China softens its one-child policy

See: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/China/China-loosening-its-one-child-population-policy/Article1-1022708.aspx 

China has loosened its one-child policy to allow more couples to have a second child in the rural areas of five provinces and two municipalities, it was announced on the sidelines of the ongoing session of the National People’s Congress (NPC).

The amendment means that couples from rural areas in the municipalities of Shanghai and Tianjin and the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, Anhui and Fujian could have a second child if either of them was the only child.

Till now, rural couples could have a second child if the firstborn was a girl; both rural and urban couples could have a second child if the father and mother was the only child of their parents.

China introduced the one-child policy around 30 years and its long-term impact could result in a negative population growth; the world’s fertility rate is 2.7, compared to China’s 1.5.

A report by the government-affiliated China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) said China was heading for and an ultra-low fertility rate, as well as issues related to aging, gender imbalances, urbanisation, an expanding shortage of migrant workers and an only-child generation.

The government is not unaware about the impact.

“As per changes in demographic, economic and social landscapes, we have improved our policies regarding child bearing in recent years,” Wang Pei’an, vice-minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission said on the sidelines of the NPC.

To read the full story, please click here: http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/China/China-loosening-its-one-child-population-policy/Article1-1022708.aspx

Filmmaker Valentina Canavesio is currently working on a feature-length documentary film about population growth, its challenges, and solutions.

She is exploring the history of the population movement in the US and looking for anyone involved in ZPG in the late 60s/early 70s who would be interested in participating in the film and talking about their experience in the movement.

In addition, she is also looking for archival ZPG materials such as photos or videos. Any help would be greatly appreciated – you may contact her at vcanavesio@gmail.com for more details.

The false-alarmists behind this shrinking population panic
Policy-making elites would have us believe a smaller workforce spells the end of prosperity. Actually, it spells redistribution

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/false-alarm-shrinking-population-panic

The retirement of the baby boom cohorts means that the country’s labor force is likely to be growing far more slowly in the decades ahead than it did in prior decades. The United States is not alone in facing this situation. The rate of growth of the workforce has slowed or even turned negative in almost every wealthy country. Japan leads the way, with a workforce that has been shrinking in size for more than a decade.

Slower population growth is affecting the developing world as well. Latin America and much of Asia are seeing much slower population growth than in prior decades. In China, the one-child policy adopted in the late 1970s has virtually ended the growth in its labor force.

According to many media pundits, this picture of stagnant or declining labor forces is cause for panic. After all, it means that countries will be seeing an increase in the ratio of retirees to workers. Countries around the world will be suffering from labor shortages. And with even developing countries experiencing slower population growth, there will be nowhere to turn to make up the shortfall.

The only part of this picture that should, in fact, be scary is the failure of people involved in economic policy debates to have even a basic understanding of economics and arithmetic. There is no reason why the prospect of a stagnant or declining workforce should concern the vast majority of people. Rather, from the standpoint of addressing global warming and other environmental problems, this is great news.

First, a bit of arithmetic would be useful. People involved in economic policy-making tend to have problems with arithmetic, which is why they failed to recognize the housing and stock bubbles. Some simple sums can quickly show that the concerns about falling ratios of workers to retirees are ill-founded. In the United States, the social security trustees project that the ratio of workers to retirees will fall from 2.8 in 2013 to 2.0 in 2035.

It’s pretty simple to figure out the impact of this decline. Let’s assume that an average retiree consumes 85% as much as the average worker. This means that our 2.8 workers must produce enough goods and services to support the equivalent of 3.65 workers. That would imply each worker gets to keep 76.7% (2.8/3.65) of what they produce, with the rest taken away through taxes or other mechanisms to support pesky retirees.

When the ratio of workers to retirees falls to 2.0 then each worker will get to keep 70.2% (2.0/2.85) of what they produce. This implies a drop in the share of output going to workers of 8% over the next 22 years.

While that would depress living standards, we will also be seeing an increase in potential living standards from rising productivity growth. If productivity grows at the rate of 1.5% annually – roughly the rate it has been growing over the last two decades – then productivity in 2035 will be almost 40% higher than it is today. This means that the fall in the ratio of workers to retirees will take back less than a quarter of the potential gains from productivity growth. (It’s true that most workers have seen little benefit from productivity growth over the last three decades, but this points again to the importance of intra-generational distribution; it’s not a reason to be distracted by demographic nonsense.)

