Saturday, July 30, 2011

We must be prepared for more Anders Breiviks - The Muslim population of Europe will undoubtedly rise – and the irrational fear will spread



By Robert Fox - The First Post

One of the problems with Colonel Gaddafi is that from time to time he is in the habit of speaking an inconvenient truth. OK, let's not exaggerate, from time he speaks grains of inconvenient truths.

Since 2006 the Libyan leader has been proposing that Islam should be the religion of Europe - he even said so in Rome during his visit there two years ago.

Furthermore, Gaddafi said last year that it will become Europe's major religion and that European governments will have Muslims in them by 2050. He said this was sure to happen because of the growth of the Muslim population in Europe, which he claims could be "more than 50 per cent if Turkey joins the EU".

Last October Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany seemed to half agree with the colonel when she denounced the failure of multiculturalism in her country in her party conference speech in Potsdam. As a good daughter of a Lutheran pastor she suggested that the Muslims of Germany must integrate more and sign up to the basic values - mostly taken from secular Christianity - embraced by the constitution of today's federal Germany.

All this has particular point and accent in the aftermath of the massacre of 76 Norwegians by Anders Behring Breivik. He aimed to murder the Labour prime minister Jens Stoltenberg and youth members of the party at their summer camp because they are the appeasers who have allowed Muslim immigrants to get more than a toehold in Norway.

The issue was summed up a couple of days ago by one of the most socially and politically observant and astute officers I have known in the British Army, or any other army for that matter.


Making Food Security Global


By Terry Waghorn, Forbes


Food security is perhaps the most expansive of the 10 categories we at Katerva break sustainability into. Within its realm are aspects of many other categories including behavioral change (consumption habits), protected areas (land management), urban design (agricultural integration), human development (poverty reduction), transportation (efficient distribution) and more. All the major sciences (biology, chemistry, psychology, etc) can lend their prowess to the issue of global food security.

For full article:

Literacy and the Population Problem



By Justin Gillis, New York Times

The world’s population is expected to pass seven billion in late October. A few weeks ago, I joined my colleague Celia Dugger in writing about worrisome new population projections from the United Nations. Instead of peaking in this century, as previously expected, the new projections suggested that the human population would continue growing all the way into the next century, probably topping out above 10 billion.
Whether the planet can support that many people, and in what living conditions, is a subject of continuing uncertainty.
In a special report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, experts consider the implications of this continued population growth and other demographic shifts expected in coming decades. Some, but not all, elements of the package are available free at this link, including videos and a podcast discussing several of the new papers.
The article that most caught my eye was a review paper by demographers in Vienna. They confirmed previous research suggesting that the single biggest factor influencing population growth rates is the educational status of women. If one wants to slow the rapid population growth in developing countries, the thinking goes, the highest priority should be putting more girls in school.

For full article:

'Explosive' population growth threatens developing nations, says UN


By Kate Taylor, TG Daily

By the end of this year, there'll be seven billion people on the planet, a whole billion more than in 1999, according to new UN figures.

In 2011, approximately 135 million people will be born and 57 million will die, a net increase of 78 million people.

And between now and 2050, an estimated 2.3 billion more people will be added — nearly as many as inhabited the entire planet in 1950. By the end of the century, the population will reach 10.1 billion, says the Population Division of the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Practically all the growth in the next 40 years - 97 percent - will take place in less developed regions, with just under half in Africa.

For full article:

Devastating famine elicits divergent reactions


By Malcolm Mcsporran, Vancouver Sun

Re: African food shortage becomes a major crisis, July 7 The headline is wrong: There is no food shortage in Africa; there are too many people. The headline should have read, "African over-population becomes a major crisis."

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Rural US Disappearing? Population Share Hits Low - ABC News



In this Feb. 9, 2011 file photo, a coal truck drives out of downtown Welch, W.Va. Rural places account for just 16 percent of the nation's population, the lowest share ever, while metro areas are booming into sprawling megalopolises (/AP Photo)

By HOPE YEN Associated Press - WASHINGTON July 27, 2011 (AP)

Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation's population, the lowest ever. The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, demographers say.

