key=key-tov3iziacuwi8o8itf0

http://network.nature.com/groups/population/forum/topics

This OpEd by Babatunde Osotimehin, UNFPA Executive Director, appeared in Science magazine.  It was recognized by the Population Institute with a Global Media Award.  See

Population and Development

Babatunde Osotimehin

29 July, 2011

AS THE WORLD’S POPULATION REACHES 7 BILLION THIS YEAR, WE SHOULD REFLECT ON THE MANY ways in which population dynamics matter to the planet’s future. Population growth patterns are linked to nearly every challenge confronting humanity, including poverty reduction, urban pollution, energy production, food and water scarcity, and health. With world population projected to surpass 9 billion by 2050, these issues and the desire to raise living standards at the same time will create a huge challenge. What immediate actions can be taken  to deal with growth while ensuring a sustainable future for all of the world’s inhabitants?

People are generally living longer and healthier lives, but huge inequalities exist across continents, and analyses of global growth rates, as well as insufficient attention to the region specific growth mechanisms, mask these disparities. We now know that not all growth is the same around the world. Population growth and fertility rates in some developing countries remain high. Most population growth in the coming decades will come from the demographic momentum arising from young people that currently populate most of the developing world. This group will enter their reproductive years soon and account for 80% of the world population growth. Thus, the population will continue to grow long after replacement fertility has been reached in most parts of the world. Specifically, about 70% of future world population growth (until 2050) will take place in just 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (not including China).

These regional differences have implications for crafting policies that effectively address unsustainable population growth in ways that are universally beneficial but are sensitive to regional and national diversities. Programs that are applicable to certain countries in Africa and Asia, where fertility rates are still high, may not be so in most countries in Latin America or in countries where fertility rates are comparatively lower, such as Japan and most European nations.

Continue Reading »

October 28, 2011

Washington, DC – An Ethiopian serial drama, a Kenyan news article series, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, and the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund are among the 10 recipients of the Population Institute’s 2011 Global Media Awards for excellence in population reporting. The awards will be presented January 12th, at a ceremony in New York City.

Dick Smith will receive the Best Book award for his book Dick Smith’s Population Crisis: The dangers of unsustainable Australia. The book looks at challenges related to population growth globally, and then takes a closer look at the impact of those challenges on Australia.

Reject, a special bimonthly insert in the Star newspaper distributed throughout Kenya, will be honored with the award for Best Article or Series of Articles for its World Population Day Special Issue. Reject is published by the African Woman and Child Features Service. This special issue focused on population from a common person’s perspective and how population impacts the average person in Kenya.

Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), will be honored with the award for Best Print Editorial for his editorial entitled “Population and Development.” The editorial, which ran in Science magazine, highlights the implications of the world’s population reaching 7 billion, and the challenges that will face humanity in terms of poverty reduction, pollution, food and water scarcity, and health.

New Security Beat by the Environmental Change and Security Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will be awarded Best Online Commentary or Blog for its posts on international population issues and their links to the environment, international development, foreign policy, and peace and conflict.

Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, produced by Tiroir A Films Productions will receive the award for Best Film or Miniseries. The film brings to light an issue that silently fuels our most pressing environmental, humanitarian and social crises – population.  In doing so, it illustrates both the overconsumption and the inequity side of the population issue by looking at one women’s journey which takes her from Denver to Ethiopia to discover the complexities of population.

Weathering Change, produced by Population Action International, will receive the award for Best Short Film. This short film tells the stories of women from Ethiopia, Nepal, and Peru, and their struggle to adapt to a changing climate that impacts their health and livelihood. The film calls for expanding access to contraception and empowering women to help families and communities adapt to the effects of climate change.

Joel Pett, a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, will be honored for the second year in a row for Best Editorial Cartoon. Over the course of his award-winning career, he has published numerous editorial cartoons on population and environmental issues.

