forbes.com – January 9, 2012

By Michael Charles Tobias

Imagine a country like French Guiana or Vanuatu – with human populations of 225,000 to 235,000 – emerging, every day! That is the conundrum facing humanity and the natural world. The human population explosion, multiplied by its cumulative consumption, represents what many believe to be the most significant challenge ever faced by life on Earth in billions of years. This is an equation that forms the basis for most rational analysis of global environmental issues. It is a starting point. In the absence of dealing with it, most other techno-fixes or alleged ecological “solutions” are unlikely to produce much traction.

I spoke with Bill Ryerson about this essentially fundamental reality we are all grappling with. Ryerson is President of Population Media Center (Shelburne, Vermont) and CEO of the Population Institute (Washington, DC). He has endeavored to help solve the population problem for 40 years, including 25 years of using social change communications worldwide.  You can read his chapter in the Post Carbon Reader, “Population: the Multiplier of Everything Else.”

During his career, Ryerson has served as Director of the Population Institute’s Youth and Student Division, Development Director of Planned Parenthood SE Pennsylvania, Associate Director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and Executive Vice President of Population Communications International.

Michael Tobias: Bill, most corporations and students of the environment– consumers, people everywhere – seem to be paying some lip-service to the word “sustainability.” What is the underlying reality, in your opinion?  Is human civilization moving in a sustainable direction?

Bill Ryerson: Michael, sustainability is the ultimate health issue, the ultimate human rights issue, and the ultimate environmental issue.  Books like “Collapse” are ringing alarms for the public, while numerous scientists are now debating not whether the collapse will occur, but when – and how bad it will be.

Michael Tobias: Arguably, humankind is exceeding the Earth’s biological carrying capacity. Our global footprint enshrines a multitude of economic impacts that are bundled together. Oil and agriculture, for example, are linked in problematic ways people often ignore, no?

Bill Ryerson: Absolutely. Industrial agriculture and our industrial way of life depend on non-renewable resources, particularly cheap oil. Consider what happened in 2008 when the price of oil rose to $140 per barrel.

The price of food went so high that there were food riots worldwide.  Remember, oil is used in pumping irrigation water, plowing, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, transport to market, refrigeration, transport home, and cooking.  Modern industrial agriculture is the process of turning oil – and water – into food.  While the recession reduced demand for oil, and prices dropped, the “recovery,” such as it is, has led oil prices back up to over $100 per barrel, and food is now near all time peak prices.

For the full article, visit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2012/01/09/at-the-crossroads-of-sustainability-a-conversation-with-bill-ryerson/

msnbc.com – October 26, 2011

By James Eng

Sometime on Monday, Oct. 31, the world’s population is projected to hit 7 billion. Is that numerical milestone a cause for celebration or concern?

A little bit of both, according to the United Nations Population Fund. The organization, an international development agency that promotes the right of every person to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity, on Wednesday released a report detailing the achievements and setbacks faced by an ever-crowded world.

How we respond now will determine whether we have a healthy, sustainable and prosperous future or one that is marked by inequalities, environmental decline and economic setbacks, according to “The State of World Population 2011” report.

The report notes that the record population can be viewed as a success because it means people are living longer — average life expectancy has increased from about 48 years in the early 1950s to about 68 in the first decade of the 21st century — and more children are surviving worldwide. But not everyone has benefited from a higher quality of life.

In some of the poorest countries women are having more babies, stymieing development and perpetuating poverty; in some of the wealthier countries low fertility rates and a shortage of workers are raising concerns about the sustainability of economic growth and social programs.

“This report makes the case that with planning and the right investments in people now — to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves but for our global commons — our world of 7 billion can have thriving, sustainable cities, productive labor forces that can fuel economic growth, youth populations that contribute to the well-being of economies and societies, and a generation of older people who are healthy and actively engaged in the social and economic affairs of their communities,” writes Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UNFPA.

The 7 billion milestone “is a challenge, an opportunity and a call to action,” Osotimehin said.

In response to the report, msnbc.com asked seven notable figures to identify some major problems — and potential remedies — confronting a world with 7 billion inhabitants. Here’s what they had to say:

For the full article, visit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44990504/ns/us_news-life/

UN Dispatch – October 31, 2011

By Alanna Shaikh

On October 31^st, the UN Population Division has predicted the planet will see its 7 billionth person. In advance of that event, UN Dispatch spoke to William Ryerson about what that kind of population growth means. He’s well placed to answer the question. Mr. Ryerson is the founder and President of Population Media Center, Chairman of Population Institute (Washington DC), fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and recipient of the 2006 Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage.

UND: What happened? How did population go from a non-issue to an issue again?

Population was a huge issue in the 60s and 70s. I have been working on this for 40 years. The first earth day was largely about population growth, then it became taboo. Part of why it become taboo was human rights violations committed by India and China, and partly was because of Ronald Reagan, who said that population growth was a good thing. He was influenced by Julian Simon, who said there was no limit to how many people the planet could support. We saw a negative response to publications like The Limits to Growth, which predicted that in the early part of the current century, we’d run into resource limits.

What is clear now is that oil production has gone flat, no matter how much we spend on trying to find more. And our whole agriculture system is based on cheap oil. The oil component of the price of food is a major component. People were suddenly finding they were unable to buy food. The spike in oil and then food prices led the media to realize there really was a problem.

There was also a major effort by our organization and other organizations to start talking to the media. The Limits to Growth was basically on track in terms of their forecast. We are running into limits on all kinds of resources. Not just oil – water, minerals and metals, too. By ignoring the issue of population we have really failed to take the somewhat simple steps to address this component of what is clearly a demand and supply problem.

For the full article, visit: http://www.undispatch.com/seven-billion-what-does-it-mean

AlterNet – October 29, 2011

By Scott Thill

The definition of overpopulation has less to do with raw numbers of people than their relationship with the planet’s sustainable resources.

Here’s some freaky news: According to United Nations, Earth’s seventh-billionth person could be born by Halloween, even though “the fire marshal only certified Earth for 6,999,999,” according to a recent tweet from “The Daily Show.” It’s a clever joke hiding a tragicomic dimension of the uncertain achievement: The planet’s increasingly inhospitable climate and depleted resources mean we have little room for more humans, especially the 10 billion or more expected to stress the planet’s already overweight system by 2100.

“Let’s assume the average weight, or mass, of a human is 50 kilograms, or 120 pounds,” University of Washington paleontologist and The Flooded Earth author Peter Ward told AlterNet. “That takes into account all the fat men, and all the kids, so it’s a ballpark figure. That means 350 billion kilograms, or 770 billion pounds, of humanity on the planet. I wonder if this is the highest mass of any chordate on Earth. Only rats might weigh more of all natural populations.”

But even rats have the good sense to abandon a sinking ship. Not so for humanity, whose resource wars have created a hyperreal dragnet that has caught up everything from mass-media distractions like Herman Cain and Mommar Gaddafi to worthy insurgencies like Occupy Wall Street. As those stories, for better or worse, dominated the news cycle, British Petroleum was quietly freed to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after turning it into a marine nightmare since 2010. Exxon Mobil posted a $31 billion profit on the year thanks to billions in groundless government subsidies. American rivers and streams have become hypersaturated with carbon dioxide, and Arctic sea ice has become as thin as the United States is fat in the gut and head. Environmentalists and other concerned parties can be forgiven for not breaking out the bubbly because the planet has managed to spawn seven billion souls with increased life expectancy, thanks to miracles of science and industry. Because in the scariest scenario, that same science and industry could doom most, and perhaps even all, of us.

For the full article, visit: http://www.alternet.org/story/152902/7_billion_and_counting_welcome_to_a_planet_with_population_overload_and_resources_in_crisis

By Dahr Jamail

Aljazeera – July 4, 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

Wendy Johnston with Oakwyn Farms in Athens, West Virginia, is deeply concerned about how shifting weather patterns are impacting farmers’ ability to feed the global population.

“This year we’re off to a slow start,” Johnston, who farms 40 hectares, told Al Jazeera. “Last year in April we were able to plant, but this year we even had rain, cold and snow a few days in April. The weather has become very unpredictable, and that’s the real problem.”

Climate change is making farming more difficult for her, and she wonders how much worse things will become.

On March 31, The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned of “potentially catastrophic” impacts on food production from slow-onset climate changes that are expected to increasingly hit the developing world.

The report filed with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that food production systems and the ecosystems they depend on are highly sensitive to climate variability and change.

Changes in temperature, precipitation, and related outbreaks of pest and diseases could reduce production, the report said. Those particularly vulnerable are poor people in countries that rely on food imports, although climate change events are already driving up food costs around the globe, including in developed countries.

April broke many weather-related monthly records in the US, including 292 tornadoes and 5,400 extreme weather events, which combined to cause 337 deaths.

The US National Climatic Data Center announced in June that April’s weather extremes were “unprecedented” and “never before” seen in a single month. The center also noted drought across the southern plains, wildfires in the southwest, and record floods along the Mississippi River.

“Severe weather events around the world will increase, even parts of the globe that don’t normally see extreme weather events,” said Steff Gaulter, Al Jazeera’s senior weather presenter. “Those parts of the world that already struggle with water shortages will find matters worsening, including Australia, Mexico, the southwest United States, and parts of Africa.”

Gaulter agrees with the FAO that poorer countries are likely to be the worst affected because they have less resources to cope with disasters.

“With worsening water-shortages, there will be more crop-failures, which means an increase in malnutrition,” she added. “There is also likely to be an increase in disease as people drink water that is unsuitable for consumption. All of this is an added expense that will be particularly punishing for poorer regions to endure, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Approximately 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa currently lack access to clean drinking water.

“It is also estimated that by 2020, an additional 75 to 250 million people there will also face water shortages,” said Gaulter. “That’s in less than ten years.”

For the full article, visit: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201173114451998370.html

By Dahr Jamail

Aljazeera – June 23, 2011

http://aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland’s largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes “dead”, meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

Floods have struck Eastern and Southern China, killing at least 52 and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, followed by severe flooding that again hit Eastern China, displacing or otherwise affecting five million people.