EU27 Population Now At 502.5 Million


By Eurasia Review

On 1 January 2011, the population of the EU27 was estimated at 502.5 million, compared with 501.1 million on 1 January 2010. The population of the EU27 grew by 1.4 million in 2010, an annual rate of +2.7 per 1000 inhabitants, due to a natural increase of 0.5 million (+1.0‰) and net migration of 0.9 million (+1.7‰).

he population of the euro area (EA17) was estimated at 332.0 million on 1 January 2011, compared with 330.9 million on 1 January 2010. The population of the euro area grew by 1.0 million in 2010, an annual rate of +3.1‰, due to a natural increase of 0.3 million (+1.0‰) and net migration of 0.7 million (+2.1‰).

These figures come from a report2 published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Highest natural growth rates in Ireland, Cyprus, France, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom
In 2010, 5.4 million children were born in the EU27. The crude birth rate was 10.7 per 1000 inhabitants, the same as in 2009. The highest birth rates were recorded in Ireland (16.5‰), the United Kingdom (13.0‰), France (12.8‰), Cyprus (12.4‰) and Sweden (12.3‰), and the lowest rates in Germany (8.3‰), Latvia (8.6‰), Hungary (9.0‰), Italy (9.3‰), Austria (9.4‰), Portugal (9.5‰) and Malta (9.6‰).

For full article:

A Global Minimum Wage System by Thomas Palley



The global economy is suffering from severe shortage of demand. In developed economies that shortfall is explicit in high unemployment rates and large output gaps. In emerging market economies it is implicit in their reliance on export-led growth. In part this shortfall reflects the lingering disruptive effects of the financial crisis and Great Recession, but it also reflects globalization's undermining of the income generation process.
One mechanism that can help rebuild this process is a global minimum wage system. That does not mean imposing U.S. or European minimum wages in developing countries. It does mean establishing a global set of rules for setting country minimum wages.

For full article:


This article is drawn from Chapter 12, "The Challenge of Globalization," of Thomas Palley's forthcoming book: From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economic Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Part 34: Human Overload--how and why journalilsts avoid the population connection



By Frosty Wooldridge

Mark Twain’s famous ‘silent assertion’ lives, breathes and manifests in the 21st century.  The press continues to obfuscate cloud, deny, suppress and ignore America’s and humanity’s greatest dilemma: overpopulation.” 
                                                                                            FHW

          Why do you suppose most Americans remain apathetic to our hyper-population growth?  What rational person supports water shortages, climate change, and worse ramifications caused by more people? 

          Surprise!  Most vacant-minded leaders fail to see a problem.  Four years ago, I personally called U.S. Congressman Chris Cannon, (R-UT).  He said, “America can easily hold one billion people.”

          I nearly fell out of my chair.  It’s almost beyond my understanding that anyone can be that ‘obtuse’.  [Politically correct term for—dumber than a box of gerbils!]
          How do Americans live in denial?  For the life of me, I don’t understand.

          The imminent writer T. Michael Maher said, “Recent surveys show that Americans are less concerned about population than they were 25 years ago, and they aren’t connecting environmental degradation to population growth.

For full article:

PRB 2011 World Population Data Sheet - PR Newswire


World Adding Another Billion People Every 12 Years

Embargoed until 5 p.m. (EDT) (GMT-4), July 27, 2011

Global population will reach 7 billion later in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999
WASHINGTON, July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today's world population is double the population in 1967. But while the overall growth rate has slowed, the population is still growing, and growth rates in some countries show little if any decline.

The Population Reference Bureau's 2011 World Population Data Sheet and its summary report will be released on July 27, 2011, at 5 p.m. (EDT) at www.prb.org. These publications offer detailed information on 18 population, health, and environment indicators for more than 200 countries. A webinar will be held on July 28, at 11 a.m. (EDT).

"Even though the annual population growth rate has declined to 1.2 percent per year, world population grows by about 83 million annually," says Wendy Baldwin, PRB's president. "If the late 1960s population growth rate of 2.1 percent—the highest in history—had held steady, world population would have grown by 117 million annually, and today's population would have been 8.6 billion."

For full article:

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The scourge of 'peak oil' When demand for oil consistently surpasses supply, experts warn that our lives will look "very differently".