Click here to read the full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/false-alarm-shrinking-population-panic

Denial of Catastrophic Risks
Martin Rees 

See: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1123.full

In a media landscape saturated with sensational Science stories and “End of the World” Hollywood productions, it may be hard to persuade the wide public that real catastrophes could arise as unexpectedly as the 2008 financial crisis, and have a far greater impact. Society could be dealt shattering blows by the misapplication of technologies that exist already or could emerge within the coming decades. Some of the scenarios that have been envisaged may indeed be science fiction, but others may be disquietingly real. I believe these “existential risks” deserve more serious study. Those fortunate enough to live in the developed world fret too much about minor hazards of everyday life: improbable air crashes, possible carcinogens in food, low radiation doses, and so forth. But we should be more concerned about events that have not yet happened but which, if they occurred even once, could cause worldwide devastation.

The main threats to sustained human existence now come from people, not from nature. Ecological shocks that irreversibly degrade the biosphere could be triggered by the unsustainable demands of a growing world population. Fast-spreading pandemics would cause havoc in the megacities of the developing world. And political tensions will probably stem from scarcity of resources, aggravated by climate change. Equally worrying are the imponderable downsides of powerful new cyber-, bio-, and nanotechnologies. Indeed, we’re entering an era when a few individuals could, via error or terror, trigger societal breakdown.

Some threats are well known. In the 20th century, the downsides of nuclear science loomed large. At any time in the Cold War era, the superpowers could have stumbled toward Armageddon through muddle and miscalculation. The threat of global annihilation involving tens of thousands of hydrogen bombs is thankfully in abeyance, but now there is a growing concern that smaller nuclear arsenals might be used in a regional context, or even by terrorists. We can’t rule out a geopolitical realignment that creates a standoff between new superpowers. So a new generation may face its own “Cuba,” and one that could be handled less well or less luckily than was the 1962 crisis.

What are some new concerns stemming from fast-developing 21st-century technologies? Our interconnected world depends on elaborate networks: electric power grids, air traffic control, international finance, just-in-time delivery, and so forth. Unless these are highly resilient, their manifest benefits could be outweighed by catastrophic (albeit rare) breakdowns cascading through the system. Social media could spread psychic contagion from a localized crisis, literally at the speed of light. Concern about cyberattack, by criminals or hostile nations, is rising sharply. Synthetic biology likewise offers huge potential for medicine and agriculture, but in the sci-fi scenario where new organisms can be routinely created, the ecology (and even our species) might not long survive unscathed. And should we worry about another sci-fiscenario, in which a network of computers could develop a mind of its own and threaten us all?

Some would dismiss such concerns as an exaggerated jeremiad: After all, societies have survived for millennia, despite storms, earthquakes, and pestilence. But these human-induced threats are different-they are newly emergent, so we have a limited time base for exposure to them and can’t be so sanguine that we would survive them for long, or that governments could cope if disaster strikes. That is why a group of natural and social scientists in Cambridge, UK, plans to inaugurate a research program to identify the most genuine of these emergent risks and assess how to enhance resilience against them. True, it is hard to quantify the potential “existential” threats from (for instance) bio- or cybertechnology, from artificial intelligence, or from runaway climatic catastrophes. But we should at least start figuring out what can be left in the sci-fibin (for now) and what has moved beyond the imaginary.

The People Problem
See: http://current.mnsun.com/2013/02/108242/

Forget about global warming. Forget about saving the ice caps, or the whales, or the rainforest. It all doesn’t matter, says one Richfield-based activist who has made it his life’s work to let the world know: “Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause.”

David Paxson has a metronome app on his iPhone at the ready in case he needs to reinforce his point. The tool ticks at 147 beats-per-minute, roughly the net rate at which the world’s population is growing, notes Paxson, a Richfield resident of 32 years.

Paxson has spent the last 20 focusing on one underlying message, he explained during an interview in a noisy coffee shop:

“We’re headed toward this cliff of collapse pretty fast.”

Unless, that is, “we stop population growth and reduce population.”

Paxson is part of a quiet chorus around the world that warns of the dangers of overpopulation. They point to depleting aquifers and energy reserves and farmland and to a coming humanitarian crisis if something isn’t done to curb the growth.

