Thanks to Dave Paxson for this press release.
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PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 8, 2008
Contact:
Kelly Boatman, Chair, City of Bloomington Environmental Commission
(812) 287-0031
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMISSION ADDRESSES GROWTH
The City of Bloomington Environmental Commission has adopted a position statement and completed a report to increase awareness of growth and sustainable development. The statement, “Position of the City of Bloomington Environmental Commission on Economic Growth in the United States” is modeled on similar statements issued by the United States Society for Ecological Economics and over 40 other groups inspired by the work of the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy (CASSE). The statement advocates a steady state economy in which resource consumption and waste production are maintained within the environment’s capacity to regenerate resources and assimilate waste, emphasizing development as a qualitative, rather than quantitative, process. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to Joe Starinchak of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for this article. You may have already heard of Noosa Shire, Australia but, if not, it’s nice to have an example of a community that values its biodiversity and natural landscapes, is aware of carrying capacity, and as a result has capped its population and is actively seeking a steady state economy. Could this ever happen in Vermont?
Many thanks to Fred Meyerson for this article from Nature (Reports). He and several other demographers who work on population and climate issues are quoted.
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When Brian O’Neill migrated to population research six years ago, he was surprised to find it a rather sparsely populated field. Looking for a wider-angle approach to the work he did in climate modelling, he decided to address the one important factor that he felt was being left out of emissions projections. Put simply, that factor was people: how many there are, how old they are and where they live. Unexpectedly, few other researchers were taking this kind of population information into account. “I entered a sparsely populated area of demography,” he says.
With one foot in each camp, O’Neill, who is now based at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is ideally placed to gauge why research on population seldom enters into climate change equations. “The assumption of emissions scientists is that population isn’t really important,” he says. But, he adds, it doesn’t help that it’s also a politically sticky topic. Say the words ‘population policy’, and many people still think of China’s one-child system, or campaigns of forced sterilization.
The world’s poorest countries have one thing in ever greater abundance: people.
“Nearly all of world population growth is now concentrated in the world’s poorer countries,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based independent research organization.
Currently 1.2 billion people live in countries classified as developed by the United Nations, compared with 5.5 billion in less developed regions, PRB said in its annual Population Data Sheet, released Monday.
In case you have not seen Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado-Boulder give a talk on population, peak oil and the exponential function, please watch these You Tube videos.
For anyone planning to be interviewed on a talk show or a news program, the findings from this poll may be useful in helping to frame their statements about population issues.
Muslim leaders in Kenya’s North Eastern Province have resolved to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV.
The decision was made after a recent meeting on the theme of “Islam and Health”, attended by more than 60 Muslim scholars and teachers in the provincial capital of Garissa.
“A lot of money is being wasted to poison our community … a huge amount of money is spent on buying condoms, buying immorality,” Sheikh Mohamud Ali, of Garissa district, told IRIN/PlusNews.
Thanks to John Tanton for reminding me of this 1971 paper by Garrett Hardin, which seems fitting in response to some of the recent disasters to strike Asia.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt attempted to ease concerns Thursday that the Bush administration is planning to issue new rules that would limit women’s access to birth control.
Under federal law, institutions may not discriminate against individuals who refuse to perform abortions or provide a referral for one. The Health and Human Services Department is considering requiring health care providers and organizations to certify their compliance with the law, but in doing so, lawmakers and several interest groups worried that the administration was attempting to lump contraceptives into its definition of abortion.