"We're going to see major changes in industrial civilisation ... anything with a parking lot is going to be in trouble" [EPA]

Energy derived from oil reaches, quite literally, every aspect of our lives. 

From the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to how we move ourselves around, without oil, our lives would look very differently. 


Yet oil is a finite resource. While there is no argument that it won't last forever, there is debate about how much oil is left and how long it might last.

Tom Whipple, an energy scholar, was a CIA analyst for 30 years - and believes we are likely at, or very near, a point in history when the maximum production capacity for oil is reached, a phenomenon often referred to as "peak oil".


"Peak oil is the time when the world's production reaches the highest point, then starts back down again," Whipple told Al Jazeera. "Oil is a finite resource, and [it] someday will go down, and that is what the peak oil discussion is all about."


There are signs that peak oil may have already arrived.

For full article:


UNFPA to Produce Report on Ethiopian Population




By Andualem Sisay
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is set to launch Ethiopia’s population report focusing on the state and trend of Ethiopian population.

According to the UNFPA Deputy Representative, Ibrahim Sambuli, the reason behind is to showcase the rest of the world Ethiopia’s experiences in health extension program, women initiative and the like. “We are given green light from Ethiopian government to prepare a separate report that assesses Ethiopia’s population status,” he said this morning (July 26, 2011) briefing journalists gathered in Adama town, a hundred kilometers from the capital, for a workshop that deals with population issues.

For full article:


The expected value of each human being is positive (on the Beckham's)


By: Timothy P. Carney | Senior Political Columnist
Soccer player David Beckham and his wife Victoria (formerly a performer) are being derided in the British press as "bad role models." No, they're not publicly carrying on affairs, fighting in public, or abandoning their children. Their sin: having four children.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Global warming threatens world peace - UN - Legal Brief - Note



The UN Security Council has made their first official statement implicating climate change as a serious threat to world peace and security, says a Jurist report.

For full article:

Most Americans Want Scientists, Not Politicians, to Lead Climate Debate - Reuters


The latest results from an ongoing Yale/George Mason study indicate that Americans want experts to explain how human activities are altering the climate

By Elizabeth McGowan, SolveClimate News
WASHINGTON—Americans nationwide still have a quiver full of queries for experts about climate change.
But the content of their questions — and the sources they are likely to trust with answers — vary depending on their level of concern and engagement with the issue.
That's one of the latest conclusions drawn from an ongoing and wide-ranging study that has tracked how each of the "Six Americas" interprets the threats of global warming since the last presidential election. Researchers at Yale and George Mason universities first identified those half dozen separate audiences after their initial autumn 2008 survey.

Watch your population growth, Kenya advised - Capital FM




NAIROBI, Kenya July 22 – Kenya needs to check its population growth rate just like its Vision 2030, benchmarking countries like Singapore and Malaysia, in order to achieve sustained development.

According to the CEO of the National Coordinating Agency for Population and Development, Dr Boniface K’Oyugi, a sustained population growth rate of 2.9 percent will make Kenya’s population to hit 70 million mark in 2030.

Dr K’Oyugi said that the Draft National Population policy is aimed at encouraging Kenyans to establish smaller families which are sustainable.

This is policy that would like to align the aspirations of vision 2030 so that population can support targets of the vision,” he said adding that the population pressure also impacts negatively on the environment.

For full article:

Overpopulation: Don't buy 'more people, more problems' [Blowback] Los Angeles Times Part 2




Laura E. Huggins responds to The Times' July 24 Op-Ed article "The world's biggest problem? Too many people." Huggins is a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and at the Property and Environment Research Center. She was co-editor of the book "Population Puzzle: Boom or Bust?"
Mary Ellen Harte and Anne Ehrlich write, "Unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants. We must stop the denial."
We are in denial for a reason. For more than 40 years, climaxing around the first Earth Day, the public has been bombarded with apocalyptic tales of disaster regarding population growth. Paul Ehrlich, for example, a Stanford professor, prominent prophet of population doom and contributor to this op-ed article, predicted in his 1968 bestseller "The Population Bomb" that millions of people would die of starvation during the 1970s because the Earth's inhabitants would multiply at a faster rate than the world's ability to supply food. Six years later, in "The End of Affluence," a book he co-authored with his wife, Anne Ehrlich, the death toll estimates increased to a billion dying from starvation by the mid-1980s. By 1985, Ehrlich predicted, the world would enter a genuine era of scarcity.

