Below is an Op-Ed written by Robert Walker, President of the Population Institute, regarding the derision and rhetorical attacks that have been launched against the Royal Society report “People and Planet”. It was published in the Huff Post. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/when-scientists-speak-who_b_1471423.html

When Scientists Speak, Who Listens?

Scientists get no respect these days. When they speak, no one listens. It doesn’t matter how many scientists are speaking, what they are saying, or what their qualifications are, they get a fraction of the media attention lavished on a reality TV star or an American Idol contestant. Three thousand scientists and experts, including a number of Nobel Laureates, joined together and issued a warning several weeks ago about the planet and possible “catastrophic consequences” for global civilization, but Kim Kardashian and her alleged marriage woes stole the headlines. The Royal Society, the world’s oldest and most distinguished academy of science, late last month issued a report on how increasing population and rising consumption are imperiling the planet. Sir John Sulston, the Nobel Prize Laureate who chaired the working group,cautioned about a possible “downward vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills,” but his warning got less press attention in the U.S. than Mitt Romney’s dog.

If scientists get any media attention it’s only because the science-deniers are ridiculing them. When the Royal Society produced its “Population and the Planet,” report, the ink was not even dry before the critics were slashing away at it. A writer for The Economist declared, “On the whole it stinks.” A self-described “global expert on the metal scandium,” asserts in Forbes and The Telegraph, that it is “an appallingly bad report” and “a dismal failure.” Really? Did anyone actually read the report, or look at the credentials of those who wrote it? Doubtful.

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Here is an excellent read. See: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/24/what_sex_means_for_world_peace

What Sex Means for World Peace
The evidence is clear: The best predictor of a state’s stability is how its women are treated.

In the academic field of security studies, realpolitik dominates. Those who adhere to this worldview are committed to accepting empirical evidence when it is placed before their eyes, to see the world as it “really” is and not as it ideally should be. As Walter Lippmann wrote, “We must not substitute for the world as it is an imaginary world.”

Well, here is some robust empirical evidence that we cannot ignore: Using the largest extant database on the status of women in the world today, which I created with three colleagues, we found that there is a strong and highly significant link between state security and women’s security. In fact, the very best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, or its ethno-religious identity; the best predictor of a state’s peacefulness is how well its women are treated. What’s more, democracies with higher levels of violence against women are as insecure and unstable as nondemocracies.

Our findings, detailed in our new book out this month, Sex and World Peace, echo those of other scholars, who have found that the larger the gender gap between the treatment of men and women in a society, the more likely a country is to be involved in intra- and interstate conflict, to be the first to resort to force in such conflicts, and to resort to higher levels of violence. On issues of national health, economic growth, corruption, and social welfare, the best predictors are also those that reflect the situation of women. What happens to women affects the security, stability, prosperity, bellicosity, corruption, health, regime type, and (yes) the power of the state. The days when one could claim that the situation of women had nothing to do with matters of national or international security are, frankly, over. The empirical results to the contrary are just too numerous and too robust to ignore.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/24/what_sex_means_for_world_peace

Thanks to Sharon Ede, of Post Growth Institute, for sending me the following video (‘Welcome to the Anthropocene’), a highly engaging 3 minutes, which presents part of the spectrum of human influence on the Earth. Sharon provides the following introduction:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then visual approaches to communicating large numbers or complex topics are worth their weight in gold.

Yet much sustainability communication still relies on words, even though 75% of our brain is devoted to visual processing.

Animations, photography, data visualizations, art, film – all play a critical role in communicating meaning through converting data into narrative. They enable the human brain to grasp and process concepts much more readily than trying to analyze reams of information.

To watch the video, please click here: http://vimeo.com/40940686

Thanks to John Feeney for alerting me to this important article. If you find this interesting, a second article on the same topic can be accessed here: http://www.imachordata.com/?p=1217

Impacts of biodiversity loss rival those of climate change and pollution

Current estimates suggest we are now, or soon will be, in the grip of earth’s sixth mass extinction of species. This is of course a tragedy in many ways-but will it really affect us in any substantial way? With the thundering hooves of all the other apocalyptic horsemen bearing down on us-global warming heating, hypoxic dead zones, overfishing, ocean acidification-can we afford to worry about declining biodiversity? Is this really that big a deal?

Yes. In fact we can’t afford not to worry about biodiversity.

That is the message from our new analysis, published online today in Nature. For the first time we’ve been able to compare-directly, quantitatively, and rigorously-the impacts of losing wild species to the effects of all the other human-caused environmental changes on the productivity and functioning of ecosystems and their ability to continue providing for us.

The time is ripe because two decades of research have now shown pretty conclusively that more biologically diverse ecosystems are generally more productive, as John previously highlighted here. And that means that ongoing extinctions of species caused by habitat loss, overharvesting, and a slew of other environmental changes might well stuff up nature’s ability to provide things we need and want. Like food, clean water, and a stable climate. But so far it’s been unclear how such biodiversity losses stack up against other big environmental changes.

