Thanks to Dave Gardner of Growthbusters for sending out this strong commentary from Paul and Anne Ehrlich. GrowthBusters has launched a campaign to honor the 40th anniversary of the Limits to Growth study.

The campaign features daily posts to the GrowthBusters blog, Facebook page and Twitter, as well as a special Facebook event page, to raise awareness that the scale of our population and global economy have outgrown the planet. They also have a call to action, encouraging the public to take a Think Small pledge – to limit family size, get out of debt, scale down consumption, unplug from and stop supporting a culture obsessed with growth.

See here: http://www.growthbusters.org/2012/04/pollyannas-of-population-growth/

Pollyannas of Population Growth: Fooled by the Culture Gap

Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich

Casting doubt on the seriousness of climate disruption is now a major front in the Republican war on science [1].  It is grounded in an ideology that opposes regulation of industries that might limit the growth of profits, even if society adopts regulations in order to avert possible future disasters.  Those who try to mislead the public about the science of climate change are financed in large part by the fossil fuel industry and supported by propaganda from a fleet of conservative think tanks.  The anti-regulation ideology has been promulgated by a shameless group of pundits, some of whose careers trace back to being flacks for the tobacco industry, trying to persuade the public that evidence of smoking being harmful was “equivocal” [2].  But there is another equally serious assault on science and humanity.  That is systematic claimingthat population growth is either beneficial or at least not seriously harmful.

There is a major difference between the two assaults, however, in that those who think the population can and should grow forever are not united by greed or even ideology, but by a lack of understanding of basic science.  Roman Catholic bishops fight contraception (and backup abortion) to protect their ideological base – to do otherwise would be to lose more power by admitting the Protestants were right all along. In so doing, their main damage has been to cripple U.S. government efforts to spread family planning overseas by misleading and intimidating politicians of other persuasions.  Their actions have tragically condemned millions of women to injury and death in unsafe abortions and helped to perpetuate poverty in developing nations.  If the bishops understood human sexuality and the unrecognized perfect storm of problems civilization now faces, one would hope that if they were moral men they would quickly see through the Church’s antique and immoral notions and desert from the trenches of its war on women.  It is noteworthy that Catholic laypeople generally use contraception and abortion at about the same level as non-Catholics in the same nations. Indeed, mainly Catholic nations in Europe are among those with some of the lowest birth rates on the planet.  Moreover, many of those unfazed by the population explosion are not Catholic, including multitudes of businessmen and economists who imagine that ever-increasing numbers of people are necessary for economic prosperity (yes, greed is one element along with doctrine!).

To a large extent, refusal to recognize that continued population growth is a serious threat to the future of civilization can be blamed on the failure of educational systems to bridge key parts of the culture gap [3], the growing chasm between what we each know as individuals and all of the knowledge society possesses corporately.  That gap leaves many well-educated people ignorant of today’s crucial environmental problems.

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The following Op-Ed article was penned by Mr. Mohammad Mohiuddin Abdullah, a former Joint Chief, (PRL), Planning Commission, of Bangladesh. See: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=229509

Population planning imperative
Monday, April 9, 2012

The current high population growth rate is absorbing resources required for increased productivity and sustained economic development. Conversely, economic development, improved education and alleviation of poverty are pre-requisites for reduction in child mortality and fertility levels. Arable land, capital and skills are necessary inputs to achieve increased productivity and job creation.

Pressure on arable land is already high at 1,950 people per sq. km., which will rise to 2,600 in the next 12 years. The landless population, currently between 54% 60 %, will increase further. Food production is increasing but progress towards the government’s objective of a minimally adequate 16 oz of food grains per capita day, about 1,500 calories, is slow. Investment per potential new work is one of the lowest in the world. Education resources are already fully extended to meet a primary school enrolment ratio of 64%. Around 3.25 million children will be added to the primary school population by 2021, depending on rate of fertility decline. This increased demand on resources will greatly diminish any capacity to extend coverage or improve standards. The rate of unemployment (40%) will be changed. Between now and the year 2021, about 22 million persons will be added to the labour force, aggravating further the existing unfavourable labour market.

