Power of the People

The BBC adds this interesting take to the flurry of human population related news stories that have come out over the past week or so (anyone know what the impetus for these have been?).  Here is the question posed by the BBC story:

As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.

Unfortunately, ideas for how to manage human population growth do indeed have a history that is more than a little tinged with the inequities associated with race, class, and socio-economic power.  The eugenics and Social Darwin movements are cases in point.  More recently, the Sierra Club experienced a vigorous internal debate over its stance on population growth and immigration (mostly the illigal kind) into the US.  The beginning of this article gives a brief synopsis.  The potential inequities associated with managing human population have also been explored in a number of movies and books.  In Time just out in theatres has a Logan's Run-esque plot: people are only allowed to live until 25 as a way to sustainably manage resource use on the planet.  However, rich people can buy their way out the social contract....they get to live forever!

And of course managing population growth also always involves a whole other range of hot button issues such as the proper role of government in people's lives, abortion and other methods of contraception, and  religion.  Its perhaps because of these complexities that population growth is rarely talked about explicitly when we are thinking about sustainable resource management.

The Oldest Conflict

I came across yet another story this week about the growing human demand for the world's resources.  This one is from this month's National Geographic and is about the Albertine Rift, part of the Great Rift Valley in Africa. The Rift Valley is where we have the first evidence of our earliest human ancestors, and for want of more detailed information we can probably think of it as the cradle of human civilization.  Today, it is a place of enormous natural resource capital and intense competition for that capital by humans.  This resource competition is probably one of the underlying causes of the horrific violence that has plagued the region over the past several decades.  In fact many of our conflicts tend to come down to battles over resources.  See this video of Wangari Maathai talking about the relationship between conflicts and resources.

The Big Short

In the absence of any comprehensive federal action on limiting our carbon emissions, individual states have started to act.  One of the most significant is California's cap and trade program that was just adopted.  Read about it in this LA Times story.  Cap and trade programs are a great example of attempts to "internalize" the economic benefits of ecosystem services (and the costs of degrading those ecosystem services).  We did not discuss this in class, but there is actually a good deal of debate about what the best ways of internalizing those costs and benefits are.  For instance, there has been a vigorous policy debate about whether cap and trade systems or simple taxes on carbon emissions would produce the best results.  Check out this debate on the subject.   Other folks have questioned the value of the whole market approach altogether.  See this opinion piece by Larry Lohmann published originally in the New Scientist and this Film by Annie Leonard called the Story of Cap and trade

Green Acres

Check out this story about a commercial urban farm in New York City.  Think about this in this week's theme of human population growth and resource use, the idea of urban farming is an intriguing one.  I am just guessing (since I don't think we have any actual data to inform us), but I suspect that growing vegetables on a rooftop in NYC is more energy intensive then growing them on a traditional farm upstate. But what if the alternative is clearing a patch of second growth deciduous forest....or a patch of rainforest to provide food for our growing more resource intensive populations?

The last anchovy

Another story this week about human population growth, demand for resources, and the fate of the planet.  This one in the Washington Post.  It includes several nice photo essays.

7 billion

There was an interesting Op-ED piece in the New York Times this past Sunday by the Mathematical Ecologist Joel Cohen.  In it Dr. Cohen muses on the implications of our population passing the 7 billion mark.  It is an interesting read.  The Washington Post also has several human population related stories this week, including this infographic, this story about how we measure human population growth, and this story about the economic practicalities of managing human demographics

Commercialism

Check out this commercial from Chipotle.  It features Willie Nelson doing a nifty  version of Cold Play's The Scientist.  I sort of miss Chris Martin's falsetto, but who can argue with Willie?  The video itself is an interesting parable of sustainable agriculture.  I'm not sure what to make of it.  Can a corporation (or technically the non profit arm of a corporation) have lofty goals and ideals?  Doesn't it by necessity always come down to money and profits for shareholders?  Or is the dichotomy between profit and idealism a false one?

On an entirely different tangent, what is the value of a two minute commercial like this?  Is it educational?  Simplistic pablum?  Propaganda?

Shut Your Pie Hole

NPR and the New York Times had stories this week about the 64th anniversary of the first televised presidential address.  I'm not sure what prompted the press interest (although granted it was a momentous change in how we interact with our Presidents), but I found the actual speech Harry Truman gave to be interesting for a couple of reasons.  Truman asked Americans to stop eating so much so that we could send the surplus food to our friends and defeated enemies in Europe who were starving.  Among other things Truman suggested that we should refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays, and poultry and eggs on Thursdays.  The idea was to give the grain that would have gone to feeding livestock (to produce those meat and dairy products) instead directly to hungry people. The food shortage that Truman was trying to tackle was caused by war.  But a number of people fear that if we don't do anything to curb population growth, reduce the per capita consumption of the relatively well off, or improve food production, that we are headed for a more profound and long-term shortfall in our food supply.  A number of people have focused on the consumption bit, particularly our love of woefully inefficient to produce meat.  See this video of Mark Bittman (its also on our class reading list).  Apparently Truman was ahead of the times!

Another thing that struck me was the blunt and almost moralizing tone that Truman had.  He basically says that you would be selfish, heartless, and even un-American if you didn't do your part to lessen world hunger.  I am not sure what the reception to Truman's speech was, but I suspect that it was nothing like the response that our First Lady  received from some over her Let's Move campaign to encourage kids to be more active and to have healthier eating habits.  Can you imagine the reaction if President Obama said that we should re-introduce meatless Tuesdays to help lessen the strain on our planet?

Home Sweet Home

Check out this you YouTube clip.  It's taken largely from a longer film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand called HOME http://www.homethemovie.org/, and uses  music by Armand Amar. Setting aside a discussion of the film's agenda, by themselves the images of our planet are pretty amazing.