My View: Bob Walker on family planning funding’s global value

See:

http://www.rrstar.com/updates/x1959368821/My-View-Bob-Walker-on-family-planning-fundings-global-value

In the grand scale of federal spending, international family-planning assistance is miniscule, less than one-fiftieth of 1 percent.

But dollar for dollar, it may be our best investment in a peaceful and prosperous future for all.

World population, which officially crossed the 7 billion mark on Oct. 31, 2011, is projected to reach the 8 billion mark in 12 more years; 50 years from now, we could have close to 10 billion people on the planet.

The vast majority of that growth, 97 percent, will occur in developing countries, many of which struggle with severe poverty, chronic hunger, water scarcity or internal conflict.

Some of these developing countries are on pace to triple their population within the next 50 years.

One of them is Mali, the West African nation that is fighting a major Islamic insurgency in the northern half of the country. For decades Mali has been fighting just to feed itself; now it is fighting to remain a country.

Child marriage is prevalent there; one of four girls is married before turning 15. Maternal and infant mortality, as a consequence, are extremely high, and chances of emerging from poverty are very low.

Mali is part of a large group of potentially “failing states.” Dozens of countries are struggling against great odds to maintain a functioning government, including Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Haiti and Democratic Republic of Congo.

And many fear that Pakistan could be become a failing country.

All of these nations have population-growth rates that pose a major barrier to reducing poverty and improving food security.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.rrstar.com/updates/x1959368821/My-View-Bob-Walker-on-family-planning-fundings-global-value

Tanzania: Population Growth Worries PM Pinda

See: http://allafrica.com/stories/201304060530.html 

TEN per cent of the country’s over 44.9 million people live in Dar es Salaam which has both the highest population density and annual growth rate compared to the national average.

The country’s population density is 51 people per square kilometre while Dar has over 3,133 per square kilometre. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda expressed concern that the government is taking measures to address the country’s rapidly growing population at 2.7 per cent per annum with Dar es Salaam’s rate at 5.6 per cent.

Mr Pinda said in Dar es Salaam yesterday while launching Population Distribution by Administrative Units that the 2012 census report is a good tool for the government as it will assist in development planning and budget allocation.

“I would like to advise all regional and district commissioners to distribute this report to all lawmakers, councillors, ward and village officials for use in development planning,” Pinda said, saying central government is encouraging people to practise family planning.

He pointed out that the country’s rapidly growing population is a challenge to the government and its leaders who should plan to improve infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water as more mouths come aboard to feed. “The government will continue urging people to reduce sizes of their families and practice child spacing,” the PM stressed.

To read the full article, please click here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201304060530.html

There Is Nothing We Can Do – Meadows

See: http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/there-is-nothing-we-can-do-meadows/ 

FORMAT interviews Dennis Meadows, author of “The Limits to Growth”, about the shocking position of the planet. 40 years ago, Dennis Meadows presented the best seller “The Limits to Growth”. In it, he predicted, not the exact date of the apocalypse, but the U.S. researchers showed by means of computational models, that by mid-century, the resources of planet Earth will be depleted.

The book sold 30 million copies and Meadows is now regarded as the most famous “Sunset prophet” of the world. FORMAT’s writer Rainer Himmelfreundpointner met Meadows on a visit to Vienna for an exclusive interview. The message of the nearly 70-year-old is now no more optimistic as then, and is not for the faint of heart.

FORMAT: Mr. Meadows, according to the Club of Rome, we are currently facing a crisis of unemployment, a food crisis, a global financial and economic crisis and a global ecological crisis. Each of these is a warning sign that something is quite wrong. What exactly?

Meadows: What we meant in 1972 in “The Limits to Growth”, and what is still true, is that there is simply no endless physical growth on a finite planet. Past a certain point, growth ceases. Either we stop it … by changing our behaviour, or the planet will stop it. 40 years later, we regret to say, we basically have not done anything.

FORMAT: In your 13 scenarios the end of physical growth begins – that is, the increase in world population, its food production, or whatever else they produce or consume – between 2010 and 2050. Is the financial crisis part of that?

Meadows: You cannot compare our current situation that way. Suppose you have cancer, and this cancer causes fever, headaches and other pain. But those are not the real problem, the cancer is. However, we try to treat the symptoms. No one believes that cancer is being defeated. Phenomena like climate change and hunger are merely the symptoms of a disease of our earth, which leads inevitably to the end of growth.

FORMAT: cancer as a metaphor for uncontrolled growth?