Our per capita income is one of the lowest in the world. Estimates have shown that if population continues to grow at the current level of 1.74% (unofficial estimate 1.86%) gross domestic product (GDP) would need to grow at the rate of 12.5% per annum within 2021 to reach the threshold per capita income level of $1,150 by 2021. The generation of adequate resources for investment to achieve the growth rate of 12.5% per annum is a Herculean task for a country faced with serious internal resources constraints and where nearly 48% of development budget is financed out of the external assistance.

It is evident that without a substantial decrease in fertility, improvement in socio-economic conditions will be difficult if not possible to achieve. A significant change in fertility pattern will not occur unless overall development strategies are designed to equally involve both men and women. It is needless to mention here that all our economic effort for development is being negated by the ever-growing mass of population every year. And in the next decades, if steps are not taken now, we will not have sufficient arable land to cultivate to meet our increasing demand for food grains, industry, energy and urban expansion.

To read the full op-ed, please click here: http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=229509

Several people mentioned the following article to me, including Valentina Canavesio. See: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/04/09/120409crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all

The Case Against Kids: Is procreation immoral?
by Elizabeth Kolbert April 9, 2012
In 1832, Charles Knowlton, a doctor in Ashfield, Massachusetts, published a short book with a long title: “Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People, by a Physician.” Knowlton, who was thirty-one, was a “freethinker” and, by the standards of the Berkshires, an unusually adventurous soul. While attending the New Hampshire Medical Institute (now Dartmouth Medical School), he was too poor to pay for a dissecting class and so had liberated a corpse from a cemetery. For this, he was convicted of grave robbing and sentenced to sixty days in jail. In 1829, he wrote up his ideas about agnosticism in a tract and had a thousand copies printed at his own expense. Unable to find buyers in western Massachusetts, he took the copies to New York City, where he was arrested for peddling without a license.

In “Fruits of Philosophy,” Knowlton took up the subject of sex, or population growth, which, at the time, amounted to much the same thing. Like Thomas Malthus, whose work he cited, Knowlton was worried about the hazards of fertility. Using nineteenth-century birth rates, he projected that the number of people on the planet would double three times every century. Unlike Malthus, who saw no remedy except plague or abstinence, Knowlton believed that a more agreeable solution was at hand. What he called the “reproductive instinct” need not actually lead to reproduction. All that was required was some ingenuity. “Heaven has not only given us the capacity of greater enjoyment, but the talent of devising means to prevent the evils that are liable to arise therefrom; and it becomes us, ‘with thanksgiving, to make the most of them,’ ” he wrote.

Knowlton’s pamphlet provided his readers with easy-to-follow instructions. “Withdrawal immediately before emission” could, “if practiced with sufficient care,” be effective. A small piece of sponge, fitted with a narrow ribbon and inserted into a woman’s vagina “previous to connection,” would also suffice. If neither of these techniques appealed, he counselled “syringing the vagina immediately after connection, with a solution of sulphate of zinc, of alum, pearl-ash, or any salt that acts chemically on the semen.” As for the reliability of this last method, which he called the “chemical check,” Knowlton testified that he had discussed the matter with a gentleman who used to live in Baltimore, and that the gentleman had “no doubt of its efficacy.”

“Fruits of Philosophy” once again brought Knowlton into conflict with the law. Not long after the first edition appeared, he was charged with publishing obscene literature and fined fifty dollars. Even before the trial ended, he was indicted on new charges. This time, Knowlton was sentenced to three months of hard labor. In 1834, he was hauled into court for a third time. The third trial resulted in a hung jury, as did the retrial that followed.

But a good idea could not be kept down. Perhaps partly because of Knowlton’s legal trouble, “Fruits of Philosophy” was a popular hit. One of the jurors at the first trial told the doctor that, even though he’d seen no choice but to find him guilty, “still I like your book and you must let me have one of them.” In twenty years, the pamphlet-it was printed on tiny pages and could fit easily into a back pocket-went through nine editions in the United States. It was also published in Britain, where it sold roughly a thousand copies a year for nearly four decades.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/04/09/120409crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all

The announcement is posted on the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID) website, indicating that the U.K. government is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to host a Family Planning summit in London in July 2012. The event will “aim to generate unprecedented political commitment and resources from developing countries, donors, the private sector, civil society and other partners to meet the family planning needs of women in the world’s poorest countries by 2020.”

Family planning: UK to host summit with Gates Foundation
See: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/News/Latest-news/2012/Family-planning-UK-to-host-summit-with-Gates-Foundation/

06 March 2012

The UK Government is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and partners to host a Family Planning summit in London in July 2012.

