Thanks to John James for this article.  See  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns

If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change

Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 November 2011 05.01 EST

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world’s foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change

Many thanks to Lindsey Grant for this article.  To download your copy, see: https://docs.google.com/a/necsp.org/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeMDIwZjM0MTktMzRlZS00YTAwLTg0YzMtMjY0YjcwMjRhZjcz&hl=en_US&pli=1

From the AP. See: http://news.yahoo.com/economy-best-birth-control-us-births-dip-again-213808194.html

Is economy best birth control? US births dip again

By MIKE STOBBE

The Associated Press

Thursday, November 17, 2011

ATLANTA – The economy may well be the best form of birth control. U.S. births dropped for the third straight year – especially for young mothers – and experts think money worries are the reason.

A federal report released Thursday showed declines in the birth rate for all races and most age groups. Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since record-keeping began in the 1940s. Also, the rate of cesarean sections stopped going up for the first time since 1996.

Experts suspected the economy drove down birth rates in 2008 and 2009 as women put off having children. With the 2010 figures, suspicion has turned into certainty.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt now that it was the recession. It could not be anything else,” said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. He was not involved in the new report.

To read the full article, please click here: http://news.yahoo.com/economy-best-birth-control-us-births-dip-again-213808194.html

Thanks to Cheryl Haugen for this article.  See: http://culturechange.org/issue9/kirkpatricksale.html

An Interview with Kirkpatrick Sale
Rebel Against the Future

by David Kupfer

Kirkpatrick Sale has written a book on the Luddites titled Rebels Against the Future, released in paper-back in 1996 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., U.S. $13; 320 pp.

DK: From where was your desire to write this historical interpretation of the Luddites born?

KS: If you locate the problem as being the industrial system, it’s simple to say: “Well, let’s go back to the industrial revolution, the big industrial revolution.”

And after you make that identification, the next one is to say: “Well, did anybody ever object to this?” And you find the Luddites there.

At the beginning of the industrial revolution (about 1785), they rose up in resistance. They made a brave effort that, although it failed, was so powerful that it embedded their dream in the language.

So I decided to study the Luddites in a positive light, which had almost never been done before. The two other books on the Luddites, written in England, essentially were saying these were foolish and misguided people.

Do you think the Luddites are misunderstood today?

Of course. Everyone assumes they were bad people who were against all technology and were fools to resist it. In general the Luddite image today is negative. People will say, “Well you don’t want to use a computer, then you must be a Luddite,” meaning a social outcast. Or they’ll say, “Well I’m no Luddite, but I can’t reset the clock in my VCR,” meaning “I don’t want to be thought of against technology, mind you…”

The connotation of Luddism is “taking us back,” while it is human nature to progress, to build on and go forth.

To believe that what has happened to humankind in the last 200 years is “progress” is to fall into an industrialist trap of: “Anything new is better and everything is better tomorrow than it is today because we have more material advantages and more ease and speed in our life and this is good.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://culturechange.org/issue9/kirkpatricksale.html

From the UN Population Division.

The United Nations Population Division is pleased to announce the publication of World Fertility Report 2009.

Since the 1970s the world has experienced profound changes in fertility, union formation and contraceptive demand. Fertility has declined throughout the world, early childbearing and marriage are less common and the percentage of women and men using contraception, especially modern methods, has risen. Nevertheless, the level and pace of change in fertility and the proximate determinants of marriage and contraceptive use have varied markedly among countries such that major differences in fertility levels persist across countries and regions of the world.

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If you attend worship services, does your service ever include a discussion like this?  Thanks to Dave Paxson for this sermon: Being Fruitful without Multiplying.  To read it, visit: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeNzdhOWQ4ZmQtOTliZC00NmU1LThjM2YtNDA1ZjMwMTExMWE1&hl=en_US

Thanks to Joel Pett for this cartoon, which won this year’s Global Media Award in the cartoon category from the Population Institute.

Many thanks to Roger Martin of Population Matters for this paper he delivered at the African Population Conference in Ougadougou, organized by the Union for African Population Studies (UAPS).

UAPS 2011

Item 11.3: Population, Environment and Conflict

Abstract

The paper traces historic competition and conflict over scarce resources throughout evolution, and among early agricultural and industrial societies. It describes how population growth increases pressure on the natural environment and on farmland soils and water supplies, becoming both the spur for and means of provoking violent conflict with neighbouring communities, states and empires. It outlines several contemporary sources of tension over food, water, energy and other natural resources, in the context of the approaching ‘perfect storm’ of population growth, climate change and peak oil. It cites examples of the strange omission of any reference to the population driver, and thus to the consequent need for well-funded programmes of family planning and women’s empowerment, in many current reports on global issues where they are clearly relevant, ascribing this to an irrational taboo. It contrasts the importance of this issue with the ‘derisory’ aid for family planning; and makes some recommendations.

Item 11.3: Population, Environment and Conflict

I come to the population issue from my two careers, first as a diplomat, then as an environmentalist. But I came to Africa in 1959 as a first-year VSO volunteer in the then Northern Rhodesia. The population at that time was 4 million; Zambia’s today is 13.3 million, more than triple, and rising at 2.4% per year.

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Thanks to Eric Rimmer for these three important and interesting essays.

Three Short Pieces on Fertility

The first of the three pieces is by J. Kenneth Smail, Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus), and the second two by Eric Rimmer and Andrew Ferguson.  They should appear in the OPT Journal sometime, but the subject matter is somewhat topical, with the announcement of the world population passing seven billion, and a projection by the UK Office of National Statistics that in fifteen years time the UK population will be about 70 million.  Both signify overpopulation of a similar degree.  Moreover the reason that population is growing rapidly in the USA has similar causes to the UK, which hopefully will make the pieces of wide interest.

Acknowledgements: Eric Rimmer and Andrew Ferguson would like to thank Simon Ross and Harry Cripps of Population Matters for their valuable comments on our drafts.

ACKNOWLEDGING AND CONFRONTING THE INEVITABLE:  A SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN GLOBAL HUMAN NUMBERS AND OTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

by J. Kenneth Smail, (Ph.D. Yale, 1976), Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus) of Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio 43022, (excerpts by Andrew Ferguson, with approval of the author, from a May 5, 2008 online article published on the Culture Change website maintained by Jan Lundberg)

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Thanks to Charles Hall for this announcement of the International Conference on DeGrowth in Montréal May 2012.

We are pleased to invite proposals for workshops, panels, papers, posters, artistic presentations, symposia and special sessions for the Montreal International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas from May 13-19, 2012.

Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended:

*   Artistic proposals:
*   January 31st, 2012
*   Symposia, workshops, roundtables and special sessions:
*   January 31st, 2012
*   Paper presentations:
*   January 31st, 2012
*   Posters:
*   February 28th, 2012
*   Abstracts for individual symposia, workshop and roundtable presentations:
*   February 28th, 2012

A voice is rising among those who are deeply concerned with global environmental degradation and escalating poverty and inequality. A root of the problem lies in an unrelenting priority given to economic growth. Degrowth is a new social and economic paradigm that challenges the growth-driven economic model on which existing policies are based. To build on the emergent international discussion on degrowth, the Montreal International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas will articulate the needs and aspirations of the Americas for a post-growth, more equitable and better world.

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