On Tuesday, May 15th, WWF released the 2012 edition of its Living Planet Report.

• To see the full report (PDF) click here: http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr_2012_final_120507.pdf
• To see the summary document (PDF) click here: http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/lpr_2012_summary_booklet_final.pdf
• Below is a news report out of Seattle announcing the report. See: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/press-releases/article/Earth-in-Major-Resource-Overdraft-WWF-s-3558018.php

Earth in Major Resource Overdraft – WWF’s Living Planet Report 2012

By 2030 humanity will need two planets worth of resources to support the world’s population

Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) May 14, 2012

Humanity’s ever-growing demand for natural resources is putting huge pressure on the planet’s biodiversity and threatening our future security and well-being, according to the Living Planet Report 2012, released today by World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The report measures the health of 9,014 populations of more than 2,600 species – a thousand more populations than had been monitored by previous editions. This data, which creates the Living Planet Index (LPI), is presented in the report alongside updated global ecological and water footprint data.

The biannual report examines the ecological state of the planet and is produced in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network. The report is being launched just five weeks before nations, businesses and civil society gather in Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20 ). Twenty years after the first Earth summit, this meeting is a key opportunity for global leaders to reconfirm their commitment to creating a sustainable future.

“It’s taken a near meltdown of our economy for our nation to finally have a thoughtful conversation about our national debt. It’s time for us to have that same kind of conversation about our ecological debt, because right now we’re living beyond our planet’s means.” said Colby Loucks, Director of Conservation Science, WWF. “The science is clear: we need to be smarter about how we use our finite natural resources.”

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/press-releases/article/Earth-in-Major-Resource-Overdraft-WWF-s-3558018.php

You may be interested to know that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church has, during its recently concluded convention in Tampa FL, revised its resolution on Population. It is a bit stronger than the previous one in terms of acknowledging that Genesis 1:28 is not a commandment of indefinite duration…

The call to action section of the document begins by asking all United Methodists to access educational opportunities that focus on the issue of population and its inter-relatedness to other critical issues such as poverty, disease, hunger, environment, injustice, and violence, and to promote these opportunities in the local church. The document also urges that United Methodist medical facilities around the world to provide a full range of reproductive health and family planning information and services.

You can scan the redline and strikeout version here:

http://calms.umc.org/2012/Text.aspx?mode=Petition&Number=133

You may recall the Daily Email of April 6th, 2012, which provided a video link to a speech given by Melinda Gates, in which she announced her commitment to putting contraception back on the global development agenda. Below, we have a further report on Ms. Gates’ initiative, written by the talented Michelle Goldberg. Goldberg is a senior contributing writer for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, and is also a past winner of the the Population Institute’s Global Media Award for Best Book (The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power & the Future of the World).

See:  http://www.thedailybeast.com//content/newsweek/2012/05/06/melinda-gates-new-crusade-investing-billions-in-women-s-health.html

Melinda Gates’ New Crusade: Investing Billions in Women’s Health 

May 7, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

She plans to use the Gates Foundation’s billions to revolutionize contraception worldwide. The Catholic right is pushing back. Is she ready for the political firestorm ahead?
In the 12 years since Melinda Gates and her husband, Bill, created the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropic organization, she has done a lot of traveling. A reserved woman who has long been wary of the public glare attached to the Gates name, she comes alive, her associates say, when she’s visiting the foundation’s projects in remote corners of the world. “You get her out in the field with a group of women, sitting on a mat or under a tree or in a hut, she is totally in her element, totally comfortable,” says Gary Darmstadt, director of family health at the foundation’s global health program.

Visiting vaccine programs in sub-Saharan Africa, Gates would often ask women at remote clinics what else they needed. Very often, she says, they would speak urgently about birth control.

“Women sitting on a bench, 20 of them, immediately they’ll start speaking out and saying, ‘I wish I had that injection I used to get,’” says Gates. “‘I came to this clinic three months ago, and I got my injection. I came last week, and I couldn’t get it, and I’m here again.’”

They were talking about Depo-Provera, which is popular in many poor countries because women need to take it only four times a year, and because they can hide it, if necessary, from unsupportive husbands. As Gates discovered, injectable contraceptives, like many other forms of birth control, are frequently out of stock in clinics in the developing world, a result of both funding shortages and supply-chain problems.

