Many thanks to John Tanton for alerting me to a website they have set up with the writings and talks of Al Bartlett. The link to the site is http://www.albartlett.org/.

A senior United Nations official and a cabinet minister called on the Philippine government Wednesday to take steps to control the country’s population growth, despite fierce opposition from the Catholic church.

Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral called for the passage of the much-delayed Reproductive Health Care Act and urged President Gloria Arroyo to support the bill, despite her previous opposition to family planning.

For full article, visit:
http://www.yehey.com/news/Article.aspx?id=228715

Some years ago a mother of six wrote to this newspaper recounting the effects the Catholic Church ban on artificial contraceptives was having on her life.

“You have a two-month-old on one side of the bed, a 16-month-old on the other, and a two-and-a-half-year-old in another room. Beside you is your husband that you love and who has been using his ’self-control’ for at least four months. Verbal communication is of necessity cut down to a minimum and cosy chats together are out.

For full article, visit:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion

Cultural practices that abuse human rights, especially women’s rights, can best be changed through support for pre-existing change advocates within the culture, according to a new United Nations report released here and in London today.

Development projects to promote equality for women should integrate cultural factors into policy and programs, said the State of World Population 2008 report from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. But they do not have to be value-neutral and should not accept cultural abuses, such as female genital cutting, the report said, because human rights reflect universal values.

For full article, visit:
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2008/presskit/docs/en-swop08-report.pdf

Thanks to Ralph Risch for alerting me to the op-ed piece published in the New York Times on June 27. You can read this defense of the Catholic Church’s stand on contraception at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27allen.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin.

Washington, DC – The Mayor of London and a two time Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist are among the 11 recipients of The Population Institute’s 2008 Global Media Awards for Excellence in Population Reporting. The awards will be presented November 18, at a ceremony in Los Angeles, CA. If you would like to join us at the dinner ceremony, please contact Jennie Wetter at jwetter@populationinstitute.org by November 12. Paul Ehrlich will be the keynote speaker.
Read the rest of this entry »

Hollywood is turning the silver screen “green,” but cutting waste, energy and costs in an industry known for big budgets and over-the-top productions is not easy, even in the trend setting movie business.

Hollywood has long used its star power to help the environment. A-list stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Redford are well-known environmentalists and Al Gore’s 2006 Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth,” about global warming, is widely credited for making the issue more mainstream.

For full article, visit:
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews

Thanks to Ralph Risch for this article.
——————

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

For full article, visit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn

We in the fields of population and reproductive health will not soon forget the suffering caused by the policies of the last eight years. Thanks to Ben Zuckerman for this article.
——————-

If Barack Obama’s tour of Europe and the Middle East does anything, it will give the senator from Illinois a taste of just how desperate the world beyond US borders is for the very brand of change he’s advocated these many months. Sure there are the obvious points: the promise to pull out of Iraq, the reinvigoration of a kind of outwardly focused global neo-liberalism and engagement with allies and foes alike on everything from climate change to countering terror. But this month’s World Population Day pointed to another reason the Bushies can’t leave office fast enough.

For full article, visit:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/22/10526/

Thanks to Paul Ehrlich for the attached paper arguing that the “birth dearth” in Europe and Japan is something to celebrate – and certainly not a trend to counteract in this era of climate change and energy shortages.

Birth Dearth 2006 (PDF, 1MB)