The event will aim to generate unprecedented political commitment and resources from developing countries, donors, the private sector, civil society and other partners to meet the family planning needs of women in the world’s poorest countries by 2020.

There are hundreds of millions of women in developing countries who want to delay or avoid a pregnancy but are not using an effective method of family planning. The UK Department for International Development’s priority for this year is to support national governments’ efforts to increase access to family planning in the poorest countries. This is part of the UK’s contribution to the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health “Every Woman, Every Child.”

Increasing access to family planning information, services and supplies has dramatic health benefits for women and children, preventing up to a quarter of maternal deaths. It is also an extremely cost effective investment towards the achievement of the maternal and child health Millennium Development Goals and wider development outcomes. And yet, global attention and leadership on this issue has been lacking.

International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said:

“Every woman should be able to choose whether and when she has children, yet for 215 million women across the developing world this is not an option.

“The UK Government is determined to take action. We will work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and our partners to improve the lives of millions of girls and women in the poorest countries who want to avoid pregnancy and improve their health, education and future chances.

“That is why Britain will host a Family Planning summit later this year to help them take charge of their lives for the better.”

Here is an announcement of the Population Environment Research Network’s (PERN) upcoming cyberseminar to be titled “Bringing the Population-Sustainable Development Debate to a Higher Level”. You can sign up to participate in this cyberseminar, which will take place from May 7th to May 14th. See: http://www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/seminars.jsp

PERN Cyberseminar on “Bringing the Population-Sustainable Development Debate to a Higher Level”

See: http://www.populationenvironmentresearch.org/seminars.jsp

In anticipation of Rio+20, PERN is pleased to announce a cyberseminar entitled “Bringing the Population-Sustainable Development Debate to a Higher Level”, from 7-14 May 2012, organized jointly with IIASA in Laxenburg, Austria, and The Royal Society in London, UK.

This cyberseminar brings together two allied efforts to bring population considerations into the debate at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in Rio in June (Rio+20). In the one, a global forum of experts met under UNFPA sponsorship in late November at IIASA in Austria to bring data and research to bear on these higher-level population relationships. Under the broader umbrella of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, their summary document, the Laxenburg Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development, was announced in a 24 February 2012 letter in Science magazine. In the other, The Royal Society’s expert international working group, chaired by Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston FRS, oversaw a study which resulted in a major report, People and the Planet, which will be released on 26 April 2012. They conducted a wide-ranging evidence gathering exercise involving meetings with government, industry, academia, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations in the UK and overseas, as well as an open public call for evidence.

In this cyberseminar we will draw on both documents. It takes as a premise that population matters are important in considerations of sustainable development (SD). Yet, the framing of the discussion has tended to be Malthusian, with a focus on population size and growth rates and a policy emphasis on efforts to curb population growth rates.

The size of populations, though, is only one dimension of their characteristics that matter for SD prospects. Research indicates that size is usually not even the most important dimension. Other dimensions-among them age distribution, household composition, place of residence, migratory and consumption patterns, gender considerations, and educational structure-have arguably more important and more predictable implications for people’s ability and willingness to engage in mitigation of environmental challenges, their effectiveness in adapting to such challenges, and their success in developing and adopting new approaches and technologies across the spectrum of daily life.

Through this cyberseminar, researchers and policymakers from around the world can add their perspectives-their readings of the scientific evidence and its policy implications-to those of their colleagues who met at IIASA and who contributed to People and the Planet report. Some of the IIASA and The Royal Society study experts will be back as active participants during the seminar week.

Yesterday, on April 5th, Melinda Gates gave a speech in Berlin regarding contraception as part of the TedXChange initiative. As co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, her ideas obviously carry a lot of currency. You can watch an archived video of her speech by via the following link. Skip to minute 1:22:25. See: https://www.facebook.com/tedxchange?sk=app_133541933424737

Below is a companion blog post, authored by Ms. Gates.

See:

http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/04/Will-You-Tell-Your-Story-About-How-Contraception-Changed-Your-Life Â

More than 1 billion people currently use birth control. For the most part, they do it without hesitation. They do it because they want the power to plan their own lives-and to raise healthy, happy families when they are ready to do so. There is almost no controversy around this routine fact of everyday life.