Meadows: Yeah. Healthy cells at a certain point stop growing. Cancer cells proliferate until they kill the organism. Population or economic growth behave exactly the same. There are only two ways to reduce the growth of humanity: reduction in the birth rate or increase the death rate. Which would you prefer?

FORMAT: No one wants to have to decide.

Meadows: I don’t either. We have lost the opportunity of choice anyway. Our planet will do it.

To read the full interview, please click here: http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/there-is-nothing-we-can-do-meadows/

Catholic Leader Welcomes Ruling on Access to Emergency Contraception

See: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/news/pr/2013/CatholicLeaderWelcomesRulingonEC.asp 

“Today is an important day in the ongoing battle to ensure that all women have access to the reproductive health services they need,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. “The ruling The ruling by Federal District Judge Edward Korman that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must remove the age restriction on emergency contraception (EC) will enable more women to access EC in a timely manner. This is a very positive step and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), should move quickly to make this a reality.

“Judge Korman’s decision stated that the HHS’s original ruling, which prevented women under the age of 16 from accessing EC over the counter-a ruling that was fully supported by President Obama-was ‘arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.’ We agree. EC is safe and it is an effective method of birth control that can be used to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex or contraceptive failure.

To read the full release, please click here: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/news/pr/2013/CatholicLeaderWelcomesRulingonEC.asp

The Helms Amendment is America’s Foreign Policy Skeleton in The Closet
The Helms Amendment not only hits women who’ve been raped, but threatens the health of all women in developing nations.
See: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201343104350559475.html

A few weeks ago, in what has become an arms race to limit reproductive freedom in the United States, North Dakota approved the country’s most restrictive abortion ban. Days earlier, that repugnant title was held by Arkansas, and who knows what absurd restriction tomorrow will bring.

What US elected officials are doing to reproductive rights in the US is outrageous, but at least we have some recourse as voters and advocates. What US elected officials are doing to the reproductive rights of women in developing countries – through foreign policy that exports our own abortion hang-ups – is reproductive colonialism.

The Helms Amendment was enacted in 1973 and bars US aid recipients from using funds for abortion services, even in countries where it is legal. However, funding can support abortion referrals and even the procedure itself in cases of rape and incest. But it rarely or never does.

The language of the policy is vague and confusing, prohibiting “abortion as a method of family planning” and the “motivation or coercion” of anyone to perform the procedure. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) (and one presidential administration after the next) has continually neglected to provide sufficient guidance on how to implement the policy.

This has left ample room for misinterpretation by aid recipients and USAID staff, which is further fostered by the US’ long history of politicising and stigmatising abortion combined with the undue power of a wealthy donor country. The result is that Helms is being implemented as if it were a total abortion ban.

Maternal mortality

Seeds of stigma and censorship have been sewn into already-struggling health systems of poor countries, hampering meagre efforts to address unwieldy maternal mortality rates. It is poor women who suffer, unable to access the safe, legal abortion services they deserve.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201343104350559475.html

How Thailand Succeeded in Their Demographic Dividend

See: http://prbblog.org/index.php/2013/03/28/how-thailand-succeeded-in-their-demographic-dividend/

by Jay Gribble, vice president, International Programs Population Reference Bureau

Thailand often is held up as a model of success for its efforts in family planning, but it’s amazing how quickly the country has transformed from rural and very poor to the modern economic powerhouse it is today, in a matter of a few decades. Yet Dr. Kosit Panpiemras, former minister of finance and industry of Thailand, laid out the story of Thailand’s success in four succinct points. It wasn’t easy for Thailand to accomplish its goals, but the policies and investments the country made were strategic and targeted.

Infrastructure policies. In the early 1960s, Thailand began investing in infrastructure. The country was rural and the economy was based on subsistence farming. By building roads and installing irrigation, farmers produced more and had an outlet for selling their produce. By helping farmers get their produce to market, the economy became more focused on cash and less on subsistence agriculture. One result was that the need for large families to work the farm changed; as produce was sold, the desire for large families decreased and the desire for cash increased. And as a result, the demand for family planning increased. Another side effect was that people were available to work in places other than the farm.

Population policy. In the 1970s, Thailand turned its attention to a population policy. Because there were fewer people working in agriculture, more people began looking for other sources of work, and as a result, there was a high level of underemployment. Technocrats suggested that Thailand develop a population policy based on two key goals: reducing fertility; and integrating maternal and child health into the health system, and creating public awareness about family planning. Many people know the story of Thailand’s successful family planning program, but they may not realize that it fits into the bigger story of the country’s development.

