It is one of the most important – and terrifying – papers I have read in some time. Not only will it make you an expert on the various schemes for engineering the climate and their prospects for impact on climate trends, but it will help you understand the level of arrogance going into planning global climate engineering using such schemes as spraying sulphur dioxide gas into the stratosphere to create sulphate aerosol particles to reflect solar radiation. This idea is being pursued by wealthy individuals and possibly governments as actions they could take unilaterally without input from the world’s people or the other nations of the world, in order to allow continued escalation of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The paper also gives a look into some of the sources of funding for such schemes. Some of the players are among the major climate deniers. Many thanks to Eric Rimmer for sending the paper to me.

After you read this paper, I hope you will contact your government representatives to urge immediate action to stop these harebrained schemes for engineering the climate. At the moment, there is no international law or treaty to stop individuals from drastically altering the chemical composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.

You can visit Clive Hamilton’s website at www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/index.php?page=contact. You can see a talk by him at http://www.themonthly.com.au/climate-change-denialism-clive-hamilton-and-andrew-glikson-2006 and http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/28266460. During the Q&A at the end of the talk, he addressed Australia’s high rate of population growth and the need to stop that growth.

The Agriculture Outlook 2010-19 anticipates that wheat and coarse grain prices could jump to levels of between 15 and 40 percent higher than they were between 1997 and 2006, while vegetable oil and dairy prices are also projected to rise by more than 40 percent.

Spikes in livestock prices are not expected to be as marked, even in the face of rising global demand for meat which is set to outpace demand for other commodities as some segments of the population in emerging economies alter their dietary habits due to increased wealth.

For full article, visit:
http://www.unicwash.org/Media.aspx?date=2010-06-15#item445

But Dutch scientists writing in the journal Science concluded the impact would be much less than previously estimated a few years ago by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. report in 2007 warned that hundred of millions of people were at risk from disappearing glaciers.

The reason for the discrepancy, scientists said, is that some basins surrounding the Himalayas depend more on rainfall than melting glaciers for their water sources.

For full article, visit:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article

The growing world population affects food and water supplies, ecological balance and the overall quality of life for everyone. This animation presents a variety of facts and projected statistics to reveal the severity of our growing population.

You can download and review the draft here:
http://www.epa.gov/ocfo/plan/2011/draft_strategic_plan_june_16_2010.pdf

Comments on the Draft Strategic Plan may be submitted, prior to midnight on Friday, July 30th at:
http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#submitComment?R=0900006480b054e6

NOTE: The EPA is (or should be) responsible for the long-term integrity of ecosystems and all natural resources within the total environment of the U.S. sovereign territories. ‘Long-term integrity’ here means sustainability, and the only way that they can ensure sustainability is to make sure that our nation is living within our natural resource ‘means’.

To make that determination, an agency like the EPA should conduct a broad and comprehensive sustainability evaluation of our nation. Certainly, once the EPA is charged with this responsibility, the analysis will readily show that we are very unsustainable and in order to correct the situation, U.S. policy decisions will have to be made that deal with any and all pertinent issues, including population! Putting the population issue in context with a sustainable future is important — it is politically correct to want to preserve life for future generations.

Somewhat surprisingly, the EPA does twice recognize population growth as an environmental issue within the document (see below). It could be useful to submit comments either encouraging the EPA to conduct a thorough sustainability evaluation of our sovereign territories; to think more deeply about the challenges population growth creates for a sustainable US future; or, criticizing them for not dealing more thoroughly with the issue in their current assessment and planning activities.

1. On page 24: “EPA is confronted with challenges, emerging issues, and opportunities every day. An oil spill, a flood, a hurricane, or other tragedy or disaster can divert the Agency’s anticipated focus in the short term. Other issues, such as climate change and population growth, can create long-term challenges that run deep and across many EPA programs…”

2. One page 24: “Water Quality:Water quality programs face challenges such as new drinking water contaminants, increases in nutrient loadings and stormwater runoff, aging infrastructure, and population growth (which can increase water consumption and place additional stress on aging water infrastructures). The Agency needs to examine carefully the potential impacts of solutions to these issues, including effects on water quality and quantity that could result in the long term from climate change.”

