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 Tony Leiserowitz for sending me a paper by Ed Maibach and colleagues at George Mason University and Porter Novelli.

The paper, WHAT ARE AMERICANS THINKING AND DOING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? RESULTS OF A NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD SURVEY, can be downloaded from http://www.porternovelli.com

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

Warming temperatures and increasing storms are posing serious threats to Caribbean coral reefs and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said today. During the last 50 years many Caribbean reefs lost up to 80 per cent of their coral cover, according to the Paris-based agency, which noted that 2005 was especially disastrous for Caribbean corals.

For full article, visit:

http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=837

Thanks to Edward Levering for this link. The story ran on CNN on March 25.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/25/antartica.collapse.ap/index.html

Thanks to Lester Brown for the following article.
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The world is now facing a climate-driven shrinkage of river-based irrigation water supplies. Mountain glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting and could soon deprive the major rivers of India and China of the ice melt needed to sustain them during the dry season. In the Ganges, the Yellow, and the Yangtze river basins, where irrigated agriculture depends heavily on rivers, this loss of dry-season flow will shrink harvests.

The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia. China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice — humanity’s food staples. China’s wheat harvest is nearly double that of the United States, which ranks third after India. With rice, these two countries are far and away the leading producers, together accounting for over half of the world harvest.
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Eco-Economy Indicator — ICE MELT

Eco-Economy Indicators are the twelve trends the Earth Policy Institute tracks to measure progress in building an eco-economy. Ice melting is one of the most visible indicators of climate change.

With atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at new record highs and global average temperature now some 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the frozen regions of the earth are showing us just how rapidly climate change can take effect. Recent years have seen ice melt accelerate and spread to new, previously unaffected regions. In many areas, the pace of melting has surprised even the scientists studying it most closely, providing a strong early indication that the consequences of climate change could come faster and be more severe than previously believed.

For full article, visit:

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/Ice/2008.htm

Thanks to Katie Elmore for this announcement.

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An interesting initiative to combat global warming.

Focus the Nation is organizing a national teach-in on global warming solutions for America‹creating a dialogue at over a thousand colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, places of worship, civic organizations and businesses, and directly engaging millions of students and citizens with the nation¹s decision-makers.

Focus the Nation will culminate January 31st, 2008 in simultaneous educational symposia held across the country. Our intent is to move America beyond fatalism to a determination to face up to this civilizational challenge, the challenge of our generation.

For full article, visit:

http://www.focusthenation.org/index.php