The Sierra Club has an excellent profile on Ethiopia, which demonstrates the need for family planning funding
Energy Bulletin describes the possibly devastating effects of releasing naturally occurring methane gas pockets from the sea floor
Population Connection's Blog
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Two interesting articles
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Consumption Factor
What's Your Consumption Factor
Interesting op-ed written by Jared Diamond about how consumption places a greater strain on natural resources than population. If everyone in the world consumed at the rate the Unites States does we would soon be out of resources all together. Insightful article that will make you think. -
One Voice Summit
This is the summary of the One Voice Summit from last year. The event will be held again in the spring of 2008 and we will be posting updates as it gets closer.
The 11th annual One Voice Summit was once again a great success! Along with the Sierra Club, SIECUS, and Advocates for Youth, Population Connection was able to host 98 activists in April of 2007. Participants flew to Washington DC from all over the country to participate in the weekend activist training and ensuing lobby meetings with members of Congress.
The participants received two days of comprehensive training on grassroots activism, successful communications strategies, community action plans, and how to convey their message effectively in their lobby appointments. Topic sessions were conducted to introduce activists to the specific asks they would be presenting to the lawmakers. Special courses included a sample of an abstinence-only sex education course and a session on population and climate change with Robert Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute.
After the training, constituents met with their Members on Capital Hill. A total of 247 congressional appointments were attended. The people who participated in the One Voice Summit gained useful skills in community organizing, media advocacy, and lobbying, and became more familiar with the population issues that face the world today. -
Open Forum
Current mood:
Hey to all our new friends! We want this space to be an informal place for people to talk about how population growth affects them and the things they care about. Also, we would love to have you share stories about difficulty in obtaining birth control because of self-righteous pharmacists, ridiculous things you learned in your abstinence-only sex ed classes, etc.
hopeful
I first started thinking about population growth as a problem when I was on Semester at Sea in college. We went to India and some other very crowded countries and I was struck by how it seemed like they just couldn't get ahead of the population growth. They couldn't create enough jobs, build enough houses, or grow enough food to satisfy demand. It seemed out of control.
Then I moved to the Washington DC area four years ago. I have witnessed countless developments built on previously wild land, horrendous traffic problems due to too many cars on highways not wide enough to accommodate them, and housing prices that are just ridiculous.
I can envision a world where population growth skids to a stop and finally reverses and it is very appealing. People are wonderful and children are great, but the fact is that the natural world and the people that live in it would benefit from far fewer people on Earth.
Thoughts?3:59 PM-
Post a comment...
- Eli3 years ago
Additionally, my thoughts are, as difficult as it is to 'keep up with the demands of growth' in India, etc, look at the midwest and the problems they have with population loss. Some towns there are considering tearing housing down and starting over. I'd love to hear from anyone who thinks they have a handle on the problem. PD James wrote a book (fiction) concerning the effects of population decrease. Just to for the record, I'm all for ZPG and have been since I was about 7.
- Eli3 years ago
I've approached ZPG about the fact (yup, prety much stone cold fact) that the world's economic model is pretty much built on organic population growth. Of course, the world can't go on indefinitely this way. Projections show a population 'bottleneck' somewhere around the year 2050. I don't know the number off hand, but 12 million or so rings a bell. After 12 mil the population's supposed to decline. I haven't been able to ascertain what causes the deflation in population increase and what the economic and social models are for such an occurrence. I'll be long gone by then, but my child won't, and she's what concerns me. Those are my thoughts.
- 5 years ago
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