World Population Awareness

In 1969, President Nixon issued to Congress a "Message on Population." Referring to the expectation of the time that the U.S. population might exceed 300 million by the year 2000, he said:

This growth will produce serious challenges for our society. I believe that many of our present social problems may be related to the fact that we have had only fifty years in which to accommodate the second hundred million Americans. In fact, since 1945 alone some 90 million babies have been born in this country. We have thus had to accommodate in a very few decades an adjustment to population growth which was once spread over centuries. And now it appears that we will have to provide for a third hundred million Americans in a period of just 30 years.

U.S. Population Milestones

1915: 100,000,000     1967: 200,000,000    2006: 300,000,000

California's Population Takes Aim at 38 Million

California, the most populous state in the U.S., is predicted to reach a population of 38 billion in May, according to On Numbers' latest population estimates.

Texas was next, reaching 26 million on New Years Day, New York is at 19,442,080, Florida 19,221,784 and Illinois 12,906,281.

Is Economy Best Birth Control? US Births Dip Again

For the third year in a row, U.S. births have dropped. Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since record-keeping began in the 1940s.

"I don't think there's any doubt now that it was the recession. It could not be anything else," said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization.

In 2007, U.S. births reached an all-time high at more than 4.3 million. Now it is just over 4 million, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For teens, birth rates dropped 9% from 2009. For women in their early 20s, they fell 6%. For unmarried mothers, the drop was 4%.

It seems that women who are worried about money, particularly younger women, feel they can't afford to start a family or add to it.

While birth rates fell for younger women, for women 40 and older, they rose. Those who face a closing biological window for having children and may be more worried about that than the economy.

The total fertility rate, which tells how many children a woman can be expected to have if current birth rates continue fell from 2.1 to 1.9.

For Hispanic women total fertility rate rate fell from 3 children to 2.4 in just a few years. Haub suggested that some young women who immigrated to the United States for jobs or other opportunities may have left.

U.S.: How the Budget Deficit Could Lead to Generational Warfare

Today Republicans and Democrats. In the future there may be a divisive fight between generations over who should pick up the tab for baby boomer retirement and medical expenses.

Recently the House approved the 2012 budget plan which would cut $6 trillion from federal spending over the next 10 years, but it is not expected get far in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.

The choice is to raise the federal debt ceiling or face a recovery-ending default on U.S. securities. We should also ask who should pay for closing annual budget gaps that will add trillions of dollars to our $14 trillion-plus national debt for years and years.

There is now some hesitation to ask older Americans to pay much of the price tag for fixing the enormous structural deficits built into Medicare and Medicaid, and, to a much smaller extent, Social Security. Meanwhile, even the relatively modest $38 billion in spending cuts agreed to for the rest of this fiscal year will inflict some real social costs on younger Americans, including a half-billion dollar cut to nutrition and healthcare aid to low-income women and their young children.

All current retirees and more than half of the baby boom generation comprise a cohort of Medicare recipients that is bankrupting the system, not the much smaller population of people who will be retiring in later decades. According to a study by the Urban Institute, most Medicare beneficiaries receive much more in benefits than they pay into the Medicare trust fund in payroll taxes.

A commission appointed by President Obama proposed specific plans to close Social Security's long-term deficits. As it is now structured, Social Security will be able to pay all benefits until the year 2037, at which time it could afford to pay out only 78% of benefits. But President Obama said he would not accept reforms that reduced benefits for current Social Security recipients.

The impact of these deficit-reduction proposals is thus like a giant transfer tax on younger generations. A recent study of the U.S. budget dilemma by economists with the International Monetary Fund concluded that our deficits can only be closed at an enormous intergenerational price.

"Unless currently living Americans pay more in net taxes or unless government spending on current generations is curtailed, future Americans will face net tax rates that are about 21 1/2 percentage points" higher, the study concluded.

U.S. 'Heartland' Near Historic Shift From Midwest

U.S. Census Bureau 2010 figures show that America's population center is edging away from the Midwest, pulled by Hispanic growth in the Southwest. The historic shift is changing the nation's politics and even the traditional notion of the country's heartland long the symbol of mainstream American beliefs and culture.

The four fastest-growing states - Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho - are in the West and the West has surpassed the Midwest in population.. California and Texas added to the southwestern population tilt, making up more than one-fourth of the nation's total gains since 2000.

Robert Lang, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas said: "It's a pace-setting region that is dominant in population growth but also as a swing point in American politics."

The Phoenix suburb of Peoria, Arizona has soared past its namesake Peoria, Illinois, in population size. With Arizona on track to surpass Ohio in electoral votes by midcentury, based on projected growth, issues important to the West gain in political significance.