And yet 200 million women don’t have access to contraceptives. More than 100,000 of these women will die in childbirth. And another 600,000 will give birth to a child who dies in her first month of life. But we don’t talk about this inequity. We don’t talk about it because the uncontroversial idea of deciding when to have a child has somehow become shrouded in controversy. And the victims of this paralysis are the poorest people in the world.

I just delivered a TedxChange talk about this subject (and we’ll soon have the talk available on video, in this post), because I believe that if we start talking about contraception, we will remember that shouldn’t be controversy around this topic.

To help make this happen, our global TedxChange community is launching a storytelling project. We are asking you to contribute the story about the impact of contraception. If you can take a moment to appreciate the difference birth control has made your life, the life of a loved one, a friend, or even a stranger, then we are more likely to build a movement, helping contraceptives make a similar difference in the lives of the poorest families in the world.

Here is my story. As a young woman, I felt confident in my future because I knew I had control over decisions about my family. I knew I could make plans and then carry them out.

What difference would it make if all women in the world, even the poorest, could make these decisions too? That’s a question I ask myself all the time.

I urge you to join us by telling your story. Together, we can make sure that millions more women get to tell stories like it in the years to come.

Overshoot in A Nutshell

By David M. Delaney

See: http://davidmdelaney.com/overshoot-in-a-nutshell.html

Thomas Robert Malthus, 1766-1834, famously observed that human population, if unchecked, would grow faster than its food supply.  He argued that education in “moral restraint” might prevent starvation from being the operative check on population growth. It is implicit in his writings that uncontrolled population growth, failing “moral restraint”, would stall near the natural limits of the food supply. The population would remain stable thereafter, with many people living on the edge of starvation. But general undernourishment of a stable population is not a likely result of the current fantastic expansion of the human population. Like many who have commented on population growth, Malthus did not understand overshoot.

A species may greatly overshoot the long term carrying capacity of its environment. (Its population may become greatly larger than its environment can sustain.) Overshoot becomes possible when a species encounters a rich and previously unexploited stock of resources that promotes its reproduction.

The creation of stocks is due to ongoing geological and biological activity.  A resource stock forms when a part of the daily production of a resource, a flow, accumulates slowly without being exploited, perhaps over millions of years. An enormous stock of a resource may accumulate before it encounters a species that can exploit it easily. After such an encounter, only predation and disease limit reproduction of the species.

Without significant predation or disease, and while large amounts of the stock remain easily available, the population of a species can grow to a size hundreds of times that which can be supported by the flows that created the stock. The daily production of a resource is a mere trickle compared to the flood available from a stored accumulation.

To read the full article, please click here: http://davidmdelaney.com/overshoot-in-a-nutshell.html

Always a pleasure to hear from Professor Bartlett, who recently asked PMC to send this article of his out to you.

TEACHERS CLEARINGHOUSE, FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY EDUCATION NEWSLETTER

Volume 31, No. 1, Winter 2012, Pg. 1

Sponsored by the Association of Teachers in Independent Schools, Affiliated with the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education.

Editor-in-Chief; John Roeder, The Calhoun School, 433 West End Avenue, New York City 10024

The Meaning of Sustainability

by Albert A. Bartlett, Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder

Albert.Bartlett@Colorado.EDU

NOTE; This text was developed from an invited paper of the same title that was presented August 1, 2011 at the National Summer Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers held in Omaha, Nebraska

Background on Sustainability

In the 1960s and 1970s, it became apparent to many thoughtful individuals that global populations, rates of resource use and environmental degradation were all increasing so rapidly that these increases would soon encounter the limits imposed by the finite productivity of the global ecosphere and the geological availability of mineral and fossil fuel resources.

Perhaps most prominent among the publications that introduced the reality of limits in hard quantitative terms was the book Limits to Growth (1) which, in 1972, reported the results of computer simulations of the global economy that were carried out by a systems analysis group at MIT. The simulation recorded five parameters for the global economy (population, agricultural production, natural resources, industrial production and pollution) for the period of time from 1900 to 1970 and then projected the computer-generated values of these parameters for the period from 1970 to 2100. For a wide range of input assumptions, the projections predicted a major collapse of world population in the mid-twenty first century. The computed results seemed to show that sustainability of life as we know it may not be an option.

