This short web page, Hooked on a System That No Longer Serves, saved me from writing a post I’d been considering.  Please read it and watch this related video from the same source:

Dave Gardner produced this public service announcement last week to submit to ABC News for the upcoming special, Earth 2100. The spokeswoman is Citizen-Powered Media board member Stephanie Gardner.  I can’t wait for Dave wrap up his documentary Hooked on Growth, and  you can help him complete it.

More to come on this film and Dave’s approach.

[update:  Dave says one of the most important things to do now is get the word out about his project so  when the film is released there is as big an audience as possible eagerly waiting.  Note too he's been invesrting his time, energy, and I suspect not a little of his own money in this for four years,  in between doing his day job (also film related) and being a normal human being like the rest of us.   The parts of the project I've been exposed to so far are  fascinating, insightful, and more critical to the current world situation that ever before.  If enough of us help, maybe Hooked on Growth can compete with An Inconvenient Truth for the most influential documentary award if anybody is offering one of those.  Then I can stop writing this blog and relax. ]

Add Verdurous to your feed reader.  The “green ramblings of a thirty-something Australian” are just as good as ever and well worth your time.  Among his recent posts are this video about clean coal technology — short and very engaging — and this smart, witty piece about economic growth.

Especially though I liked this fascinating hour-long panel discussion about what’s going on with the economy and why at the City University of New York graduate school with

• Canadian journalist, author, and activist Naomi Klein [her web site, Wikipedia entry]
• economist Hernando de Soto (who Time magazine called one of the 100 most influential people in the world), “a Peruvian economist known for his work on the informal economy and on the importance of property rights. He is the president of Peru’s Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), located in Lima.”[Wikipedia entry]
• Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank who has said, “If our patterns of living, our patterns of consumption are imitated, as others are striving to do, the world probably is not viable.” [his website, Wikipedia entry]
• and moderator David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center — City University of New York

It’s sheer pleasure to listen to an in depth discussion among four intelligent, well-qualified people about a complex and important topic, and Verdurous provided the path to that nourishment for the mind.

[A previous post inspired by this Ozian.]

The 60th anniversary, still a lot to be done. But it is a start.

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and “to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.”

Watch and listen to The Price of Silence, a “music video that brings together 16 of the worlds top musicians—some of whom have fled oppressive regimes—in a rousing musical plea to guarantee human rights for all. ” [h/t change.org]

Even though not formally legally binding, the Declaration has been adopted in or influenced most national constitutions since 1948. It also serves as the foundation for a growing number of international treaties and national laws and international, regional, national and sub-national institutions protecting and promoting human rights. [source]

Full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  follows.  Have you ever read it?

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

[source]

John Feeney formerly of the Growth is Madness! blog has done something special in organizing the Global Population Speak Out which will take place during February 2009. Read the letter and note the stellar group who have signed on. It’s a brilliant idea and I will being doing my part to support it in my local community. Maybe you can too.

As noted by the Global Sensemaking community there is no one isolated issue facing us with the status of “most important” but rather an interlocking set of global wicked problems. We hear about climate change and issues around oil and energy in the mainstream media, but rarely about population pressure and not much regarding

• poverty
• water and food supply sustainability
• the destructive aspects economic growth
• declining biodiversity
• equal access to basic education and medical care for all
• equal rights for women world wide
• the production of and market for weapons

My sense is we need a label for this, a word that conveys that the number one problem we face as a global community is really this entanglement of several imporant issues all of which need attention but each of which can only be addressed effectively by understanding the interwoven nature of the collection. “Global wicked problems” has been suggested and I’ll use it until a more compelling one comes to mind.

So if population is but one of a rats nest of difficult problems, why am I going to the trouble of organizing a local event in support of the Global Population Speak Out? Because it is one of the wicked problems and John is exactly right when he says

…there exists today a taboo of sorts against public discussion of the population issue.

Several of us have written about that taboo and I want to use the GPSO in February to address it explicitly by acknowledging the rational (and irrational) concerns that give the taboo life and show that in spite of these fears we need to open up the discussion of wicked problems to include population pressure. By their nature, wicked problems must be solved as a system. Leaving out population issues will ensure we don’t solve any of them.

More to come as I get my material pulled together. Meanwhile check out the wealth of resources John has pulled together. The venue I have in mind is in Bethesda, MD, so if you are interested and in the Washington DC area please get in touch.

Frank Rich, writing in his New York Times column:

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever turn against the war in Iraq or definitively reject Bush governance or elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k). Few wanted to take yes for an answer.