For full article:



Overpopulation debate comes to one conclusion - Los Angeles Times Part 1




Overpopulation is the world's biggest problem, write biologists Mary Ellen Harte and Anne Ehrlich in Thursday's Op-Ed pages. They contend that the world's growing population is creating an unsustainable strain on Earth's resources and forcing the future of humanity to hang in the balance.  
Our editorial board recently took a similar position in "Diffusing the population bomb." "Nations cannot indefinitely produce larger and larger generations to support older ones," they wrote. "Humans may have the reproductive ability to keep raising their numbers, but the planet on which they do it is finite."
RealClearScience's Alex B. Berezow, however, debates whether overpopulation is actually a crisis. He writes that we don't need to worry about overpopulation because, in fact, in some places the population is actually decreasing. He offers birthrates in Russia as one example:
The problem is so bad in Russia, which may shrink by 25 million people in the next 40 years, that demographers are referring to a population crisis. This will put an enormous strain on Russia's economy as the government struggles to care for its aging population.

For full article:

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Panel Recommends Coverage for Contraception - US


By ROBERT PEAR – NYT

WASHINGTON — A leading medical advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as one of several preventive services under the new health care law.

Obama administration officials said that they were inclined to accept the panel’s advice and that the new requirements could take effect for many plans at the beginning of 2013. The administration signaled its intentions in January when Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, unveiled a 10-year program to improve the nation’s health. One goal was to “increase the proportion of health insurance plans that cover contraceptive supplies and services.”
Administration officials, who say they hope to act on the recommendations by Aug. 1, are receptive to the idea of removing cost as a barrier to birth control — a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health.

For full article:

food prices, says report Government support for ethanol has led to an increase in corn production and a steep rise in soybean imports


A growing number of US farmers are switching to crops such as corn in order to meet the demand for ethanol. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/AP

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
Demand for biofuels in the US is driving this year's high food prices, a report has said. It predicts that food prices are unlikely to fall back down for another two years.
The report, produced by Purdue University economists for the Farm Foundation policy organisation, said US government support for ethanol, including subsidies, had fuelled strong demand for corn over the last five years.
A dramatic rise in Chinese imports of soybeans was also putting pressure on prices and supply, the report said.

For full article:

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

What's That Ticking Sound? The Male Biological Clock - Wall Street Journal



Several months ago, my friend Anna called to complain about her boyfriend of eight months. Bombarded by media warnings about the female biological clock, he wanted to make sure that Anna was fit for childbearing before the relationship moved forward. He had taken her to a fertility clinic where a reproductive endocrinologist drew blood to check her ovarian reserve and injected radioactive iodine into her uterus to ensure that her fallopian tubes were clear.

Anna is 32. Her boyfriend is 52.
Anna's boyfriend was right to be concerned. As women increasingly pursue careers and take advantage of fertility treatments to postpone childbirth into their 30s and 40s, they do place their offspring at risk for countless disorders and diseases. This occurs, however, not because of the woman's age but because women in their 30s, like Anna, tend to couple off with older men. And when it comes to fathering healthy children, older men, it turns out, are just as much at the mercy of their biological clocks.
                                        

For full article:


The new sexual revolution: Today's women are rejecting promiscuity for monogamy and motherhood - Daily Mail, UK



Extracts:

“Writing in the New York Times, she muses on the fact that younger women — including her daughter — are not so obsessed with sex as her own generation (also mine) was, back in the years of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.”


Explicit sex can become boring in the end — hence the theory that people have to rachet up the degrees of porn they watch, to find it sexy — with disturbing effects on society as a whole. Brought up in this culture, it’s easy to see how this generation of 20s-to-early-30s females can feel embarrassed by their parents’ oh-so-cool sexual permissiveness.”

Water: Managing a strategic resource


Water is critical to the energy industry, especially for oil and gas extraction. But water issues carry significant risk and require strategic planning, write Rakesh Jaggi, Muqait Ashraf and Hemes Alvarez.

Global population growth and economic expansion will bring a huge increase in energy consumption and drive a significant increase in demand for scarce water resources. Most industry agencies, including the International Energy Agency, predict oil and gas will meet the majority of world energy demand for the foreseeable future.

