Congratulations to Leon Kolankiewicz for this OpEd, which ran on Mother Nature Network’s website.
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This month, America celebrates the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, founded in 1970 by the late U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), one of our greatest environmental heroes of the 20th century. Yet few of the multitudinous articles, exhibits, parades and speeches will dare — or bother — to broach the one issue that worried Nelson perhaps more than any other: human overpopulation.

I know this because I collaborated closely with Nelson on several projects during the last decade of his life.

By the time he died in 2005 at the age of 89, Nelson had become deeply disappointed with the wholesale retreat of the environmental establishment from advocating limits to population growth. Rather, a new generation of more pragmatic (expedient?) campaigners preferred to prattle on about safer and sexier topics like tropical deforestation, overfishing, oil and water shortages, urban sprawl, traffic congestion, power plant pollution, toxic waste, marine “dead zones,” proliferating dams, roads and power lines, destruction of wildlife habitat, endangered species, and of course, climate change. Ironic when human reproduction and the population growth it produces are all about sex, eh?

For full article, visit:
http://www.mnn.com/home-blog

Congratulations to Bob Walker for the following OpEd, carried by Huffington Post.
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When the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, there was much discussion about population growth and its strain on Mother Earth. World population at that time was 3.7 billion. Today, with world population at 6.8 billion and still growing, nary a word is being said about population and its impact on the planet. What gives?

Thomas Hayden in reviewing three new ecology books for the Washington Post this week writes “Bizarrely, none of these authors discusses population growth in any kind of depth, if at all.” Julia Whitty writing for the May/June edition of Mother Jones magazine calls discussion of population “the last taboo.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker

Many thanks to Paul Ehrlich for this article.

Rebecca Coombs, Population the Forgotten Priority (PDF, 195 KB)

Thanks to Gabriela Kaplan for the link to the article “Threats to Biodiversity.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu

Thanks to Leta Finch for this article.
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The leaders have failed to deliver on a pledge to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, scientists say.

In a study published in Science , researchers said governments had instead presided over alarming declines in biodiversity.

The pledge to reduce the rate of loss was made in the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity and the research is the first to gauge progress towards the goal.

“Our analysis shows that governments have failed to deliver on the commitments they made in 2002. Biodiversity is still being lost as fast as ever, and we have made little headway in reducing the pressures on species, habitats and ecosystems,” said Dr Stuart Butchart of the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre and BirdLife International, and the paper’s lead author.

For full article, visit:
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100507210059701

Many thanks to Fred Meyerson for the attached copy of the letters to the editor of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment regarding his editorial “Population, Biodiversity and Human Well-being.” (previously distributed; see http://www.populationmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Fred-Meyerson-Population-Biodiversity-and-Human-Well-being-2009-Editorial-final.pdf), along with Fred’s reply. Fred reports that the Frontiers editor said Fred’s December editorial received an unprecedented number of responses, so they weren’t able to publish them all. Incidentally, the April edition of Frontiers carried the following erratum related to David Pimentel’s letter in the attached document: In the letter from David Pimentel (2010: 8[2]: 66) the text should read, “based on its current growth rate, [Earth’s] population will double within 58 years.” (not 13 years, as stated).

Frontiers March 2010 Write Back – Responses to Meyerson Meyerson reply (PDF, 109 KB)

Thanks to those who responded to Science Magazine’s one-sided treatment of food demands without discussion of how to address population growth (found at http://www.populationmedia.org/2010/03/05/food-security-special-issue-of-science-magazine/). The published letters are found at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/328/5975/169-b#13107. Thanks to Kathy McKee for this link, and thanks to Merloyd Ludington, Roger Plenty, Peter Salonius, Joel Marx and Kathy McGee from this mailing list for their postings.

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article from Scientific American.
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By 2050, the world will host nine billion people—and that’s if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would require the clearing (read: deforestation) of 900 million additional hectares of land, according to Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The bad news beyond the impacts on people, plants and animals of that kind of deforestation: There isn’t that much land available. At most, we might be able to add 100 million hectares to the 4.3 billion already under cultivation worldwide.

For full article, visit:
http://www.scientificamerican.com

Thanks to Mark O’Connor for the article below and for the information on the website of the Stable Population Party of Australia (SPPA), which is now up and running. See www.populationparty.com
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Debunking the Population Myths

It’s time to start knocking down the myths that prop up population growth.

It’s inevitable that we grow to a vast population. No. Demographers say we could, if we chose, still stop at 23 million the figure the Australian Academy of Science has said should be our safe maximum.

Wouldn’t the refugee intake have to suffer? No, it could be doubled, even if we if we choose to stop at 23 million. Refugees are a tiny fraction of our annual migrant intake.
Read the rest of this entry »

Many thanks to Kurt Dahl for this fascinating paper deconstructing the arguments against concern with population. Kurt’s material provides relevant answers to some of the postings at Mother Jones’ population forum, which you can see at http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/population-forum.
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There are monsters on the loose today – vile ogres who propose that we should “dispense with seatbelts” and who believe “children should be encouraged to smoke at an early age” (From the Wall Street Journal). These villainous creatures are identified as post-reproductive rich white men who are trying to protect their right to own super-yachts (Monbiot, in the Guardian), and who talk of mass sterilizations and abortions (Harsanyi, in the Denver Post).

And who exactly are these monsters? They are people like John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor – a man who “peddles calamity as science” (Denver Post), and Paul Ehrlich, the “bumbling soothsayer” (also Denver Post).

For full article, visit:
http://populationelephant.com/PEdeconstructarticle.html

Fred Pearce, author of “The Coming Population Crash,” is one of several authors who thinks population growth is not a problem. His publishers need to hear from you.

Pearce did an interview on the Daily Show. You can view that segment by going to http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch. Pearce’s views are also described at Salon.com You can post comments on Salon.com by visiting http://letters.salon.com/books/feature.

Pearce will be one of this week’s panelists in Mother Jones’ population forum this week. The others will be:

*Martha Campbell, political scientist and public health lecturer at UC Berkeley
*Paul Ehrlich, founder of Zero Population Growth and author of “The Population Bomb”
*Courtney Martin, feminist writer and Feministing.com editor
*Malcolm Potts, obstetrician, biologist, and author of “Sex and War.”
*William N. Ryerson, president of the Population Media Center and Population Institute
*Rinku Sen, racial justice writer and president of the Applied Research Center
*Julia Whitty, Mother Jones environmental correspondent and author of “The Last Taboo”

Read the rest of this entry »