Thanks to John Rohe for this letter, which he sent in response to the article below in the Wall Street Journal.  See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203804204577016353001653214.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket

Preferably, William McGurn (“And Baby Makes Seven Billion,” Main Street, Oct. 25) will find a less fragile planet on which to practice his “the more the merrier” delusion. Paul Ehrlich was only wrong in underestimating the human grief occasioned by our human tsunami (currently, births minus deaths exceed 227,000 daily). By crushing more people into a phone booth, perhaps one of them will have the intelligence to solve overpopulation. Let’s not needlessly subject the planet to this intrepid wager.

John F. Rohe

Colcom Foundation

Pittsburgh

Here’s the article that generated John’s response.  See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204777904576651391038917246.html

And Baby Makes Seven Billion

Human beings are minds, not mouths.

BY WILLIAM MCGURN

Nothing brings out the inner Malthus like a newborn baby.

That’s especially true when that baby is born to a mother somewhere in Africa or Asia. According to the United Nations Population Fund, some time this coming Monday, probably in India, the world will welcome its seven billionth person. Well, maybe welcome isn’t exactly the right word.

At Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs tells CNN “the consequences for humanity could be grim.” Earlier this year, a New York Times columnist declared “the earth is full,” suggesting that a growing population means “we are eating into our future.” And in West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette editorializes about a “human swarm” that is “overbreeding” in a way that “prosperous, well-educated families” from the developed world do not.

To read the full article, please click here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204777904576651391038917246.html

Thanks to Mark O’Connor for this article by UK population writer Brian McGavin, addressed to news editors.

To News Editors: Raising Awareness on Driving Forces Behind Failing States

From: Brian McGavin, writer and analyst.

November 2011

Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that give important background on many of the failing states regularly in the news. For example, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestinian Territory and Afghanistan. It also includes Pakistan and Iran.

Despite the near daily news coverage of these countries, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. These issues add a great deal of insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and by implication the policies of countries like the US, UK and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.

The aim is to give journalists more balance and context to reports. A simple one or two-sentence addition of data gives a far better understanding of the significance of demographics to a country’s geo-political profile, its aid dependency and social and economic future. (See table below*)

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Thanks to Lester Brown for this article.  See  www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2011/highlights20

Demographics Loom Large in State Failure

Earth Policy Release
Data Highlight
November 8 , 2011

After a half-century of forming new states from former colonies and from the breakup of the Soviet Union, the international community is today faced with the opposite situation: the disintegration of states. Failing states are now a prominent feature of the international political landscape.

The most systematic ongoing effort to analyze countries’ vulnerability to failure is one undertaken by the Fund for Peace and published in each July/August issue of Foreign Policy. The research team analyzes 177 countries and ranks them according to “their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration,” based on 12 social, economic, and political indicators. Each indicator is scored from 0 to 10. A combined score of 120 would mean that a society is failing totally by every measure. Somalia, the country first on the list, scores 113.4. A score of 0 is the strongest score possible. Finland, number 177 on the list, is the strongest state with a score of 19.7.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2011/highlights20

From Time Magazine.  See http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/12/09/plan-b-when-politics-beat-science/

Plan B: When Politics Beat Science

President Obama came into office promising to restore scientific integrity to policymaking, but his Administration has allowed politics to trump science several times-including with this week’s move to keep the emergency contraceptive Plan B from being sold without a prescription. But science-in climate change and in other areas-can only tell us so much. Ethics and values-and politics-are what really control policymaking, and it’s on climate advocates should focus their energy on changing those, instead of harping on the science.

By Bryan Walsh

On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama-surrounded by lawmakers and scientific luminaries in the White House’s East Room-made a promise: his Administration, unlike his predecessor, would “guarantee scientific integrity” in federal policymaking. As Obama said in a Presidential memorandum released that day:

The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions.  Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions.  If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public.  To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking.  The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity.

To read the full article, please click here: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/12/09/plan-b-when-politics-beat-science/

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.  See http://earthsky.org/human-world/robert-walker-new-challenges-ahead-for-population-seven-billion

EarthSky // Interviews // Human World By Jorge Salazar Nov 02, 2011

Robert Walker: Challenges ahead for population seven billion

The world’s now-seven-billion people face new challenges from population growth unseen in the 20th century. That’s according to Robert Walker, executive vice-president of the Population Institute. Walker told EarthSky:

In the 20th century, the world successfully coped with population growth. We made substantial progress in reducing poverty and hunger. But today, as the world approaches the seven billion mark, confidence is not so high. After decades of progress in reducing hunger and severe poverty, a global recession and a food crisis have reversed some of the gains that were recently made. Over the past decade, we’ve seen a trend of higher and higher commodity prices for energy, minerals, and perhaps most importantly, for basic foodstuffs. At a minimum, the era of cheap energy and cheap food appears to be over.

Looking forward, Walker pointed to sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as flash points in the fight against poverty. He said:

The critical question that we have to ask ourselves is, what can we do in the interest of reducing hunger and poverty in the world to lower fertility rates in those countries where fertility rates are well above the world average.

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Thanks to Steve Sinding for these two short papers, giving a variety of arguments for increased support of family planning, which you can access as follows:

Family Planning as an Economic Investment, published in SAIS Review: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5F-idWfw7TeNDQwOTgyOGUtNWJjOC00ZjBmLThhYTEtMDJjYTU2YzM1YWM1

Population Policy in Transition in the Developing World, published in Science: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5F-idWfw7TeYzNlYWZiNzItZTM3MC00MjcyLWJjODQtNmJmY2E4MDliMzUx

Thanks to Val Allen for this announcement.