Women would tell her that they’d left their farms and walked for hours, sometimes with children in tow, often without the knowledge of their husbands, in their fruitless search for the shot. “I was just stunned by how vociferous women were about what they wanted,” she says.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.thedailybeast.com//content/newsweek/2012/05/06/melinda-gates-new-crusade-investing-billions-in-women-s-health.html

Having recently been in Texas for Earth Day Dallas, this particular column caught my eye. In what will, no doubt, become a more regular story line, League City TX is realizing that all growth is not inherently good. As one person is quoted: “There is a growing awareness where you reach a point of uneconomical growth – when growth costs more than it brings in – and that’s really what people are beginning to see.”

See: http://galvestondailynews.com/story/311054

League City looks to ease population boom

Published April 29, 2012

LEAGUE CITY – League City’s rapid growth has come with some growing pains.

The city – Galveston’s County’s largest with a population of more than 83,000 – is close to running out of water, and traffic is a headache on some of the main roads.

The cost of dealing with those issues is leading some council members to wonder whether growth can be slowed or, at least, controlled.

The city’s population grew by almost 85 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to census data, and the city is about 47 percent developed.

There still is plenty of room to grow.

About 26 percent of the city’s about 30,000 acres of buildable space is undeveloped but already obligated, while another 27 percent is unobligated, according to city data.

With current zoning, League City could grow to a population of 199,000, said Tony Allender, the city’s director of planning and research.

While growth is good for a city, too much and too many people in one place puts a strain on a city’s infrastructure, League City Councilman Dennis OKeeffe said.

Traffic is one thing most in the city agree is a problem. To deal with the strain of so many cars on the road, League City has created a mobility master plan that lists $187 million in road projects that should chart the course of road construction for the next 23 years.

Water also is a concern. The city council is considering spending nearly $70 million to buy 10 million gallons a day from Pasadena.

Unsustainable Growth

“League City experienced an unsustainable growth during the last decade,” OKeeffe said.

To read the full story, please click here: http://galvestondailynews.com/story/311054

I suspect many of you will enjoy the following essay, sent to me by Bill Ryerson, and written by David Spratt. Mr. Spratt is based in Melbourne, Australia and you can follow him on Twitter at @djspratt. Spratt is focused on climate advocacy, but his observations are, no doubt, transferable to various strains of environmental advocacy.

See: http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/04/is-all-good-news-and-no-bad-news-good.html

Is all “good news” and no “bad news” a good strategy?
by David Spratt / Part 3 of a 5-part series

“If people don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t try to solve it.”
- Bill McKibben

Bright-siding climate advocacy is based on the view that:

• Only positive “good news” messages work. Don’t mention ”bad news” such as climate impacts and don’t communicate the magnitude of the problem, because people can’t deal with it; and
• The good-news story is first and foremost about “clean” or renewable energy, so construct public messages dominated by renewables and economic benefit, not about about replacing fossil fuels.

An example of trying to avoid “bad news” was the decision by the Australian government not to call the carbon tax a carbon tax.  Instead it used the confusing term, a “price on pollution”. This left the discourse about taxes entirely to opposition leader Tony Abbott, with devastating consequences. And then the government, having avoided the “tax” word, made its core pitch about…  how you will get a personal tax break: “How much support will my family get? Estimate your assistance here…”

The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine. The Society’s fundamental purpose, as it has been since its foundation in 1660, is to recognize, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.

Today they released a major new report titled the “People and the Planet Report”. Below are two introductory video links, followed by a summary and link to the 5MB PDF.

Sir John Sulston

Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu

To download the full report, click here:

People and Planet Report

Rapid and widespread changes in the world’s human population, coupled with unprecedented levels of consumption present profound challenges to human health and wellbeing, and the natural environment. This report gives an overview of how global population and consumption are linked, and the implications for a finite planet.

To see more, click here: http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/

Thanks to Val Allen for this announcement.

Contact: Ellen Green, Press Manager, Strategic Book Group – PressManager@StrategicBookGroup.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Now Available for Kindle, Nook, iPad and other e-Readers

How Can Planet Earth Sustain Its Population?