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

If we can be so wrong about those things, perhaps it’s possible we are wrong about how we Americans will respond to population pressure, CO2 emissions, land degradation, and water shortages in our own country and poverty worldwide.

Read Rich’s refreshing column and if you’re in need of a good laugh follow this link which he provides.

Another long, fine article by Pollan in the NYT Magazine:

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study.

In 1940 0.43 calories of fossil fuel were used to produce one calorie of food.  Today it is 10 to 1; that’s 23 times more fossel fuel to create the same amount of food.

Read the whole article. It’s rich in detail and shows the connection between our food and health systems.

In a short and to the point essay, NYT columnist Bob Hebert says what I’ve been thinking for a long time.  Since 1980 the USA has been leaning to the right for so long we have now fallen over.

Update:  His conservative colleague David Brooks chimes in:

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.

The political effects of this trend have been obvious. Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions — Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone. …

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment. …

And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.

This graph of world population growth probably doesn’t provide the scare factor it once did. We see it too often nowadays. Still, the population trend of the last 200 years can’t be ignored when thinking about the sort of world the next generation will inherit, the world as it will be in just 42 years.

The 9.2 billion projection for 2050 is the “medium variant” from the UN WPP2006 report (see “notes” below for links). The 7.8 number is “low variant” which assumes a fertility rate of 0.5 children/woman less than the medium scenario.

The editorial that prompted the previous post offers this way to think of the population growth the world is experiencing:

The annual increase in population of about 79 million means that every week an extra 1.5 million people need food and somewhere to live. This amounts to a huge new city each week, somewhere, which destroys wildlife habitats and augments world fossil fuel consumption.

This incredible growth also means we can not begin to solve the problem of extreme poverty let alone those built on its back — terrorism and environmental degradation — without getting a handle on population growth.

The current world population of 6.7 billion is double that of 40 years ago. We are now poised to add 2.5 billion more to that number in the next 40 years — even though about half of the people alive today live in what an American (or European or Japanese) can only think of as abject poverty, that is, living on less than $2.50/day which produces some mix (and for some all) of the following conditions:

• without adequate safe water for cooking, washing, and drinking
• without adequate sanitation
• without adequate nutrition
• without adequate medical and educational resources
• without adequate access to capital to improve their conditions

Here’s another way to look at world population growth:

The “medium variant” assumes fertility on average will continue to decline, mortality will on average improve, and we will gradually improve the treatment for HIV/AIDS, in short, current trends will continue. The “low variant” assumes on average a fertility rate of 0.5 less than the medium.

Numbers of special interest:

• 2.5, the difference in billions between current and projected population in the medium “business as usual” scenario. This is about the current population size of India and China combined. It took a couple hundred thousand years to get to the first 2.5 billion, but in the next 42 years we will add that same amount.
• 1.1, the difference in billions between current and projected population in the “low” scenario, about the current population size of India.
• 1.4, the difference in billions between the medium and low variants of the 2050 population projections (9.2 – 7.8), about the current population size of China.

In either scenario in the next 42 years we are going to increase world population by at least the number of people now living in India, and in the medium variant, the business as usual scenario, we’ll add another China as well.

where will the additional people go?

The population increase is not evenly distributed. Here we’ll look at three country groups:

The most developed — Europe (including Eastern Europe and Russia), Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

The least developed, the 50 poorest countries — 34 in Africa, 10 in Asia, 5 in Oceania, and Haiti in the Carribbean. Among them are names that frequently occur in the news: Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chad, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Liberia, Myanmar, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen.

All the rest, notably including India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Korea’s, Vietnam, Thailand, all of Latin American as well as most of the Middle East and Northern Africa.

The first part of the answer to where is the population going to increase is “not in the rich world.”

The most developed countries experience a population decline of 0.1 billion in the low scenairo and show no change overall in the medium. The notable exception is the USA which increases by 0.04 (more than one California) in the low variant and 0.1 billion (three Californias) in the medium.

In both scenarios the least developed nations (the least stable, the most voilatile) about double in size, going from significantly fewer people than the most developed countries to significantly more. The increase here is between 0.7 to 0.9 billion.

The population change between now and 2050 in the “other” countries is between 0.5 and 1.5 billion.

choice

Using the medium and low variants as a basis, our choice is a stark one. In just 42 years our currently overcrowded, ecologically stressed world that’s having a hard time finding enough water, food, energy, medical care, and capital to go around, we either add another India or another India and another China — 1.1 billion more or 2.5 billion more. How do we compassionately achieve the lower end of the range?