Intense competition for water, both from the agricultural and industrial sectors, will amplify an already growth problem: global water scarcity. This is compounded by the large volumes of water consumed to generate energy and a vast amount of energy required to extract, process and deliver clean water.

For full article:


Population Decline and the Recession - (The Vatican's counter argument)

By Marcus Roberts

The economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the Vatican’s Institute for the Works of Religion and professor of Financial Ethics at the Catholic University, is refusing to buy into the idea that population growth is a threat.  Instead, he sees it as the driver of economic growth. 
In an interview given in Vatican City, Tedeschi stated that demography “is a key factor in economic growth and geopolitical balance.”  The world is split into two.  On one hand, the developed countries which have not grown in population since the 1980s, which continue to consume but are producing less and are seeing their GDP consumer debt growing.  On the other hand there is the developing world which is made up of countries who are large producers but generally “eat poorly”.  According to Tedeschi:
“[t]he countries with the highest rates of economic growth and savings are those with the highest populations”.

For full article:

Overpopulation vexes city planners - China.org.cn


Population pressures in Beijing are likely to worsen in the next 20 years, according to a report released on July 18, 2011.
According to the Annual Report on Analysis of Beijing Society-Building published by the Social Sciences Academic Press, population growth will be the biggest worry for Beijing during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015).
Think tanks are calling the government to take stricter steps to control the capital's fast-growing population. Since 2000, Beijing's population has increased by 700,000 a year on average, putting strains on the city's economic, social and environmental resources.

For full article:

Monday, July 18, 2011

Why having a child is just not for us



Why are women assumed abnormal if they don’t feel the urge to procreate? And why should females past 30 justify their decision not to pass on their genes? Claire Rees speaks to an author who wrote a novel about the stigma she faces being a childless 48-year-old by choice, and hears from a woman who explains why other mums make her realise she’s right to never want to start a family...

VICTORIA Beckham has just given birth to her fourth, and the world is on baby watch for the moment the Duchess of Cambridge announces she’s expecting an heir.
It’s enough to make you broody or else there’s something wrong with you, right?

The first question most newlywed wives are asked starts with ‘when’ and ends with ‘the patter of tiny feet’, but what if the answer to that question is, “never, out of choice” ?
Novelist Sonja Lewis knows this predicament, she is a 48-year-old who decided she didn’t want children and in a society she says is obsessed with procreation, it’s not a decision those around her have always taken so well.
Her new book, The Barrenness, tells the story of a 39-year-old advised by a childless aunt to start a family or “see your womanhood fade” and now she says she is campaigning to encourage women who feel, as she does, that motherhood isn’t for them.



Sonja Lewis’ novel, The Barrenness, is out now on Prymus Publications and available at Amazon.

The World at 7 Billion: Can We Stop Growing Now?



With global population expected to surpass 7 billion people this year, the staggering impact on an overtaxed planet is becoming more and more evident. A two-pronged response is imperative: empower women to make their own decisions on childbearing and rein in our excessive consumption of resources.
by robert engelman

Demographers aren’t known for their sense of humor, but the ones who work for the United Nations recently announced that the world’s human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year. Since censuses and other surveys can scarcely justify such a precise calculation, it’s tempting to imagine that the UN Population Division, the data shop that pinpointed the Day of 7 Billion, is hinting that we should all be afraid, be very afraid.

We have reason to be. The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world’s population has gained yet another 4.5 billion. Never before have so many animals of one species anything like our size inhabited the planet.

And this species interacts with its surroundings far more intensely than any other ever has. Planet Earth has become Planet Humanity, as we co-opt its carbon, water, and nitrogen cycles so completely that no other force can compare. For the first time in life’s 3-billion-plus-year history, one form of life — ours — condemns to extinction significant proportions of the plants and animals that are our only known companions in the universe.

For full article:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Engelman is executive director of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C. The Population Institute awarded his book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, the Global Media Award for Individual Reporting in 2008. A former newspaper reporter who covered science and politics, Engelman served on the faculty of Yale University as a visiting lecturer in the early 2000s and was founding secretary of the Society of Environmental Journalists.