Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Resource collapse is bigger than peak oil, and bigger even than the projected depletion of natural gas, coal and uranium – it encompasses each and every natural resource extracted, exploited or otherwise processed on an industrial scale. We’re experiencing problems with our living environment – climate, soil and water – that are more than just energy issues.
South Asians are seeing more work on the ground and hearing more policy announcements about urban development than ever before. For many who live in and around towns and cities in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (where South Asia’s biggest cities lie) this could be a good thing. The trouble is: national governments and planning authorities in Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi are tending more and more to follow a single ideology – economic growth will drive down poverty – and a primary route to that misplaced objective, which is greater urbanisation.
Is global warming caused by too many people? This begins a series of articles in which Climate & Capitalism editor Ian Angus shows that population numbers can conceal far more than they reveal.
(First-hand report)
At the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, the consistent message is ecological, indigenous, communitarian and anti-corporate. The great majority of speakers sound radical and have the support of the thousands of attendees.
A group of social and natural scientists and scholars in the humanities is starting the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB, pronounced “mob”). The admittedly ambitious aim is to change human behavior to avoid a collapse of global civilization.
In Africa and elsewhere, burgeoning population growth threatens to overwhelm already over-stretched food supply systems. But the next agricultural revolution needs to get local — and must start to see rising populations as potentially part of the solution.
-Is Africa underpopulated?
-Zambia’s farming revolution poster boy
-Africa’s banking laws shut out the poor: Yunus
Parents love their childless friends, often their only source of grown-up activities like, say, uninterrupted conversation. Or drinking and shooting pool (mmm…). Plus they’re good babysitters! Unchilded people love having relationships with kids. Children love hanging out with adults who are independent and adventurous; they need uncles and aunties. Human communities are ecosystems, and in all ecosystems diversity is the key to health and resilience.
Here’s the dirty little secret that we’re never supposed to say in mixed company: There are a lot of perks to childfree living, not to mention a lot of green good that comes from bringing fewer beings onto a polluted and crowded planet. [Also, Stephanie Mills video on her decision to remain childless]
Beyond dwindling oil production leading to an economic nose-dive, Yemen faces a plethora of other problems; overpopulation, unemployment, poverty, malnourishment, violence etc. A significant part of its scarce water resources are used for cultivating the mildly narcotic and widely popular plant qat. Yemen is a country heading for collapse.
The National Intelligence Council has released a report on the expected effects of climate change to the Caribbean region. This 21 page report is entitled Mexico, The Caribbean and Central America: The Impact of Climate Change to 2030: Geopolitical Implications (NIC Conference Report, Jan. 2010). The report is authored by a team of private researchers under the Global Climate Change Research Program contract with the CIA’s Office of the Chief Scientist.
Should climate activists and feminists support campaigns to slow population growth? Laurie Mazur says that alliance will strengthen the movement. Ian Angus strongly disagrees …
