PMC and Sonny Fox Consultants will host a one-day event for members of the creative community on November 18 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, CA.
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Thanks to Joyce Tarnow for this article.
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The latest controversy over biofuels backs up Oxfam’s report published last week. Profit, pressure from industry and farm subsidies show that there is more behind this enthusiasm for the crops than a desire to stop climate change.

If politicians want to reduce emissions and stop global warming, biofuels are not the solution. Recent research suggests that biofuels may increase greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduce them. And by pushing up demand for agricultural land, they’re causing farming to expand into other areas that store carbon – such as wetlands and forests – releasing way more carbon than is saved through biofuels.

For full article, visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/04/biofuels.carbonemissions

Thanks to Fred Stanback for this article.
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As the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden should have some insight on the biggest threats facing the U.S. But when Hayden recently described what he saw as the most troublesome trend over the next several decades, it wasn’t terrorism or climate change. It was overpopulation in the poorest parts of the world. “By mid-century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion,” Hayden said in a speech at Kansas State University. “Most of that growth will occur in countries least able to sustain it.” The sheer increase in population, Hayden argued, could fuel instability and extremism, not to mention worsening climate change and making food and fuel all the more scarce. Population is the essential multiplier for any number of human ills.

For full article, visit:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1739253,00.html

Thanks to Leon Kolankiewicz for this article.
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The weather forecast for this holiday weekend is wildly unsettled. We had better get used to it. According to the climate change scientist James Lovelock, this is the beginning of the end of a peaceful phase in evolution.

By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine.
The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain.

We will, he says, have to set up encampments in this country, like those established for the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in East Africa.

For full article, visit:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Thanks to Kent Welton for this article.
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Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned.

The hidden threat from the world’s water shortages
Food shortages: how will we feed the world?
Biofuel rules ‘could make millions homeless’
The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures.

Governments should be preparing for the worst

For full article, visit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main

Climate change is already affecting public health across the globe. The World Health Organization estimates that climatic changes are already causing more than 150,000 deaths annually and substantial losses in quality of life due to diarrheal disease, malaria, malnutrition, and flooding. And the health impacts from climate change will likely increase over time.

Some of these anticipated health impacts include:

* Asthma and allergic diseases are likely to worsen. Warmer temperatures favor the formation of ozone, which aggravates asthma; higher CO2 and other climate changes may increase allergenic pollen formation.ii,iii,iv

* Food and water-borne disease could increase. Climate-related increases in natural disasters and warmer ambient temperatures could increase the burden of food- and water-borne diarrheal diseases.

* Increased extreme weather events will directly impact health. More frequent and severe heat waves,v,vi hurricanes, wildfires, and floods will cause deaths and injury.vii Contact with contaminated floodwater,viii and displacement contribute to additional morbidity and mortality.

For full article, visit:
http://media-newswire.com/release

New Orleans utility Entergy (ETR) has looked into the future, and the Katrina-scarred company is worried by what it sees. More devastating hurricanes like Katrina. Heat waves. Seas rising as much as six feet, flooding everything south of Interstate 10, now 50 miles inland. “The consensus is pretty much in. Climate change is happening and we must plan for that,” says Randy Helmick, Entergy’s vice-president for transmission.

Entergy is one of the leaders in a growing effort to plan for a world reshaped by climate change. The utility is proposing steps such as strengthening transmission poles and shoring up substations.

For full article, visit:
http://www.businessweek.com

Researchers unveiled the first detailed map of human impacts on the world’s oceans last week, and the news is not good. A team of 20 acclaimed marine scientists from around the world collaborated on the project, finding that humans are having a major impact on marine ecosystems, leaving only four percent of the world’s oceans unaffected by human activities.

“In the past, many studies have shown the impact of individual activities,” said lead scientist Benjamin Halpern of California’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. “But here for the first time we have produced a global map of all of these different activities layered on top of each other so that we can get this big picture of the overall impact that humans are having rather than just single impacts.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4099

Shelburne, VT - On April 22nd, Population Media Center (PMC) will celebrate Earth Day. PMC is an international nonprofit organization that strives to bring about the stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world’s natural resources, in order to improve the well-being of people around the world and lessen the harmful impact of humanity on the earth’s environment. PMC uses entertainment-education strategies, like serialized dramas on radio and television that encourage positive social and health behaviors, such as the use of family planning and the empowerment of women.

Please join us in celebrating Earth Day on April 22nd. William Ryerson, President and Founder of Population Media Center will be available for interviews.

Population and Environment
Currently, there is a great deal of concern in the media, government, business, and general public regarding the issue of global warming. However, the impact of rapid human population growth on global warming is often overlooked. Decreasing consumption levels will not be enough if the human population continues to rise. The United Nations Population Division estimates that by the year 2050 the world population will reach 9.2 billion, with most of this increase occurring in the developing world. It is estimated that by 2050 over 50% of carbon emissions will come from developing nations. Not only does population growth significantly contribute to an increase in carbon emissions, but it creates a strain on other resources such as water, food, and energy.

Make the Link Between Population and Environment
For more information about population and environmental issues, PMC’s founder and president, William Ryerson, will be available for interviews. Mr. Ryerson has a four decade history of working in the fields of population and reproductive health. As a graduate student, he was Founder and first Chairperson of the Yale Chapter of Zero Population Growth (ZPG). He also served on the Executive Committee of ZPG, as Eastern Vice President and Secretary of the national organization. In 1970, he was featured in Life Magazine’s Earth Day issue organizing student activities on the Yale campus for the first Earth Day.

During the last two decades, he has been working to adapt the Sabido methodology of entertainment-education for behavior change on family planning and family size issues to various cultural settings worldwide. He has also been involved in the design of research to measure the effects of such projects in a number of countries, one of which has led to a series of publications regarding a serialized radio drama in Tanzania and its effects on HIV/AIDS avoidance and family planning use. He received a B.A. in Biology (Magna Cum Laude) from Amherst College and an M.Phil. in Biology from Yale University (with specialization in Ecology and Evolution). He served as Director of the Population Institute’s Youth and Student Division, Development Director of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, Associate Director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and Executive Vice President of Population Communications International before founding Population Media Center. Mr. Ryerson is listed in several editions of Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the East. In 2006, he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage from the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development.

This online document is a journalists’ resource guide devoted to climate. It is a collection of links, which are at this time primarily United States (US)-based, to various resources on climate from a wide range of sources, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, National Academies’ National Research Council, American Bird Conservancy and National Wildlife Federation, Evangelical Environmental Network, Sierra Club, and the Pew Center, among many other individuals and groups. Chapters group the links according to their field of expertise, and, in some cases, give tips, such as: “50+ Really Serious Scientist Sources on Climate (who would probably be glad to talk to a journalist).”

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/266739/306