Once you have made comments on the strategic plan, you can also leave comments on the EPA blog topic “Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism” by clicking through here:

http://blog.epa.gov/strategicplan/?p=134&preview=true

To give you inspiration, here is an summary of what Todd Greenburg wrote:

To Whom It May Concern:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released for widespread public review and comment a draft of its new 5-year Strategic Plan. The new Plan will drive much of what the Agency does between 2011-2015. Recognizing that population and environmental protection are inextricably linked, it is appalling that there is only passing mention of population in the draft Plan (page 24). The issue of population should take center stage in this kind of plan, for it undermines many efforts to improve the nation’s air, water, and land quality. Getting the average car to achieve 35 miles per gallon is not progress if we have 500,000 more people each year driving. Improving the energy efficiency of the average home is not progress if we have 400,000 new homes being built each year. Getting farmers to use less conventional pesticides in favor of organics is not progress if 50,000 new acres of crops need to be grown each year to keep up w/ growing demand for food. It’s all about carrying capacity and some experts fear we exceeded it years ago.

Given the focus of your organization, ignoring population links is a huge misstep by the EPA. The Agency needs to know that the counteractive impact of overpopulation on efforts to protect human health and the environment deserves more than just passing mention in the new strategy. The time for acting on overpopulation was yesterday. This Administration needs to do something, and quick. EPA is just as good a place as any to jump-start this critical dialogue.

So please consider sending comments along these lines by the 7/30/10 deadline — even if all you do is say that the section entitled External Factors and Emerging Issues deserves a more detailed discussion of the impact of population and an explanation of what the Agency intends to do about it. The more often EPA hears about this concern from multiple parties, the more likely it is to give the issue greater attention in the Plan.

In 1823, a government surveyor named Stephen Long was working to map out the Great Plains, an expanse of land acquired along with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. He was unimpressed by what he saw. As his geographer wrote in the report that accompanied the expedition: I do not hesitate in giving the opinion that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.

Long would have been shocked to see what the region looks like today — not merely fit for cultivation, but in fact one of the most fertile and productive areas of the world. Since World War II, dramatic leaps in technology have allowed farmers to pump groundwater for irrigation and extend America’s breadbasket through the entire Great Plains, transforming what Long called “The Great American Desert” into an expanse of green circles defined by the reach of central pivot irrigation systems.

For full article, visit:
http://www.aolnews.com/earth-day/article

We all need to pause for a minute and consider the possible implications of the droughts that are engulfing China. One of these is in the north — Inner Mongolia, and the second more serious one covers most of southwestern China.

If the weather patterns revert to normal and the May monsoons come on schedule in the next month or so, then all should be well and we, along with 60 million or so Chinese farmers, can stop worrying. But these are not normal times and even the disappearance of the El Niño in the central Pacific may not bring enough rain to mitigate the situation. Then, there could be serious trouble not only for the Chinese and southeast Asian peoples, but for the rest of us as well.

For full article, visit:
http://www.postcarbon.org/article/90195-the-peak-oil-crisis-china-s-latest

Major economies are pushing for substantial increases in the price of water around the world as concern mounts about dwindling supplies and rising population.

With official UN figures showing that 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water and more than double that number do not have proper sanitation, increases in prices will be – and in some countries are already proving to be – hugely controversial.

However experts argue that as long as most countries provide huge subsidies for water it will not be possible to change the wasteful habits of consumers, farmers and industry, nor to raise the investment needed to repair old supply systems and build new ones. And price rises can be managed so that they do not penalise the poorest.

For full article, visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/27/water-price-rise

Joyce Tarnow of Floridians for a Sustainable Population, sent the following response to National Geographic

I was so excited when the special issue of National Geographic, “WATER, Our Thirsty World,” arrived in my mailbox. Finally, a too little reported crisis would get national attention from a respected institution. Many critical aspects of water supply and safety were spotlighted, but not the most critical one–population numbers. This glaring omission continues the restriction that has crippled environmental progress since the mid 1970′s. On Page 52, the last sentence of the large print text is revealing of this decades long practice of ignoring population demand on all of our resources, not just water. “….With 83 million more people on earth each year, water demand will keep going up unless we change how we use it.” There are no logical remedies to stave off a more thirsty future, other than reducing population numbers.

The Burden of Thirst

Aylito Binayo’s feet know the mountain. Even at four in the morning she can run down the rocks to the river by starlight alone and climb the steep mountain back up to her village with 50 pounds of water on her back. She has made this journey three times a day for nearly all her 25 years. So has every other woman in her village of Foro, in the Konso district of southwestern Ethiopia. Binayo dropped out of school when she was eight years old, in part because she had to help her mother fetch water from the Toiro River. The water is dirty and unsafe to drink; every year that the ongoing drought continues, the once mighty river grows more exhausted. But it is the only water Foro has ever had.

For full article, visit:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/water-slaves/rosenberg-text