They address the truth that there is only so much room to live and so many rocks to mine and so much water to tap on one planet, and that there are more and more souls demanding those resources.

Paxson may be the loudest voice in Minnesota sending that message – neither he nor supporters interviewed were aware of anyone as active with the cause.

It was 20 years ago following “a moment of clarity” that Paxson founded World Population Balance, an organization operating with a skeleton crew out of Central Education Center in Richfield.

Paxson, who has worked in real estate, financial planning and at the Center for Population Studies at the University of Minnesota, recalled his moment of inspiration, when a minister asked him, “What are you really concerned about in this world?”

What concerned Paxson was not a new realization.

He thought back to the 1970s, when he says his father first came upon warnings about overpopulation. The best-selling book, “The Population Bomb,” had come out a few years prior and his father told him that had he known better, he wouldn’t have had all three of his children. Paxson understood.

“And I’m the youngest,” he said.

To read the full article, please click here: http://current.mnsun.com/2013/02/108242/

The Future is Hers

See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gordon-brown/the-future-is-hers_b_2819909.html  

Because of two recent tragedies — the shooting of Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai last October, and the rape and murder in December of Indian student Jyoti Singh — girls’ rights have moved to the heart of the global agenda for change just as we celebrate the 102nd International Women’s Day.

And now in quick succession a series of initiatives organized by women for women — including Feb. 14′s V-Day, the Girl Rising films which premiere this week, Girls not Brides, Plan International’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ and Gucci’s new Chime for Change program — are making 2013 a turning point in the fight for the emancipation and empowerment of girls. For it is girls themselves, no longer prepared to tolerate the complacency of the adult world, who are standing up for their own rights. They are not just requesting changes in policy, but demanding that their concerns are center-stage. They sense that the future is theirs.

Understandably the focus of recent campaigns has been securing basic freedoms from forced marriage, violence and rape, as women fight to escape these forms of slavery. But girls want to do more than stop men violating their rights; they want to right wrongs. And so we are moving from the 20th-century movement of women’s emancipation, where the issue was what we sometimes call ‘negative freedom’ — from evils that ruined women’s lives — to the 21st-century empowerment of women. This demands that we also deliver opportunity, helping girls move out of exploitation and into education.

Go to Pakistan, where I met many of the million-strong Malala demonstrators demanding a girl’s right to school. Travel to Bangladesh, where we now have girls who want to be saved from loveless marriages and to go to school, and so have created ‘child-marriage-free zones’, where girls group together as ‘wedding busters’ to prevent them being sold into marriage. Visit Nepal, which led the way in demonstrations for girls’ rights. Attend the marches in India led by child laborers themselves, demanding not just an end to this form of slavery but the delivery of their right to learn a skill.

The demand for education reminds us that for most of history it has been adults — and primarily men — who have dictated whether or not the next generation is free to dream of a better future. But it also shows us girls themselves talking across frontiers and connecting with other girls, determined that adults will no longer trample on their rights. Indeed, the new superpower that cannot be ignored is the power that girls are rightly seizing for themselves.

Click here to read the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gordon-brown/the-future-is-hers_b_2819909.html

We’re Scarily Close to the Permafrost Tipping Point
-By Julia Whitty 

| Tue Mar. 5, 2013 3:15 AM PST
See: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/03/were-getting-scarily-close-permafrost-tipping-point

Permafrost-the ground that stays frozen for two or more consecutive years-is a ticking time bomb of climate change. Some 24 percent of Northern Hemisphere land is permafrost. That’s 9 million square miles (23 million square kilometers) found mostly in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, and other higher mountain regions.

Unfortunately, thawing permafrost releases massive amounts of methane and/or carbon dioxide. The question is whether that would happen over the course of decades or over a century or more.

Click here to see the full post: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/03/were-getting-scarily-close-permafrost-tipping-point

World population: The end of growth is improbable

The global population may not stabilize at a level of 10 billion, as projections by the United Nations suggest.

See: http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/press_releases_1916/world_population_the_end_of_growth_is_improbable_3131.htm

Rostock, Germany. UN projections suggesting that the world population will stop growing after reaching a level of 10 billion people at the end of this century are improbable. While there could be stagnation over the short term, even small fluctuations in the energy or food supply could cause the population size to deviate from the 10-billion mark, and enter another period of strong growth. This finding comes from model calculations performed by Oskar Burger at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock together with John DeLong from Yale University in New Haven, USA, and Marcus Hamilton from the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, USA.