To read the full article, please click here: http://prbblog.org/index.php/2013/03/28/how-thailand-succeeded-in-their-demographic-dividend/

The Coming Crash: Our Addiction to Endless Growth on a Finite Planet
See: http://www.alternet.org/environment/coming-crash-our-addiction-endless-growth-finite-planet-photo-slideshow?paging=off  

Tara Lohan: How did this book project come about? I know it started out as a book about tar sands, but then it evolved into so much more.

Richard Heinberg: The economy is all about energy. Almost all of our environmental issues relate to energy in one way or another. Certainly, climate change does. War and peace, it’s all about energy. Upping the energy literacy of the American people and thought leaders is a pretty high priority.

TL: Explain a little bit more what you mean by energy literacy, because I know you talk about that in the book as well.

RH: Well, surprisingly few people have really looked at or thought about or studied what energy is. It’s in all of our lives. We all depend on it for everything we do, but energy is pretty allusive. You can’t hold a jar of pure energy in your hands. Useful energy comes to us in various forms. All of these different forms of energy, whether it’s coal, oil, natural gas, wind, hydropower, nuclear, each has its own characteristics. Environmental characteristics. Economic characteristics. It takes a while to sort of wrap your head around all of that, and there are some basic concepts like the laws of thermodynamics. The ideas of energy density and return on energy investment that are absolutely fundamental to evaluating different forms and sources of energy.

Again, not too many people have really studied or given much thought to these. Well, over the course of the next few years, we’re going to be making absolutely critical decisions about our energy future, our environmental future and our economic future. Unless we have these basic elements of energy literacy, unless more of us understand the criteria by which to evaluate these different sources of energy, we’re going to get a lot of things wrong. We think energy literacy is really important.

TL: Right, it’s not as easy as just replacing all the coal and oil with solar and wind, because they differ in terms of the energy returned on energy invested.

RH: There’s actually a good article on that in the current issue of Scientific American that has some neat infographics. This becomes a real issue in energy sources that have very low returns like biofuels and also unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and shale gas and tight oil. These sources of energy can be profitable in certain situations, especially if there are government subsidies or if Wall Street gets interested and attracts a lot of investment capital, but these are energy sources that are not going to be able to support an industrial society absent other sources of energy that have a higher return on investment.

If all we had to power society were tar sands, biofuels, shale gas and tight oil, society would basically come apart at the seams because we’d be having to put so much of our effort into producing energy that we wouldn’t have much energy left over at the end of the day to do all the things we need energy for like education, healthcare, transportation, trade. All of those things use energy. They don’t produce energy. We need a very substantial energy surplus from the energy that we do invest in getting more energy. These sources just aren’t up to the job.

TL: It seems like there’s an increasing industrialization in order to get there, too. I’m thinking about what the footprint looks like for a conventional natural gas well as opposed to a well that’s being fracked.

RH: Right. It’s a lower quality resource. The shale gas is produced from rocks with very low porosity. The gas just doesn’t want to migrate to the wellbore. That’s why they have to apply technologies like hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling. That increases the contact between the wellbore and the resource, but at the end of the day, we may have changed technology, but we haven’t changed the rocks themselves. What we get are very high decline rates. If you drill a shale gas well on January 1st, by December 31st of the same year, the rate of production of that well may already have fallen by 70 percent or 80 percent.

That means we have to drill and drill and drill in order to keep overall production rates flat or increasing. That means thousands, tens of thousands, even ultimately perhaps hundreds of thousands of wells. This is costly, of course, but it’s also extremely environmentally risky. If we were only drilling a few wells, there would only be a few water tables to put at risk of pollution and probably only a few accidents. But if, let’s say, 6 percent or 7 percent of well casings end up being faulty, which is according to research, a pretty fair estimate, we’re talking about thousands of wells that are going to be leaking methane and other chemicals and toxics into water and air.

Unless this is understood, people really don’t have a basis for making good decisions.

To read the full interview, please click here: http://www.alternet.org/environment/coming-crash-our-addiction-endless-growth-finite-planet-photo-slideshow?paging=off#image-1

See: http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C49/wind_power_2013

Even amid policy uncertainty in major wind power markets, wind developers still managed to set a new record for installations in 2012, with 44,000 megawatts of new wind capacity worldwide. With total capacity exceeding 280,000 megawatts, wind farms generate carbon-free electricity in more than 80 countries, 24 of which have at least 1,000 megawatts. At the European level of consumption, the world’s operating wind turbines could satisfy the residential electricity needs of 450 million people.