Part of the answer lies in empowering women and providing family planning information and contraception services to everyone as discussed here and here. Another part is getting religious leaders to help which is addressed in that second link and also here.

In Iran religious leaders encouraged a reduction in the birthrate through education and contraception and in a few years a very high birthrate was brought down to a reasonable level then to the replacement rate. In the Philippines where the Catholic church holds sway religious leaders fundamentally oppose any use of contraception even though, quite notably, business leaders understand and approve of family planning and the use of contraceptives. The Philippines is struggling to cope with its high population growth, increasing wealth disparity, and increasing numbers of poor people.

Contrary to the much bandied about assumption that fertility rates only come down as the standard of living rises, proactive programs to teach and encourage family planning and the availability of contraceptives have a real impact aside from changes in income.

direction

The economist Jeffery Sachs provides an intelligent, informed way forward in The of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time. Sachs, an advisor to a number of countries since the late 1980’s (including Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China, & India), has led many countries in the transition from communism to market economies.

notes

Data for population prior to 1950 is from this paper by the Optimum Population Trust. The data from 1950 to the present and projected to 2050 comes from the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision (WPP2006). WPP2006 presents 11 different projections based on differing assumptions about fertility, mortality, and international migration. (See here for the details.) The one most often cited is the medium variant used in the diagram above which assumes,

Total fertility in all countries is assumed to converge eventually toward a level of 1.85 children per woman. However, not all countries reach this level during the projection period, that is, by 2045-2050. Projection procedures differ slightly depending on whether a country had a total fertility above or below 1.85 children per woman in 2000-2005.

“We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.” — Terri Swearingen

Not often that population pressure gets attention from the mainstream press:

• July 25, in The Guardian, Doctors’ advice to Britons: have fewer children and help save the planet
• August 27, in the Chicago Tribune, Scientists: Save the planet — have fewer kids

Both articles are based on an editorial published in the British Medical Journal, Population growth and climate change: Universal access to family planning should be the priority by John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health, and Pip Hayes, general practitioner. Guillebaud is a co-founder and Hayes a trustee of the Optimum Population Trust.

[H/T to August and Sparky at the The Environment Site.org.]

For context see Too many people: Earth’s population problem at the Optimum Population Trust.

What if through enhancing education, contraceptive availability, and women’s rights we could achieve a peak global population of 7.8 billion in the next 40 to 50 years? Although still 1.1 billion more than today’s population, that’s 1.4 billion fewer people on the planet than the 9.2 the UN projects in that time frame if we go about business as usual. Think of the impact on global demand for water, food, living space, and energy. Think of the reduced production of CO2, the biodiversity that won’t be destroyed, the human conflicts over resources that could be avoided. Think of the increased quality of life the smaller population number (1.4 billion less) makes possible.

Should we now explain to … couples who plan a family that stopping at two children, or at least having one less child than first intended, is the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren? We must not put pressure on people, but by providing information on the population and the environment, and appropriate contraception for everyone (and by their own example), doctors should help to bring family size into the arena of environmental ethics….

Of course this sort of thinking only applies if we care about the kind of planet we choose to leave to future generations.

See also are we bacteria or primates?.

Can’t help myself. Just got to make this small comment. If you’re not aware of the current PZ fiasco don’t bother reading this.

Paul Myers (aka PZ) of Pharyngula fame (which by implication now means evangelical atheist and status as the blogosphere’s Richard Dawkins) wrote an incendiary post recently causing a big dust up. No surprise there. That’s what PZ does when not writing interesting essays about biology. It’s also why I don’t read his blog anymore in spite of those fine science pieces. Too little science too many inflammatory screeds; used to be the other way ’round.

As for the dust up, Mike Dunford offers excellent background, analysis, and a way forward. John Wilkins takes a colder, analytical view. And of course there’s Tristero with some wisdom and many others neatly organized by Bora at A Blog Around the Clock who adds much to the discussion by talking about his experience in Yugoslavia.

I have just this little bit to add.

PZ’s original post is titled IT’S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!. Everyone knows “frack” is a euphemism for “fuck,” a very old and useful Anglo-Saxon word not used in polite conversation because most people hear it as an offensive curse word. So PZ avoids it — then goes on to write the most offensive post imaginable.

Strikes me as inconsistent, even irrational.

For my history with PZ just put “myers” into the search box at the top of the page. (Or click here.) What irritates me about the current incident is how it feeds the extremists on both ends of the spectrum who in large part get just what they want (more righteous indignation from their supporters and more press) while shedding no additional light on anything.

Addendum

I think Mark C. Chu-Carroll gets it just about right.