Thanks to Alan Kuper for the link to this half-hour, May 5th Canadian television program, Population and the Planet. The program is 30 minutes long. After linking to the website, click on the Population and the Planet tab.
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda

Thanks to John Feeney for this article.
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Only since 1800, in the last 0.01% of the history of Homo sapiens, has the human population shot into the billions. Now at nearly 6.7 billion, with 9 billion looming 40 years away, few environmentalists seem to care.

Yet the population-environment link is clear. Our environmental impact, as gauged by total resource consumption for a country or the world, is the product of population size and the average person’s consumption.

Today’s crumbling environment, racked by climate change, mass extinction, deforestation, collapsing fisheries and more is evidence our total consumption has gone too far. We are destroying our life-support system. In ecological terms we are in “overshoot” of Earth’s “carrying capacity” for humans, our demand exceeding the planet’s absorptive and regenerative capacities.

For full article, visit:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk

Thanks to Bill Willers for this article by Peter Salonius.
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News of food price escalation is bringing global carrying capacity for human beings ‘front and center’- with food riots all over the world.

This is being precipitated now by food-to-ethanol programs, although with constantly rising populations fed by the increased food produced by various agricultural revolutions (the Green Revolution being the latest), these riots would have eventually happened. However the speed of these developments is awe inspiring.

On April 14 2008 we heard Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, calling for a crash program of food production increases to stave off the approach of famine. How many times does he think we can pull new ‘productivity rabbits’ out of the hat when soil resources of the planet continue to be degraded to produce more food for the irresponsibly breeding horde?

For full article, visit:
http://www.abc.net.au/news

Thanks to Marianne Ward for this follow up commentary from Marni Fogelson-Teel on the Duggar family population explosion.
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When People and several other popular media outlets heralded the news that the Duggar family in Arkansas welcomed their 17th child earlier this month, my reaction was not necessarily that of awe or amazement. It was anxiety. While the Duggar family is certainly an anomaly, it would become more than slightly problematic if everyone exercises their reproductive rights and simply has as many children as they physically can.

A recent study from the Optimum Population Trust pointed out that tactics for combating climate change “almost universally ignore population: it is seen as too sensitive and too controversial.” Personal birth rate and contraceptive choice are contentious subjects for many people because reproductive decisions often result from religious or cultural traditions. However, this decision has a huge impact on more than just one’s own family. In his hugely popular book The End Of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Jeffrey Sachs explains how the most poor countries, “are stuck with fertility rates of five or more. On average, a mother is raising at least two girls, and in some cases three girls or more. In those circumstances, national populations double each generation.”

For full article, visit:

Below is a paper by Martha Campbell, “Why the Silence on Population Issues.” A second piece on this same topic was sent to me by Luigi De Marchi, founder of the Italian Planned Parenthood Federation. He broadcast this editorial on May 5, 2008 over Italy’s Liberal Radio.

Why the Silence on Population (PDF, 178KB)

World Crisis (Word doc., 33KB)

Thanks to Ben Zuckerman for this editorial, which was distributed to 800 newspapers and magazines in the U.S. through the Cagle Syndication Service.
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Ever since my youth I’ve been a numbers type of guy. As a teenager in the 1950s I discovered that the typical American woman was having 3 or 4 children and I calculated that the USA was in for a big population explosion. At about the same time, Chinese women were having even more children than Americans. The fact that these two countries together are currently responsible for half of the entire anthropogenic contribution to increasing atmospheric carbon is partially a result of the large population increases engendered by these high fertilities.

For full article and an accompanying editorial cartoon, visit http://www.caglepost.com

Additional related editorial cartoons can be viewed at http://www.caglecartoons.com/column.

Dave Paxson, John Feeney and I participated in a 90-minute radio program on April 20 on population issues produced by Free Range Thought in Media. You can listen to the program – one of several in a series on population – at http://www.freerangethought.com/.

At the same site, you can also listen to an interview with David Pimentel of Cornell University discussing population and the current food crisis.

Part one of the April 20 interview can be linked to directly at: http://www.freerangethought.com/Audio/Ryerson_Paxson_Feeney_P1_042008.mp3.

And this is the link for part 2: http://www.freerangethought.com/Audio/Ryerson_Paxson_Feeney_P2_042008.mp3.

The interview is also posted on the PMC website by clicking here.

Thanks to Gene Nelson for this article and link. Also see his comment at the end of the article. This is from the 1 May 2008 Washington Post. Gene added a link to CIA Director Hayden’s prepared 30 April 2008 comments. There is such a contradiction between this view by the Administration’s CIA Chief and the Bush Administration’s lack of support for family planning information and services.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Thanks to Jane Roberts for this Population Day editorial.
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On June 26, the Bush administration, for the seventh year in a row, refused to release congressionally approved funds for the United Nations Population Fund.

The fund, supported by 181 countries last year, not only offers reproductive health care and family planning in 151 countries but also studies population and poverty trends. It’s a good time to talk about population. The fate of women is central to any population debate.

The planet is home to 6.7 billion people, and about 75 million more births occur each year than deaths. Ninety-eight percent of this growth happens in the poorest countries.

For full article, visit:
http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion

“Population, Health, and Environment: Exploring the Connections,” an original ECSP video, offers a lively, brief, and accessible explanation of population-health-environment connections, with examples and photos from successful programs in the Philippines. View the video on YouTube, then rate it, comment on it, favorite it, or post a video response.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGUtXzU-xb8

Presenter Lori Hunter of the University of Colorado, Boulder, spoke at the Wilson Center earlier this year as part of ECSP’s PHE meeting series. www.wilsoncenter.org/next10