PBS NewsHour will be recognized as the Best TV Show. For 35 years, millions of Americans and citizens of the world have turned to MacNeil/Lehrer Productions for the solid, reliable reporting that has made the PBS NewsHour one of the most trusted news programs in television. Over the course of this past year NewsHour has devoted several segments to population-related issues, including one on an Indonesian plant showing promise for male birth control, and a segment on how religion and tradition are clashing with family planning efforts in Guatemala.

EarthSky: A Clear Voice for Science will receive the award for Best Radio Show for their series of weekly interviews with scientists around the world. Their interviews have included a series of interviews with population experts addressing a range of population related issues.

Mieraf will receive the award for Best Serial Drama. Produced by Population Media Center Ethiopia, the radio serial drama addresses numerous health issues, including maternal and child health, use of family planning, malaria prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, hygiene, and sanitation. The airing of Mieraf has increased acceptance of small family norms and demand for contraceptives among the listening population, which is primarily rural.

For more information contact:

Jennie Wetter

Program Manager

Population Institute

Phone: (202) 544-3300 ext 108

Fax: (202) 544-0068

E-mail: jwetter@populationinstitute.org

At http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141870269/op-ed-7-billion-now-but-population-will-drop you can add your comment on NPR’s coverage of the population reaching 7 billion.  As you’ll see, the interview is spent emphasizing the imprecise nature of demographic forecasting.  Thanks to Joe Bish for alerting me to this.

Op-Ed: 7 Billion Now, But Population Will Drop

October 31, 2011

Earth’s population crossed the 7 billion mark Monday. The growing population has been the subject of doomsday scenarios, but Colum Lynch worries that the U.S. and other wealthy countries will soon have too few citizens. He predicts the world population will decline by the end of this century.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

NEAL CONAN, host: And now, the Opinion Page. The planet’s human population hit seven billion today, according to a United Nations estimate. The growth of the world’s population has been the subject of doomsday scenarios, at least as far back as Thomas Malthus in the late 18th century. But as Colum Lynch argues in Foreign Policy, predicting population growth or contraction is pretty much a loser’s game. You can go with the high-end projection of 27 billion, or an estimate of a smaller-world population some time next century. Lynch says that thinking about the implications of a world with fewer people is just as important as worrying about how many more the planet can handle.

So tell us: What does seven billion mean to you? 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That’s at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Colum Lynch is United Nations reporter for the Washington Post and the author of the Turtle Bay blog at foreignpolicy.com, where his piece “It’s a Small World” ran recently. Colum Lynch joins us now from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you with us today.

COLUM LYNCH: Thanks for having me, Neal.

CONAN: And what don’t we know about that seven-billion figure?

LYNCH: Well, we don’t know that it’s happening today. We don’t know whether it’s happened yesterday, or a couple of days ago. I mean, it’s generally an estimate. I mean, it’s better than the projections that thinking about whether there will be eight billion in 2025. But a lot of this stuff is projections on the basis of assumptions, and, you know, like most assumptions, nobody really knows whether they’ll turn out to be true or not. I gather they probably – as your earlier guest said – probably picked today, Halloween…

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

LYNCH: …to decide on this, to scare the pants off of everybody about the fear of massive population growth.

To read the full article or to comment, please click here: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141870269/op-ed-7-billion-now-but-population-will-drop

Thanks to Dave Gardner for this announcement.  Incidentally, Paul Ehrlich and I will appear at two screenings of this film in Berkeley, California at the David Brower Center (2150 Allston Way, Berkeley) on November 15.  The screenings start at 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm, with a reception at 7:00 pm.  For more information, or to obtain a pass, see http://www.growthbusters.org/screenings/bay-area-premiere-of-growthbusters/

“Most Important Film Ever Made” is Released Nov. 2

Documentary Challenges Policy & Perceptions as World Population Passes 7 Billion

The provocative documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, held its world premiere November 2 in Washington DC. Immediately following, grass roots community screenings will begin around the world. World population passed 7 billion on October 31.

After viewing a pre-release screener of the film, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote, “This could be the most important film ever made.  It tackles the three lethal taboos that threaten our civilization, those against discussing overpopulation, overconsumption, and the nonsensical idea that economic growth itself is a net benefit even in rich countries and can and must continue forever.”