China installed some 13,000 megawatts of wind in 2012, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). This was a marked slowdown from the previous two years, when new installations averaged 18,000 megawatts annually. Reasons for the drop-off include concerns about project quality and inadequate electricity transmission and grid infrastructure, which prompted the government to approve fewer projects and to restrict lending. Still, all told, China leads the world with 75,000 megawatts of wind capacity: more than a quarter of the world total.

In a country more readily associated with coal-fired electricity and nuclear power ambitions, wind reached some impressive milestones in China’s energy mix in 2012. Wind-generated electricity increased more than coal-fired electricity did for the first time.  Even more remarkable, the electricity produced by wind farms over the course of the year exceeded that produced by nuclear power plants. And this is just the beginning: with massive wind projects under development across its northern and eastern provinces, and 19 ultra-high-voltage transmission projects connecting windy rural areas to population centers (all to be completed by 2014), more milestones lie ahead in China. Consulting firms GTM Research and Azure International project that China will reach 140,000 megawatts of wind by 2015 and nearly 250,000 megawatts by 2020.

The U.S. wind industry made headlines too. More new wind electricity generating capacity was added in 2012 than any other generation technology, including natural gas-a record 13,100 megawatts. An incredible 5,200 megawatts, spread among 59 wind farms, came online in December alone as developers raced to qualify for the federal production tax credit before it expired at the end of the year. The United States remains second only to China, with 60,000 total megawatts of wind capacity-enough to power more than 14 million U.S. homes.

To read the full release, please click here: http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C49/wind_power_2013

Australian Population Jumps by 1028 Per Day
See: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/australian-population-jumps-by-1028-a-day/story-e6frf7kx-1226601938394

THE Australian population is set to reach 23 million in just four weeks, due primarily to an immigrant arriving every two minutes and 20 seconds.

The 23 millionth person is more likely to be a migrant than a new baby, experts estimate.

Federal government figures show overseas arrivals account for more than half of Australia’s population growth, outstripping the natural increase from births since 2005.

But the increase is also due to the birth of one baby almost every two minutes, with 300,000 babies born every year.

The fertility rate is now 1.88 babies per woman – up from an all-time low of 1.73 babies per woman in 2001, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show.

But our fertility rate has been well below the population replacement rate since the mid-1970s.

With Australia growing by two million people since 2007 alone, the population is forecast to hit almost 40 million by 2050.

The Herald Sun can reveal the ABS expects the 23 million mark to be reached late next month, after originally forecasting it to happen in June.

See here for the full article: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/australian-population-jumps-by-1028-a-day/story-e6frf7kx-1226601938394

April Fools Day, 2013

Pope Promotes Birth Control
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman/pope-promotes-birth-control_b_2930607.html

Recent media coverage of the papal transition has focused heavily on the past.

For example, when Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, one of the points the media highlighted was the fact that he was the first pope to resign in 600 years.

Similarly, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, the media promoted the fact that he was the first non-European pope in 1,272 years.

Given the long history of the Roman Catholic Church and the rarity of both of these events, it isn’t surprising that such stories would predominate. There is another papal anomaly, however, that also deserves our attention. This story, one which has largely been overlooked in all current reporting, also stretches back well into the past. Indeed, we need to reach back 737 years, to 1276, for the events in question.

On Sept. 13, 1276, Pedro Julião, the Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati, was elected pope following the death of Pope Adrian V. There are a number of interesting points that set Pedro Julião apart from the other 265 popes. He was Portuguese by birth, the only pope to be born in Portugal proper. He was also a well-respected physician and he served as Pope Gregory X’s personal doctor. No other pope has had such medical expertise. Finally, when Pedro Julião ascended to the papacy, he elected to be called John XXI. What makes this odd is that the last pope to be called John was John XIX. For some reason, then, Pope John XXI decided not to be called John XX.

None of that, though, is the truly striking thing about Pedro Julião. While serving Gregory X, he wrote an extraordinarily popular work entitled Thesaurus Pauperum (“Treasure of the Poor”). The book was essentially a handbook of herbal remedies for people who could not afford formal medical attention. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the book “gives a remedy for the diseases of every part of the body” and mentions that the “book was widely used.”

True enough, but the Encyclopedia’s brief mention doesn’t do justice to this amazing work.

In fact, Pedro Julião offered numerous recipes for both pre- and post-coital contraception. Yes, Pope John XXI promoted birth control and he did so in a manner that suggests he thought about strategies that could be used by both women and men.

To continue reading, please click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman/pope-promotes-birth-control_b_2930607.html