Shelburne, VT - On April 22nd, Population Media Center (PMC) will celebrate Earth Day. PMC is an international nonprofit organization that strives to bring about the stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world’s natural resources, in order to improve the well-being of people around the world and lessen the harmful impact of humanity on the earth’s environment. PMC uses entertainment-education strategies, like serialized dramas on radio and television that encourage positive social and health behaviors, such as the use of family planning and the empowerment of women.

Please join us in celebrating Earth Day on April 22nd. William Ryerson, President and Founder of Population Media Center will be available for interviews.

Population and Environment
Currently, there is a great deal of concern in the media, government, business, and general public regarding the issue of global warming. However, the impact of rapid human population growth on global warming is often overlooked. Decreasing consumption levels will not be enough if the human population continues to rise. The United Nations Population Division estimates that by the year 2050 the world population will reach 9.2 billion, with most of this increase occurring in the developing world. It is estimated that by 2050 over 50% of carbon emissions will come from developing nations. Not only does population growth significantly contribute to an increase in carbon emissions, but it creates a strain on other resources such as water, food, and energy.

Make the Link Between Population and Environment
For more information about population and environmental issues, PMC’s founder and president, William Ryerson, will be available for interviews. Mr. Ryerson has a four decade history of working in the fields of population and reproductive health. As a graduate student, he was Founder and first Chairperson of the Yale Chapter of Zero Population Growth (ZPG). He also served on the Executive Committee of ZPG, as Eastern Vice President and Secretary of the national organization. In 1970, he was featured in Life Magazine’s Earth Day issue organizing student activities on the Yale campus for the first Earth Day.

During the last two decades, he has been working to adapt the Sabido methodology of entertainment-education for behavior change on family planning and family size issues to various cultural settings worldwide. He has also been involved in the design of research to measure the effects of such projects in a number of countries, one of which has led to a series of publications regarding a serialized radio drama in Tanzania and its effects on HIV/AIDS avoidance and family planning use. He received a B.A. in Biology (Magna Cum Laude) from Amherst College and an M.Phil. in Biology from Yale University (with specialization in Ecology and Evolution). He served as Director of the Population Institute’s Youth and Student Division, Development Director of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, Associate Director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and Executive Vice President of Population Communications International before founding Population Media Center. Mr. Ryerson is listed in several editions of Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the East. In 2006, he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage from the Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development.

Thanks to Tim Wirth for this article.
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On her visit to Japan, Chancellor Angela Merkel has made a new proposal for reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases. She suggested that CO2 emissions should be measured in terms of population numbers. On her second day in Japan the Chancellor was received by Emperor Akihito – with him too she discussed climate protection.

According to Merkel’s proposal, CO2 emissions would be measured per capita. The maximum COs emissions of a country would thus be measured in terms of population numbers. The larger the population of a country, the more CO2 the country would be permitted to emit. This would mean that every individual in the world would be entitled to emit the same volume of carbon dioxide.

http://www.bundeskanzlerin.de

Thanks to Rob Gordon for this article.
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Nine ways in which the Earth could be tipped into a potentially dangerous state that could last for many centuries have been identified by scientists investigating how quickly global warming could run out of control.

A major international investigation by dozens of leading climate scientists has found that the “tipping points” for all nine scenarios — such as the melting of the Arctic sea ice or the disappearance of the Amazon rainforest — could occur within the next 100 years.

For full article, visit:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/76053

Scientists from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Hawaii unveiled new research last week showing that steadily warming sea surface waters are causing the least biologically productive swaths of the world’s oceans—so-called “ocean deserts”—to expand at an unprecedented rate (some 15 percent on average) over a nine-year period ending in 2007.

“The warming increases stratification of the ocean waters, preventing deep ocean nutrients from rising to the surface and creating plant life,” the researchers said in a statement released by NOAA. The study was published last week in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. “These barren areas are found in roughly 20 percent of the world’s oceans and are within subtropical gyres—the swirling expanses of water on either side of the equator.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4124

Thanks to author Lindsey Grant for this NPG paper, Edge of the Abyss. It will also be posted at www.npg.org.

As Lindsey Grant said in his cover email, the paper “reports on what we have learned in the past year about energy and climate, following up on THE AGE OF OVERSHOOT. I run into a certain amount of family resistance with these books and papers, on the grounds I am pessimistic. Perhaps the close of this paper provides my answer. It is realism, not pessimism. The age of fossil energy was an aberration. We must relearn to live on the sun’s annual budget. That can be done, but not if we continue to pursue growth as our ideal. And the issues are closing faster than we expected.”

Lindsey Grant Edge of the Abyss (PDF, 252 KB)

Happy April Fool’s Day. The title of this paper by Lindsey Grant, The Age of Overshoot, is unfortunately more real than the subject line of this email.

Lindsey is a member of Population Media Center’s Program Advisory Board and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population and Environment. His books include: The Collapsing Bubble: Growth and Fossil Energy, The Case for Fewer People: The NPG Forum Papers (editor), Too Many People: The Case for Reversing Growth, Juggernaut: Growth on a Finite Planet, How Many Americans?, Elephants in the Volkswagen, and Foresight and National Decisions: the Horseman and the Bureaucrat.

This and other papers of interest can be found www.npg.org under publications.

Lindsey Grant NPG-Overshoot (Word Doc., 170 KB)

It was a pleasure to have lunch last week with Dr. Norman Myers of Oxford University during his visit to the University of Vermont. Below is a paper of his addressing security concerns arising from environmental refugees.

Environmental Refugees an Emergent Security Issue (PDF, 26 MB)

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Thanks to Edmund Levering for the second article attached, from the Christian Science Monitor. Below is a UN Wire link to a recent article from Reuters on this same phenomenon sent in by Sonny Fox.

Climate refugee problems looming, few solutions on horizon
The looming specter of millions of potential refugees driven from their homes by rising seas and other climate change effects has yet to result in any real planning by the international community to deal with the problem. Residents of the Tuvalu islands, predicted to be among the world’s first climate refugees, have received little enthusiastic support from other governments in their initial attempts to plan a relocation. AlertNet.org/Reuters (3/13)

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Plenty Magazine ran this article about Alleyne Regis, PMC’s Caribbean Regional Director, in its current edition. It deals with the project Alleyne oversaw in the Western Pacific.

You can find it on their website at http://www.plentymag.com/features/2008/03/cause_celeb.php.

Thanks to Dick Grossman for a link to an editorial by him and Joe Speidel in Contraception, an international journal.

You can access it at: http://www.arhp.org/editorials/December2007.cfm.

Thanks to Earl Babbie for sending this video. It presents our choices rather starkly.

A great presentation about taking action at this time. Something each one of us can do.