Now we can answer that question with some confidence.

To read the full article, click here: http://theseamonster.net/2012/05/impacts-of-biodiversity-loss-rival-those-of-climate-change-and-pollution/

I would like to take a moment and welcome the 40 new PMC Daily Email subscribers that joined us in April, bringing our total distribution list close to 1,300 people. I especially welcome the new subscribers from Green Mountain College, VT, where Bill Ryerson recently gave a presentation titled “A Proven Strategy: Using Entertainment Media to Achieve a Sustainable Population.”

Another form of entertainment –  music — is being deployed to raise awareness around maternal health, both a stand-alone and population-related issue that PMC works on in many of our dramas around the world. You can read about the Every Mother Counts 2012 CD in the following Huffington blog post, authored by Kristi York Wooten and Christy Turlington Burns.

Improving Maternal Healthcare, One Song at a Time
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristi-york-wooten/making-motherhood-less-deadly_b_1459737.html

Note from the bloggers: As fellow music lovers and advocates for improving maternal health, we’re joining our voices to let you know about a new CD that will help make a difference in women’s lives around the world.

“Daddy, Daddy,” a little girl calls out in the background. The strumming of an acoustic guitar begins and then gives way to a familiar, rough-hewn voice.

It’s Eddie Vedder.

“All of my life, from beginning to end, what I’ll remember is holding your hand,” he sings. “All that I cherish is the time that we spent, me and you skipping, throughout the land.”

The song evokes images of the pastimes enjoyed by fathers and daughters, but its sentiment about the unique bond between a parent and child transcends both gender and time.

Vedder’s exclusive recording of “Skipping,” part of the Every Mother Counts 2012 CD compilation available today at Starbucks, is one of nineteen tracks donated by some of music’s biggest names to ensure that holding hands — and other simple pleasures of parenthood — aren’t thwarted by complications from pregnancy and childbirth.

To read the full story, please click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristi-york-wooten/making-motherhood-less-deadly_b_1459737.html

Today, as part of our series of updates on activist organizations, I am sharing with you an update from “The Wecskaop Project” (What Every Citizen Should Know About Our Planet). Randolph Femmer is the senior writer for The Wecskaop Project, and I found the 2011 edition of his book to be an excellent read.

For excerpts and previews of the 2011 edition of “What Every Citizen Should Know About Our Planet” WECSKAOP – III, I encourage you to click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/26119061/What-Every-Citizen-Should-Know-About-Our-Planet-2011-Edition

Randolph writes:

Right now The Wecskaop Project is focusing on its new Biospherics Literacy 101 open-courseware collections which features an easy “five PowerPoints / five days” pathway to biospheric literacy that summarizes the core data sets, principles, and understandings that constitute “what every citizen should know about our planet.”

The collections also include supplementary topic-by-topic PDFs (such as “Carrying capacity and limiting factors in population systems,” “Lag-times, delayed feedbacks, overshoot, and collapse in population systems,” “Population momentum on steroids,” and “Why 15.8 billion should be considered the demographic equivalent of a near-earth asteroid.”

Since humankind was already damaging earth’s natural systems and life-support machinery at populations of five and six billion (1987 and 1999) (only half of whom were industrialized), anything even approaching the U.N.’s 15.8 billion high-fertility projections constitute the demographic equivalent of a collision trajectory with a near-earth asteroid.

If a near-earth asteroid were on a path toward the earth, astronomers, NASA, and international space agencies would launch attempts to “nudge” the object out of its collision trajectory… but that nudging would have to BEGIN when the object is still far enough away for the nudging to have an effect.

Given our demographics, this object that is about to hit us is TEN to FIFTEEN BILLION humans on a planet whose machinery already started to break at populations of five and six billion so that the emergency nudging that must be accomplished is to ensure that the world’s highest birth rates begin nudging lower beginning …TODAY…- because EVERY hour, day, and instant that we delay has the effect of increasingly locking in the collision trajectory.

Thus, the issue of the moment – right now – is that in order to nudge these demographic near-earth scenarios out of their collision trajectory we must begin right now. So how close are these “near earth scenarios” to the obliterating collision trajectories? These scenarios and their obliterating collisions are so close that the only thing that worldwide fertility rates have to do is to average just ½ child per woman higher than the U.N.’s “medium-fertility” estimates for the calamitous 15.8 billions outcomes and impacts to emerge.

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Having recently been in Texas for Earth Day Dallas, this particular column caught my eye. In what will, no doubt, become a more regular story line, League City TX is realizing that all growth is not inherently good. As one person is quoted: “There is a growing awareness where you reach a point of uneconomical growth – when growth costs more than it brings in – and that’s really what people are beginning to see.”