Limits to Growth evoked admiration from scientists and environmentalists who were comfortable with quantitative analysis. The study evoked consternation from less quantitative types who tend not to believe in limits. Limits to Growth precipitated immediate and urgent rebuttals from the global economic community which proclaimed that human ingenuity can overcome all shortages so that, in effect, there are no limits. (2, 3) The book Limits to Growth got people thinking about sustainability.

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Today, I am calling your attention to an interesting global initiative called Catalysts for Change. Starting on April 3rd, there will be a 48-hour online game (from 16:00 GMT [12noon EST] on April 3, running until 16:00 GMT [12noon EST] on April 5) to engage people around the world to re-imagine the future of poverty and global well-being.  The goal? Identify a thousand new paths out of poverty in just 48 hours of gameplay with hundreds of players from all walks of life.

The game is sponsored by Institute for the Future and the Rockefeller Foundation’s global network of Searchlight Partners. In addition, leading organizations in social innovation around the world have signed on as community partners to bring many voices and perspectives to the gameplay. I have signed up, which was very easy to do, and intend to give it a try. I suggest you sign up and read the rules in preparation.

Here is the press release. See: http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/news/press-releases/1-2-billion-people-live-poverty

1.2 Billion People Live in Poverty – The Rockefeller Foundation and Institute for the Future Invite 7 Billion People to Help Find Solutions

On April 3, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) will join forces with people across the globe and ask them to help solve global poverty through an interactive online game. The game, dubbed Catalysts for Change, is based on the premise that collaboration on a global scale can yield unique insights into ways to create a more prosperous, equitable future. These insights will trigger innovations that will make a significant difference in the lives of poor or vulnerable communities. The game can be played online at  game.catalyze4change.org.

Around the world, hundreds of millions of people are looking for ways out of poverty. While progress has been made, over 1.2 billion poor or vulnerable people around the world are still living in extreme poverty.

“The public, private and social sectors have worked to tackle poverty, vulnerability and exclusion for years,” said Dr. Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation. ”While the lives of countless people and communities have been transformed as a result, the persistent level of poverty and vulnerability that remains requires new and innovative thinking. Using technology to engage a new set of actors from all over the world will provide unique perspectives, allowing us to identify new ways to solve problems and address poverty at its root causes.”

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The following interview with Michelle Duggar (no, this is not an Onion article). We are fortunate to have Bob Walker, President of Population Institute, provide a far less foolish response article below.

Duggars’ Mom, Michelle, Thinks Overpopulation Is A Lie

See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/duggars-overpopulation_n_1387640.html?ref=mostpopular

Michelle Duggar, star of TLC’s reality show, “19 Kids and Counting”, says there needs to be more children because our world needs more joy. And as for overpopulation? That’s just a lie, Duggar recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network in a web interview. “The idea of overpopulation is not accurate,” Duggar says, because the entire population of the world could fit inside of Jacksonville, Florida.

“I agree with Mother Teresa when she said, ‘to say that there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers,’” Duggar said.

She explains how her large family is resourceful and therefore not posing as big of an environmental problem as perceived. They buy used cars, she says, and frequently shop at thrift stores, purchasing things others would discard.

Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan points out that, even so, “A family of three or four would practically have to prance around throwing a trail of styrofoam packing peanuts in their wake to leave the same sort of carbon footprint that the Duggars leave.” By our rough calculations, the family uses over 1,000 rolls of toilet paper each year.

Duggar claims countries have come to America and asked us to encourage their people to have more children. “They’e in crisis,” she said. “They don’t have people of marrying age for their youth now, and they see what that’s done to their country.”

So instead of being “deceived” by the idea of overpopulation, “we need to focus on loving people and trying to reach out and make a difference for good in our world,” Duggar says.
Living on Planet Duggar

See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/michelle-duggar-overpopulatioon_b_1391329.html

We now have a new planet to add to the growing list of Earth-like planets that are being discovered by astronomers. Let’s call it Planet D in honor of Michelle Duggar, the reality TV star who has 19 children.

On Planet D there’s no such thing as overpopulation. The world has infinite space and, more importantly, infinite resources. News of the planet’s existence only came to public attention when Michelle Duggar did a web interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network this week. In the interview she disclosed that the world she’s living on does not suffer from overpopulation. She further indicated that on Planet D having more children always equals “more joy.” Although she did not elaborate, hunger and extreme poverty apparently do not exist on Planet D. Nor do such things as climate change and water scarcity.

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