The world has just hit a new population number: 7 billion people live on the planet. Is this number sustainable?

The book Growing Pains: A Planet in Distress takes an in-depth and eye-opening look at the Earth’s greatest threat, that of too many people living on one small planet. Growing Pains is a provocative and critically acclaimed book that addresses rampant population growth, as it points us toward a path to sustainability. When you read this compelling book, the realization sets in that the long and good fights by our environmentalists, anti-poverty groups and world aid groups are all for naught, as every gain is soon overwhelmed by the pressures of more population growth.

The time has come to expose the myths and taboos that are holding us back from addressing this critical issue threatening our planet. This award-winning book is a brave and rare effort to demystify the population puzzle, and it takes positive action toward reaching a population level that is sustainable.

GROWING PAINS: A PLANET IN DISTRESS (ISBN:  978-1-61897-089-3) is available at:

Amazon Kindle:http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Pains-Planet-Distress-ebook/dp/B005VUTY8I/

Barnes & Noble Nook:http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Growing-Pains/Rhonda-R-Allen/e/2940013265578

and in multi-formats for other e-Readers through numerous vendors online.

About the Author: Valorie M. Allen of Alberta, Canada, has spent the past 25 years working with environmental groups. She was awarded the Canadian Volunteer Award in 1994, an event which helped her realize that her efforts to save the environment were being undermined by an escalating global population crisis. She began concentrating her efforts on bringing attention to the population issue, a mission that continues with the publication of this award-winning book. Read more on her website at www.populationinsync.net.

In 2010-2011, PMC had projects in Brazil, Burkina Faso, Caribbean, Ethiopia, Mexico, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the United States, Vietnam and a worldwide electronic game.

2010/2011 Annual Report (PDF, 5.5 MB)

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is partnering with Helium to get your voice heard on the most pressing issues of the day. They want to know your thoughts on questions raised by Pulitzer Center-sponsored reporting projects around the globe – and the winning essays will be showcased on the Pulitzer Center’s website and on Helium. Winning writers will also receive a Pulitzer Center Global Issues/Citizen Voices Award.

The deadline for the Global Maternal Health Writing Contest is Thursday June 24. The Pulitzer Center Global Issues/Citizen Voices Award in this contest will be announced on Wednesday July 7.

For more information on the project, visit:
http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=161

Florida’s recent decline in population is making national headlines (NY Times, USA Today) and is being portrayed as a major cause for concern. The truth is that those expressing this alarm are merely clinging to an old, tired, and harmful mode of thinking.

After 63 years of massive population expansion — which changed forever the ecology, economy and society of the state – Florida’s 0.3% decline actually seems like an opportunity to many. It is a chance for America’s Sunshine State to develop a sustainable economy, which it can then model for the rest of the nation.

Ecological economists like Robert Costanza, Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, have known for a long time what seems to be eluding most mainstream economists: relying on ballooning populations and constant increases in infrastructure is not a sustainable economic model.

What once may have been possible and even desirable in the earlier part of American history is pernicious and unsustainable today.

“The long term solution is to move beyond ‘growth at all costs’,” says Costanza, who was raised and educated in Florida – a state which increased its population by 88% from 1980 to 2008.

“We must break our addiction to the current economic ideology and create a more sustainable and desirable future that focuses on quality of life rather than merely quantity of consumption or population growth. It will not be easy; it will require a new vision, new measures, and new institutions.”

The misguided hope among many is that, once this economic crisis dissipates, Florida will again experience a population expansion and greater consumption. But this would only reset the timer, beginning again the steady countdown to a renewed crisis. For a nation wrestling with high unemployment and a spiraling national debt – not to mention accelerating carbon emissions, climate change, and rapid species extinctions — that’s not an option.

There are ways to do it, says Costanza. “It is not a sacrifice of quality of life to break this addiction. Quite the contrary, it is a sacrifice not to.”

Robert Dietz, Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, adds “The ‘end of an era’ of population growth has many eyes trained on Florida. We need an economy that meets human needs without undermining the life-support systems of the planet. Florida can lead the way toward this vision of economic health. Population stability presents an opportunity to seize – an opportunity to make the economy better instead of bigger.