Bruce Sundquist has completed a scholarly analysis of the sustainability of the world’s systems for producing food, wood and freshwater. The paper, “Sustainability of the World’s Outputs of Food, Wood and Freshwater for Human Consumption” is a must read for a thorough understanding of the world situation. It can be found at http://home.alltel.net/bsundquist1/su0.html#A1, with five chapters on separate pages covering soils and croplands, forest lands, grazing lands, irrigated lands and freshwater supplies, and fisheries. Thanks to Bruce for bringing the paper to my attention.

Thanks to Marian Starkey for this article.
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Gantallan Plorensio’s farm is a paradox at the heart of Asia’s growing rice crisis. The fields that get enough water have never been more productive, contributing to a 5 percent annual increase in rice production over the past two years.

“We have a lot of rice fields, but no irrigation,” he says. “They’re just sitting there.”

As a regional rice crisis looms, threatening political instability and social unrest, the idle fields in Mr. Plorensio’s village underscore a failure of policy and foresight repeated across the region: For decades, governments have been encouraging a boom in services and skyscrapers, but not the capacity to grow more rice. Financing in agriculture has stagnated, and fewer farmers are expected to produce more rice for exploding populations.

For full article, visit:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0422/p01s03-woap.html?page=1

CARE is holding a conference in Washington, DC and is hoping to build their Vermont constituency working on advocacy issues at a state level. Here is their announcement.

Join CARE in Washington DC on June 18 and 19, 2008 for the CARE National Conference. Meet with your members of Congress to discuss policies that can help break the cycle of poverty. This year’s event will be very exciting!

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Phil Dodd for this article, which does not mention population growth as a contributor to the problem.
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A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil. It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher.

For full article, visit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html

Responses are needed to the Wall Street Journal book review of April 1, 2007. Letters to the editor can be sent by email to: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com or Fax: 1-212-416-2255 Attn: Ned Crabb. See http://www.opinionjournal.com/guidelines/ before submitting. Editorial Page Submissions, including the Op-Ed page pieces, should go to: fax: 1-212-416-2255 Attn: Tunku Varadarajan or email: edit.features@wsj.com.

For the original editorial, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120700566688178565.html.

Below is one person’s response to the article above…

Sir,

If your reviewer Martin Wooster is giving an accurate impression of Mr Connelly’s work, then neither are worthy of promotion of their views in the WSJ.
Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Ed Levering for this NY Times article.
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The ancient frozen dome cloaking Greenland is so vast that pilots have crashed into what they thought was a cloud bank spanning the horizon. Flying over it, you can scarcely imagine that this ice could erode fast enough to dangerously raise sea levels any time soon.

Along the flanks in spring and summer, however, the picture is very different. For a lengthening string of warm years, a lacework of blue lakes and rivulets of meltwater have been spreading ever higher on the ice cap. The melting surface darkens, absorbing up to four times as much energy from the sun as unmelted snow, which reflects sunlight. Natural drainpipes called moulins carry water from the surface into the depths, in some places reaching bedrock. The process slightly, but measurably, lubricates and accelerates the grinding passage of ice toward the sea.

For full article, visit:

http://www.nytimes.com

The population field has lost a great friend, Bill Paddock. He died on February 28 at age 86 in Antigua, Guatemala, where he lived with his wife, Liz. A delegation of three of us from Population Media Center, Kriss Barker, Leopoldo Peralta and I, had a lovely visit over dinner with Bill and Liz at their home last May at the beginning of a trip to Guatemala and Honduras to develop serial drama programs to promote family planning. This trip was undertaken at Bill’s suggestion and with his financial support. He will be greatly missed.

Below is a link to his obituary that appeared in the Washington Post last week.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/12/AR2008031204230.html?sub=new

This year PMC celebrates its 10th Anniversary. We are very excited about reaching this milestone and would like to extend our gratitude and appreciation to everyone that has helped to make this happen.
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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)

UN Wire is a FREE daily e-mail newsletter covering the United Nations and the World. Aggregating the most important news from hundreds of top international sources, UN Wire provides the latest news and information you need to be an informed citizen. Sign up for your very own free subscription to UN Wire.

Thanks to Katie Elmore for this link.
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Andrew Revkin maintains a blog for the NY Times on Climate Change and has a big section dedicated to population http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/population/.