“The upper limit suggested by the United Nations hardly represents a stable equilibrium,” Oskar Burger said. The results of the team’s model have now been published in the science magazine “Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment”. The model is based on the observation that population growth strongly depends on per capita energy use: if more energy is available, economic development will continue, which will in turn put pressure on birth rates. If birth rates are sufficiently low throughout the world, the global population will stop growing. Burger’s model is thus at variance with the projections of the United Nations, which simply extrapolates a trend towards declining numbers of birth observed over the past several decades.

Zero growth is possible, but it will not last

“At a level of 10 billion people, zero growth is indeed within reach,” Oskar Burger said. “But the population size will remain at this level only if sufficient energy per capita remains constantly available.” But that can hardly be expected. “Since 1960, the population has been growing faster than the amount of usable energy worldwide,” Burger said. Thus, on average, the amount of energy available per person has been decreasing, and this trend is continuing.

“In the last 50 years the world population has actually moved farther away from reaching a stable equilibrium,” the MPIDR researcher said. If zero population growth does in fact occur at a level of 10 billion people, but there is an insufficient supply of energy, it could only take a very small change in the resources or in the behavior of societies to trigger a deviation from this trend, which could gain momentum very quickly.

To read the full article, please click here:  http://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/news_press/press_releases_1916/world_population_the_end_of_growth_is_improbable_3131.htm

City sewage system can’t keep up with biosolids surge from population boom

Population growth fills sludge lagoons to capacity
By Sherri Zickefoose, Calgary Herald February 28, 2013

See: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Sewage+system+keep+with+biosolids+surge/8026012/story.html

CALGARY – The city’s booming population growth is filling more than the suburbs: Calgary’s sewage lagoons are also close to overflowing.

The city pumps its biosolids from wastewater treatment facilities into the southeast Shepard sludge lagoons. Even through the city has a sophisticated system for turning sludge into fertilizer for farmer’s fields, the treatment program cannot keep up with the increasing volume of biosolids, the utilities committee heard Wednesday.

“We are very close to capacity for biosolids and we’re running out of room. We’re a growing city,” said Ald. Brian Pincott.

Planning for a massive composting facility partnered with water and waste services could be the answer.

“One of our solutions is our composting facility and looking how we partner. It’s about efficiency and cost savings,” Pincott said.

“The environmental liabilities of having organics in the landfill are astounding.”

To read the full story, please click here: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Sewage+system+keep+with+biosolids+surge/8026012/story.html

London Summit on Family Planning Begins to Make Waves
See: http://allafrica.com/stories/201303040865.html

An unprecedented group of public and private sector partners has finalized an agreement that will make Jadelle, an effective, long-acting, reversible contraceptive implant, available to more than 27 million women in the world’s poorest countries at a more than 50 percent price reduction over the next six years.

The Jadelle Access Program – developed and supported through a partnership between Bayer HealthCare AG, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), the Governments of Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – builds on momentum generated at the July 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, where global leaders pledged to provide an additional 120 million women in developing countries with contraceptive access by 2020. It also supports the recommendations of the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities by helping to shape global markets in order to increase the availability of quality, life-saving commodities at an optimal price and volume.

Under the signed agreement, Bayer is reducing the current price of its contraceptive implant, Jadelle, from US$18 to US$8.50 per unit, effective 1 January 2013, in more than 50 countries globally, including those deemed least likely by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on maternal and child health by 2015. The device, which has been pre-qualified by the World Health Organization (WHO) since September 2009, provides effective contraception for women for up to five years.

“Innovation is the key to our commercial success and at the same time the basis of our social commitment,” said Dr. Jörg Reinhardt, Chief Executive Officer of Bayer HealthCare AG. “We are delighted to make our life-enhancing products accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of their income or where they live, thus making a substantial contribution to improving the health of women and children in developing countries.”

When fully implemented, the Jadelle Access Program will avert more than 28 million unintended pregnancies between 2013 and 2018, and, ultimately, prevent approximately 280,000 infant and 30,000 maternal deaths. In total, the program will save an estimated US$250 million in global health costs.

To read the full article, please click here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201303040865.html