See: http://galvestondailynews.com/story/311054

League City looks to ease population boom

Published April 29, 2012

LEAGUE CITY – League City’s rapid growth has come with some growing pains.

The city – Galveston’s County’s largest with a population of more than 83,000 – is close to running out of water, and traffic is a headache on some of the main roads.

The cost of dealing with those issues is leading some council members to wonder whether growth can be slowed or, at least, controlled.

The city’s population grew by almost 85 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to census data, and the city is about 47 percent developed.

There still is plenty of room to grow.

About 26 percent of the city’s about 30,000 acres of buildable space is undeveloped but already obligated, while another 27 percent is unobligated, according to city data.

With current zoning, League City could grow to a population of 199,000, said Tony Allender, the city’s director of planning and research.

While growth is good for a city, too much and too many people in one place puts a strain on a city’s infrastructure, League City Councilman Dennis OKeeffe said.

Traffic is one thing most in the city agree is a problem. To deal with the strain of so many cars on the road, League City has created a mobility master plan that lists $187 million in road projects that should chart the course of road construction for the next 23 years.

Water also is a concern. The city council is considering spending nearly $70 million to buy 10 million gallons a day from Pasadena.

Unsustainable Growth

“League City experienced an unsustainable growth during the last decade,” OKeeffe said.

To read the full story, please click here: http://galvestondailynews.com/story/311054

In what will be a surprise to almost no one, the Vatican is once again busy alienating women of the world; however, no longer content to be ignored by 98% of lay Catholic women, they are now working on becoming irrelevant to nuns as well.

Below is an article written by Nick Kristof of the NY Times, which introduces us to the recent “Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of the Women Religious”, which in a nut-shell accuses some nuns of worrying too much about the poor and not enough about abortion and gay marriage.

Another commentary, more biting and less politically correct, also reminds us that:

“And finally, there’s the current “war on women,” with Catholic bishops leading the charge. In the U.S., it is manifest in the skirmishes around reproductive rights. Young and poor women suffer greatly, but all women are implicated in these policy conflicts. Around the world, we find the Vatican successfully making alliances with other religious fundamentalists to prevent UN-based consensus on women’s reproductive health care. Casualties are many among poor and young women, the very ones the nuns would protect. So it is no surprise that the same bellicose ways operate within the kyriarchal church itself.”

You can read that article by following this link:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5908/we_are_all_nuns/
The Kristof piece is pasted below.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-we-are-all-nuns.html?_r=1

We Are All Nuns

CATHOLIC nuns are not the prissy traditionalists of caricature. No, nuns rock!

They were the first feminists, earning Ph.D.’s or working as surgeons long before it was fashionable for women to hold jobs. As managers of hospitals, schools and complex bureaucracies, they were the first female C.E.O.’s.

They are also among the bravest, toughest and most admirable people in the world. In my travels, I’ve seen heroic nuns defy warlords, pimps and bandits. Even as bishops have disgraced the church by covering up the rape of children, nuns have redeemed it with their humble work on behalf of the neediest.

So, Pope Benedict, all I can say is: You are crazy to mess with nuns.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-we-are-all-nuns.html?_r=1

You may find the following video, produced from an excerpt of Carl Sagan’s book, Pale Blue Dot, of interest. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

I suspect many of you will enjoy the following essay, sent to me by Bill Ryerson, and written by David Spratt. Mr. Spratt is based in Melbourne, Australia and you can follow him on Twitter at @djspratt. Spratt is focused on climate advocacy, but his observations are, no doubt, transferable to various strains of environmental advocacy.

See: http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/04/is-all-good-news-and-no-bad-news-good.html

Is all “good news” and no “bad news” a good strategy?
by David Spratt / Part 3 of a 5-part series

“If people don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t try to solve it.”
- Bill McKibben

Bright-siding climate advocacy is based on the view that:

• Only positive “good news” messages work. Don’t mention ”bad news” such as climate impacts and don’t communicate the magnitude of the problem, because people can’t deal with it; and
• The good-news story is first and foremost about “clean” or renewable energy, so construct public messages dominated by renewables and economic benefit, not about about replacing fossil fuels.

An example of trying to avoid “bad news” was the decision by the Australian government not to call the carbon tax a carbon tax.  Instead it used the confusing term, a “price on pollution”. This left the discourse about taxes entirely to opposition leader Tony Abbott, with devastating consequences. And then the government, having avoided the “tax” word, made its core pitch about…  how you will get a personal tax break: “How much support will my family get? Estimate your assistance here…”

If ever there is evidence that “bad news” can work, it is Australian federal opposition leader Tony Abbott’s unrelentingly assault on the Gillard government.

To read the full story, click here: http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/04/is-all-good-news-and-no-bad-news-good.html