From the Earth Portal website. See http://www.eoearth.org/article.

The Population Institute’s 29th annual Global Media Awards are devoted to drawing attention to global population issues by recognizing positive treatment of these issues by journalists, commentators and others in the print and broadcast media, as well as in new media and film.
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Thanks to Ed Levering for alerting me to Bob Engelman’s blog on the WorldWatch website at http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5713.

Below is his first entry.
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People walking around the Sheraton Hotel here are talking about population as if it were the most natural conversation in the world. The topic interests me, so I join in. As it happens, I’ve written a book on it, just published by Island Press, which I don’t shrink from mentioning. Just being here, though, reminds me that human numbers aren’t often talked about outside this hotel.

If there’s a time and place for talking population this is it: the annual meeting of the Population Association of America. The association’s demographers and public health specialists gathered this year in a city that lost about half its own residents to other places after a hurricane named Katrina. Panel topics ranged from that unprecedented urban population drop (the city’s population has since rebounded to around 70 percent of its pre-Katrina size) to the intriguing idea that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has peaked globally. While PAA members presented findings and partied at the Sheraton, people in the nearby streets of the French Quarter let the good times roll, as they usually do, with nary a thought of the number of us in the city, the country or the world.

For full entry, visit:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5713.

Thanks to Marian Starkey for this OpEd from USA Today’s April 21st edition.
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Be fruitful and multiply,” says the book of Genesis, and Lord knows we have. To the tune of more than 300 million at home and more than 6 billion abroad. But as we go about the heavenly task of multiplying, a poignant question arises: Might our religion be killing us?

We all remember the Aztecs. Some say their religion, with its penchant for violence and human sacrifice, played a critical role in the destruction of their civilization. We moderns are far more sophisticated, of course, but if we persist with some of our religious practices, we could be heading down the same disastrous dog trot. Sort of a reverse Noah story. Noah is credited with saving humanity during the big flood. We could be the ones who get blamed for destroying it.

For full article, visit:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/04/might-our-relig.html#more

Thanks to Kent Welton for this article.
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Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned.

The hidden threat from the world’s water shortages
Food shortages: how will we feed the world?
Biofuel rules ‘could make millions homeless’
The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures.

Governments should be preparing for the worst

For full article, visit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main

Andrew Holtz has done a nice article covering PMC’s work in Nigeria.

Dateline Nigeria (PDF, 130KB)

Thanks to Phil Kreitner for this heartening article
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Most weekdays, Oona Baker picks up her daughter, Ramona, from preschool and heads home to the Woodstock neighborhood. The two eat lunch, then decide what’s next. The library? Or baking cookies? With no siblings to factor in, mother and daughter map their own schedule.

“We’re pretty minimal people,” Baker, 34, says. “We have a small house. We have a small car. We can walk lots of places. Our life is just easier with one child.”

Not just easier, but greener.

In a city where people harvest rainwater, and bicycling to work is a badge of green pride, some Portland families say stopping at one child is global activism at its most personal.

For full article, visit:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article.
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Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Rice is stored at a National Food Authority warehouse at Manila, the Philippines, on April 17.Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

For full article, visit:
http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world

The Colorado River is the water source for 27 million people in seven Western states. But years of drought and increased demand have cut the water supply in half, leaving the river at risk. Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls the Colorado “a train wreck at this point,” and scientists are predicting that the Lake Mead Reservoir along the Colorado could be a virtual dry hole by the year 2021. In our Sunday Morning Cover Story, correspondent Jerry Bowen looks at the water crisis in the West, and how farmers and city dwellers are addressing the very real possibility that there won’t be enough water to go around. He talks with Kennedy, with the water planner for Las Vegas, with an avocado grower in California forced to stump nearly a-third of his avocado trees, and with the scientist whose research sounded the alarm about the Colorado.

For full article, visit:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories

See an editorial by National Audubon Society’s President that was distributed to 800 U.S. newspapers and magazines today by the Cagle Syndication Service.
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Slower Population Growth Would Benefit People, Birds, and Climate

Like canaries in the coal mine, birds are an important indicator of our planet’s health. For thousands of years, they have been one of our most important early warning systems, predicting the change of seasons, the coming of storms, and the rise of toxic levels of pollution in the food chain.

Today, birds are telling us that our climate is changing—and in many places, it may change more quickly than they can adapt, signaling complex ecosystem changes that will have serious consequences for wildlife and humans alike. We know that avoiding the worst consequences of global warming will require bold strategies for reducing our dependence on fossil fuel, expanding renewable energy, and managing our land and forests more thoughtfully. These are commonsense approaches that those of us concerned about the climate crisis have been advocating tirelessly.

For full article, visit:
http://www.caglepost.com/column