GrowthBusters delivers a full-frontal assault on the “taboos, myths and greedy growth profiteers that keep us speeding toward a cliff,” says filmmaker Dave Gardner. “Population growth is not inevitable, but it won’t stop until we acknowledge its role in the major crises we face.” “The scale of the human presence on Earth has reached unprecedented proportions,” ecological footprint pioneer William Rees states in the film. “We’ve outgrown the planet.

Gardner interviewed psychologists, physicists, ecologists, sociologists and economists to research and create GrowthBusters. It features interviews with experts like Population Media Center’s Bill Ryerson, former World Bank senior economist Herman Daly and former presidential advisors Gus Speth and Robert Solow.

GrowthBusters examines the beliefs, attitudes and propaganda causing us to ignore evidence perpetual growth is not possible or desirable. Gardner calls “Worship of Growth Everlasting the most powerful and widespread religion in the world.”

Gardner takes on presidents and prime ministers, economists, news media and wealthy capitalists who keep us hooked on growth. Sociologist Juliet Schor and environmental leader Bill McKibben discuss how our relentless drive to earn, spend and consume is not making us happier.

While the news sounds depressing, the film is actually humorous at times and hopeful. It profiles “Growthbusters in Action,” groups and individuals pioneering new value systems and ways of life that don’t depend on growth, and they seem quite happy.

Once you see this film, you’ll never again view the world the same way. The film is available to order now, and will ship in early November. Gardner emphasizes the film’s distribution and effectiveness depend entirely on grass roots supporters the world over ordering the film and organizing house parties and community screenings.

Gardner has dedicated the film to Al Bartlett, University of Colorado professor emeritus of physics, who has dedicated his life to educating people about the power of exponential growth.

Trailer:http://vimeo.com/30647439

Photos & Video: www.growthbusters.org/media-and-bloggers

Buy Film:http://www.growthbusters.org/about-2/buy-the-film/

Screening/Premiere Info:http://www.growthbusters.org/about-2/screenings/screening-event-schedule/

www.growthbusters.org

Contact:

Dave Gardner, Citizen-Powered Media

719-576-5565 (office/cell/all hours)

dave@growthbusters.org

From Population Matters on September 3, 2011.

The country’s family planning program is in peril after the United Nations sounded off its plan to cut back its aid to the government’s population control program. Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin said that she was informed that the UN would abandon its $1 million birth control program in the Philippines starting next year due to lack of funding from members.

Garin said that the fund was used to bankroll the use of injectable drugs to prevent pregnancy in three months or the distribution of birth control pills especially to those who just gave birth. The vice chair of the House committee on health said that this has made the passage of the Reproductive Health bill more urgent to ensure sustained funding for family planning programs.

Without this regular UN-funded program to poor Filipinos, Garin feared that the Philippines could experience a spike in its population growth rate recently pegged at 2.4 percent per annum.

Source: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/un-stop-funding-philippine-population-plan-041002610.html

From the Financial Times. See: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d28e7442-e859-11e0-ab03-00144feab49a.html#axzz1a8mBp4pu

Soaring population swamps Kenya ambitions

September 29, 2011 4:50 pm

Soaring population swamps Kenya ambitions

By Katrina Manson in Nairobi

Already father to 28 children, Ali Bare is keen for more. To the 46-year-old herder from north-eastern Kenya, his offspring rank among his prize assets including cows and goats.

“I will divorce my first wife, she is too old,” declares Mr Bare, who intends to take a younger, fifth wife to heed religious rules allowing a maximum of four wives at a time.

As the world readies for the arrival of its seven billionth person, a milestone expected at the end of October, Kenya is among countries facing an uphill task to reduce population growth. It is also emblematic of a bigger problem confronting Africa where the combination of scarce resources like water and land and a soaring population could yield more conflict in a region already all too familiar with war and drought.

“African countries have rapidly growing populations and the environment is very vulnerable – there’s a catastrophe there just waiting to happen,” says Dr Eliya Zulu, president of the Union for African Population Studies.