Contact: Ellen Green, Press Manager, Strategic Book Group – PressManager@StrategicBookGroup.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Now Available for Kindle, Nook, iPad and other e-Readers

How Can Planet Earth Sustain Its Population?

The world has just hit a new population number: 7 billion people live on the planet. Is this number sustainable?

The book Growing Pains: A Planet in Distress takes an in-depth and eye-opening look at the Earth’s greatest threat, that of too many people living on one small planet. Growing Pains is a provocative and critically acclaimed book that addresses rampant population growth, as it points us toward a path to sustainability. When you read this compelling book, the realization sets in that the long and good fights by our environmentalists, anti-poverty groups and world aid groups are all for naught, as every gain is soon overwhelmed by the pressures of more population growth.

The time has come to expose the myths and taboos that are holding us back from addressing this critical issue threatening our planet. This award-winning book is a brave and rare effort to demystify the population puzzle, and it takes positive action toward reaching a population level that is sustainable.

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Thanks to Mark O’Connor for this article.  See
http://theconversation.edu.au/catholic-church-urged-to-give-nuns-the-pill-to-protect-against-cancer-4636

Disclosure Statement

Our goal is to ensure the content is not compromised in any way. We therefore ask all authors to disclose any potential conflicts of interest before publication.

8 December 2011, 2.32pm AEST

Catholic church urged to give nuns the pill to protect against cancer

By Matthew Thompson, Editor

We license our articles under Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
A controversial article in Lancet suggests nuns should be prescribed the contraceptive pill to help reduce their high rates of cancer. AAP

The Catholic church should freely distribute the contraceptive pill to its almost 95,000 nuns in order to reduce their “greatly increased risk” of developing female-specific cancers, a paper published today in the Lancet says.

A comment-piece, “The Plight of nuns: hazards of nulliparity,” cites research directly linking the number of menstrual cycles a woman goes through to her risk of cancer, with younger arrival of periods or late onset of menopause being associated with higher cancer risk. Nuns, being childless, generally have no break from periods through their lives. The paper cites a study of US nuns showing that they suffer almost triple the rate of deaths from breast and uterine cancer as other women, and more than double the rate from uterine cancer.

Contraceptive pills have been shown to significantly reduce the incidence of ovarian and uterine cancer rates, the authors state, while forms of the pill are now available that suppress menstruation for months at a time or even altogether.

Professor John Hopper, a NHMRC Australia Fellow at the University of Melbourne, said that, if the paper’s recommendations were followed, it could put the church in an awkward position. “It’d be wonderfully ironic for the Catholics to say it’s OK to use the pill if you’re a nun, but not if you’re not.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://theconversation.edu.au/catholic-church-urged-to-give-nuns-the-pill-to-protect-against-cancer-4636

Thanks to Leta Finch for this article from Psychology Today. See http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201109/the-incredible-expanding-adventures-the-x-chromosome

The Incredible Expanding Adventures of the X Chromosome

Genes housed on the X chromosome shed new light on the human mind, including why identical female twins differ more than male twins, why there are more male geniuses and male autists, and why you may have mom to thank for your brains.

By Christopher Badcock Ph.D., published on September 06, 2011 – last reviewed on October 31, 2011

In the early 1980s I met and began an unofficial training with Anna Freud-Sigmund Freud’s youngest daughter, and his only child to follow him into psychoanalysis. I was a young social scientist who had been carrying out a self-analysis for some years.

Anna Freud’s couch was a daybed on which I lay, with her seated in a chair at its head. On one or two occasions I couldn’t help but think that the voice I heard coming from her chair was in fact that of her father, speaking to me from beyond the grave.

I can even recall her exact words in one case. I had been free-associating about my attempt to analyze myself when Anna Freud remarked, “In your self-analysis you sank a deep but narrow shaft into your unconscious. Here we clear the whole area, layer by layer.” This produced a spine-tingling reaction in me, and I surprised Miss Freud (as I called her) by stating that her remark reminded me of her father, because he was particularly fond of archaeological metaphors in his published writings. Most people would simply attribute her statement to the influence of her father’s writing on her own choice of words. Thirty years ago, I would probably have said the same. But today, having spent decades researching the links between genetics and psychology, I can offer a different hypothesis, one that goes to the core of all we now know about the inheritance and expression of genes in the brain.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201109/the-incredible-expanding-adventures-the-x-chromosome

Thanks to Kurt Dahl for this essay on how to get people to become concerned about population issues.

The Cassandra Dilemma

In Greek Mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty was so extraordinary that Apollo fell in love with her, and as a gift to show his devotion, he granted her the ability to know the future. But when she refused his love, he then cursed her by making it so that no one would ever believe her predictions. Cassandra had perfect knowledge of the future (she even warned the Trojans about the Trojan horse) and yet nobody would ever believe her – a frustrating curse in the extreme.

Today, this same extreme frustration is shared by many people who have extensively read about and carefully studied our unfolding sustainability crisis. These modern day Cassandras clearly understand that (unabated) the current trends in climate disruption, peak oil, water depletion, and soil degradation, combined with a rapidly increasing human population, will soon result in a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

These frustrated Cassandras have studied the facts, have integrated all of the information, and have done the math. The conclusion is clear – if we don’t act soon, within a few decades we will experience a violent, chaotic, and massive human die-off.

Those of us who have spent the many, many hours of reading, studying and discussing this problem have virtually all come to the same conclusion. Yet in our attempts to warn the general public, we all experience the same response. The (less informed) public simply does not believe us. Often they will argue that we must be wrong – even though they are often fundamentally unaware of the facts.

This “Cassandra Dilemma” that we face is itself a hotly debated and discussed topic within the community of sustainability activists. “Why won’t they listen to us? Why can’t we get them to read even the most basic information about the issue? How can we get them wake up to the danger?”

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