Meanwhile in Europe, crops in the northwest are suffering the driest weather in decades.

Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth’s temperature, and the aforementioned events are a sign of what is to come.

“If you had a satellite view of the planet in the summer, there is about 40 per cent less ice in the Arctic than when Apollo 8 [in 1968] first sent back those photos [of Earth],” Bill McKibben, world renowned environmentalist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences told Al Jazeera, “Oceans are 30 per cent more acidic than they were 40 years ago. The atmosphere is four per cent more wet than 40 years ago because warm air holds more water than cold air. That means more deluge and downpour in wet areas and more dryness in dry areas. So we’re seeing more destructive mega floods and storms, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing lightning strikes.”

So far human greenhouse gas emissions have raised the temperature of the planet by one degree Celsius.

“Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century,” said McKibben, “If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we’d be best not to hit four degrees.”

For the full article, visit: http://aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

By Jeff Gomez

Tribecafilm.com – May 9, 2011

http://www.tribecafilm.com/tribecaonline/future-of-film/Reawakening-the-Grand-Narrative.html

While traveling a few weeks back I had the good fortune to meet an Egyptian scholar. “Isn’t it wonderful,” I said, “how the Internet and social media were used by your people to free themselves from an oppressive regime?”

His response surprised me: “Oh no, Facebook and Twitter didn’t free us. Yes, they were tools we used along with diligent housewives, copy machines and handwritten flyers. The true tipping point happened late last year when our parliament retained power with the usual brazen wave of election fraud, corruption and thievery. The difference this time is that they didn’t even bother to lie to us about it. They didn’t even tell us a story.”
As someone who has spent the last decade advising the entertainment industry on how best to extend big movie and videogame properties across an array of strange new media platforms, I’ve had to think about story from any number of perspectives. What I’m coming to understand is this: Story is more powerful than any weapon. More than warriors, storytellers have influenced the way we’ve evolved as a race.

For the rest of this article, visit: http://www.tribecafilm.com/tribecaonline/future-of-film/Reawakening-the-Grand-Narrative.htmlFor

The Economist – May 5th, 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/18648847

In the radio drama “Nau em Taim” (“Now is the time” in Pidgin) aired in Papua New Guinea, a widowed father takes up dynamite fishing—profitable but disastrous for the reef. Then he meets a dashing marine scientist who warns him off. The idea is that by the end of the drama, which debuted in February, both he—and the listeners—will renounce dynamite for sustainable fishing.

The show’s producer, the Population Media Center (PMC) in Vermont, has been a pioneer of programmes with the goal of fostering development. But other groups have increasingly followed suit. In Vietnam Khat Vong Song uses radio drama to teach its listeners about domestic violence. In Kenya Mediae promotes civil rights with a television soap called “Makutano Junction”.

Evidence that radio and television soaps can change behaviour was first spotted in the 1970s. But solid academic research was lacking until a few years ago. In 2008 economists at the Inter-American Development Bank, for instance, found that Brazilians receiving Globo, a television network, had fewer children and got divorced more often. Another study discovered that, as cable television spread, the fertility rate in rural India dropped by as much as if women had received five additional years of education.

Some thought that this was because couch potatoes were less likely to make babies. But research in Ethiopia showed that dramas can have a direct effect. Demand for contraceptives rose by 157% among married women who listened to the soap operas “Yeken Kignet” and “Dhimbibba”. Male listeners sought tests for HIV/AIDS four times as much as male non-listeners.

“The best results are when people identify with characters,” says Betty Oala of the PMC. This is why the organisation does extensive research, takes on local writers and uses native languages.

Not only are soaps effective, but they are also cheap. Radio programmes can cost as little as three cents to reach a listener in Africa. Yet trying to influence the poor can be controversial. Although producers do not hide their agendas, Charles Kenny, an economist, thinks that there could be a “quagmire of a debate over morals and a tangle of regulation”. An increase in divorces, say, may seem like good news to a woman activist, but bad to a Catholic priest.

The National – Tuesday, February 22, 2011
http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node/16777

Listeners of the family show on FM 100 will have more to live, love and laugh about when the two new serial dramas on social change are aired live for the first time tonight and will continue every Tuesday and Thursday at 8.30pm.

The series would have a two-year run with the Tok Pisin series “Nau em taim” and English series “Echoes of change” would follow in three storyline segments.
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By: Brendon Bosworth
http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/colorado_filmmakers_explore_overpopulation/C37/L37/

A new documentary that debuted at the Boulder International Film Festival calls overpopulation a looming and underreported issue.

Directed and produced by Denver-based Tiroir A Films, “Mother: Caring Our Way Out of the Population Dilemma” confronts what it labels a social, political and religious taboo – rapid population growth – and its role in natural resource depletion and economic inequality.

Pointing to the United Nations’ projection of a world population of 9 billion by 2045, the film calls for a more responsible approach to reproduction and the promotion of a global culture of female empowerment and respect for women’s rights. It features commentary by population scholars, economists, authors and scientists, including the outspoken Paul Ehrlich, author of 1968 book “The Population Bomb,” which has been criticized for its predictions of global famine in the 1970s.
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