The problem, demographers say, is that it may be too late already. In Kenya, they complain, few policymakers understand that because 43 per cent of Kenyans are under 15, even if birth rates decline further, numbers will not start to stabilise until 2090 at about 100m. Even by moderate estimates, Kenya’s 41m people today will swell to 85m by 2050, straining ambitious hopes to become a middle-income country by 2030.

“Our problem is not size, but the pace of its growth: every year an additional million new [people] enter [the population] and it is choking growth in the economy,” says Boniface K’Oyugi, chief executive of Kenya’s national co-ordinating agency for population and development. “Instead of resources going for productive investment they have to go for consumption: we will have all this idle youth who require health, education, skills training before they can be made useful.”

To read the full article, please click here (subscription required): http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d28e7442-e859-11e0-ab03-00144feab49a.html#axzz1a8mBp4pu

Thanks to Ben Zuckerman for this article. Please see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/25/crisis-bigness-leopold-kohr

This economic collapse is a ‘crisis of bigness’

Leopold Kohr warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. We should have listened

Paul Kingsnorth

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 September 2011 16.00 EDT

Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it’s a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled “growth” are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair.

To listen to a political leader at this moment in history is like sitting through a sermon by a priest who has lost his faith but is desperately trying not to admit it, even to himself. Watch Nick Clegg, David Cameron or Ed Miliband mouthing tough-guy platitudes to the party faithful. Listen to Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy or George Papandreou pretending that all will be well in the eurozone. Study the expressions on the faces of Barack Obama or Ben Bernanke talking about “growth” as if it were a heathen god to be appeased by tipping another cauldron’s worth of fictional money into the mouth of a volcano.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/25/crisis-bigness-leopold-kohr

OP-ED: Crowd control? Unsustainable population growth trumps all of our other problems

Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011
Source: Los Angeles Times
Author: Ellen Harte, Anne Ehrlich

Think back on what you talked about with friends and family at your last gathering. The latest game of your favorite team? “American Idol”? An addictive hobby? The new movie blockbuster? In a serious moment, maybe job prospects, Afghanistan, the economic mess? We live in an information-drenched environment, one in which sports and favorite programs are just a click away. And the ease with which we can do this allows us to focus on mostly comforting subjects that divert our attention from increasingly real, long-term problems.

Notice that we didn’t mention climate change above, or the exploding population/consumption levels that are triggering it — the two major factors threatening humanity’s future. Sure, if you’re not too far from the Western wildfires or Midwestern floodplains, the conversation might have turned to the crazy weather that is finally forcing some media to actually talk about climate change in the context of daily events.

But population? Get out. Way too inconvenient a truth.

Continue Reading »

From the NY Times. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17drought.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Opinion

Drought: A Creeping Disaster

By ALEX PRUD’HOMME

Published: July 16, 2011

FLOODS, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other geological phenomena have left a trail of destruction during the first half of 2011. But this could be just the start to a remarkable year of bad weather. Next up: drought. In the South, 14 states are now baking in blast-furnace conditions – from Arizona, which is battling the largest wildfire in its history, to Florida, where fires have burned some 200,000 acres so far. Worse, drought, unlike earthquakes, hurricanes and other rapid-moving weather, could become a permanent condition in some regions.

Climatologists call drought a “creeping disaster” because its effects are not felt at once. Others compare drought to a python, which slowly and inexorably squeezes its prey to death.

The great aridification of 2011 began last fall; now temperatures in many states have spiked to more than 100 degrees for days at a stretch. A high pressure system has stalled over the middle of the country, blocking cool air from the north. Texas and New Mexico are drier than in any year on record.

The deadly heat led to 138 deaths last year, more than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods, and it turns brush to tinder that is vulnerable to lightning strikes and human carelessness. Already this year, some 40,000 wildfires have torched over 5.8 million acres nationwide – and the deep heat of August is likely to make conditions worse before they get better.

Climatologists disagree about what caused this remarkable dry-out. But there is little disagreement about the severity of the drought – or its long-term implications.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17drought.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss