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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Bill Ryerson appeared on Vermont Public Television’s Profile with Fran Stoddard on January 7, 2011.

Watch the full episode. See more Profile.

Donna Baptiste, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago has published an article in the Journal of Women’s Health that describes Population Media Center’s work in northern Nigeria. It discusses PMC’s program promoting maternal health and addressing obstetric fistula, starting on the sixth page of the attached document.

Donna Baptiste Integrating Women’s Human Rights into Global Health Research An Action Framework.2010 (PDF 311 KB)

On the next Your Call, we’ll rebroadcast our show about what it will take to have a substantive conversation about the growing population. There are almost 7 billion people on the planet; there could be 9 billion by 2050. What are the primary concerns with population growth? How have perceptions of population control changed? How do racism, classism, and resource inequalities factor into the controversies over population control? It’s Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb
William Ryerson, president of the Population Media Center
Martha Campbell, president of Venture Strategies for Health and Development and global health lecturer in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley

click to Listen: Why is population control so controversial?

By Juliane Poirier
http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/12.15.10/greenzone-1050.html

Q: What’s even better for health and brain growth than Sudoku, green tea, dark chocolate and meditation all at once? A: Applying one’s brain to the puzzle of human survival.

It’s hard work, but vastly rewarding. And one can get a great kickstart from more than 40 incredibly smart people in one paperback called The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises (Watershed Media; $21.95). It’s not only a good read, it’s a brain-enhancing tool that can also be utilized to replace fear and inertia with connectedness and purpose, and when the brain is connected with the heart, it can do anything.
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FM100 to air radio drama on MDGs
By ELIZABETH MIAE

The Population Media Centre-PNG (PMC) has partnered with Kalang Advertising Ltd (KAL)-FM100 for the broadcast of the millennium development goals (MDG) radio drama series for a two-year period commencing next February.

A broadcast agreement contract was signed last Friday between the two parties.

PMC is an implementing agency to the United Nations and is responsible for the production of the MDG radio campaign involving two long running radio drama series.
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