The Census Bureau calculates the mean U.S. center every 10 years based on its national head count. The center represents the middle point of the nation's population distribution the geographic point at which the country would balance if each of its 308.7 million residents weighed the same.

The 2010 census figures will mean a loss of House seats for states including Missouri and some of those east of it, primarily in the Midwest's declining Rust Belt.

In Arizona, which gains a House seat, Hispanics accounted for roughly half of the state's population increase since 2000, according to census estimates. Arizona has picked up at least one House seat every decade since 1950.

The Western U.S. grew 13.8% from 2000, surpassing the Midwest as the second most populous region. The West's growth rate is nearly equal to the South's, which rose 14.3% on the Sun Belt strength of Texas and Florida.

California did not gain a congressional seat. Los Angeles posted a gain over the past decade of just under 100,000 people, its smallest numerical growth since 1890-1900, as many of its Hispanic residents moved elsewhere. The state, the nation's largest with 37.3 million, continues to grow primarily from immigration and births.

US California: Sacramento Region Grows at Double State's Rate, Census Shows...

Census figures show that, from 2000 to 2010 in California's population grew 10% to 37.3 million., Latinos grew by 28% to 14 million while Asians grew by 31% to 4.8 million. Non-Hispanic whites decreased by 5% and African-Americans dropped 1%.

The Sacramento region grew by 353,000, or 20%, now with 2.15 million residents. Both its Asian and Hispanic communities increased by 55%. Whites no longer make up the majority of Sacramento County's population.

Placer County grew 40% lagging behind Riverside County. The Placer County town of Lincoln grew by nearly 300%. Citrus Heights and South Lake Tahoe lost residents - a fact that could cost them millions of dollars over the next decade due to redistricting.

Since the Central Valley grew faster than the state, it will likely get more representation in the state legislature and U.S. House of Representatives.

U.S. Population Impact Map at NumbersUSA

NumbersUSA believes that federal immigration policies are the cause of most U.S. population growth. The clickable population maps on this website (follow the link) will help you see at a glance where immigration is driving the most population growth and radical change across the country. Nearly every county that is colored for high growth either (a) has had a lot of immigration, or (b) has had a lot of migration of Americans fleeing other parts of the state or country. You can click on the metro areas on a state map to obtain zoomed-in maps.

NOTE: the maps do an excellent job of showing population growth, which is horrific in many places. They do not actually show where growth is due to direct immigration, or flight from other areas due to traffic congestion or other factors, as opposed to a high birth rate.

Hey, You're Standing on My Foot! the U.S. Population is Projected to Reach 400 Million by 2043

If the U.S. population, now approximately 300 million, were to keep increasing at the current rate, we'll reach 400 million by 2043. "Population growth is the ever expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie," Lester Brown of the Earth Policy says. "It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, a growing dependence on imported oil and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."

In other developed countries, populations have either slightly dropped or stayed constant. "It may be time for the United States to establish a national population policy, one that would lead toward population stabilization sooner rather than later," Brown says. It may be important to switch the focus toward population stabilization and then decide how to stretch the resources among society.

U.S.: Ben Franklin's Sister - Poor Jane’s Almanac

The Republican's new economic plan this month is called "The Path to Prosperity," a nod to an essay written by Benjamin Franklin, called "The Way to Wealth."

Franklin was the youngest of 10 sons. His sister Jane, 6 years his junior, was the youngest of seven daughters. Their family was poor, which meant that, in school, boys learned to write but girls only learned to read. Jane never went to school. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.

At 17, Franklin ran away from home. At 15, Jane married Edward Mecom; and she was probably pregnant, since a third of all brides then were. She and her brother wrote letters to each other all their lives: his were learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers were misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow.

Franklin told his sister: "You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women," and he was right.

He wrote the "The Way to Wealth" and a famous autobiography, and his picture is on the $100 bill.

She had one child after another and struggled, and failed, to keep her familiy out of debtors' prison, the almshouse, asylums. But she read, thirsting for knowledge.

She had 12 children and buried 11 of them.

The story of Jane Mecom is a reminder that, especially for women, escaping poverty has always depended on the opportunity for an education and the ability to control the size of their families.

In 1789 when Jane Mecom was 77, Boston, for the first time, allowed girls to attend public schools. The fertility rate began declining. The American Revolution made possible a new world, a world of fewer obstacles, a world with a promise of equality.

Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia in 1790 at the age of 84. He left Jane the house in which she lived and he gave one hundred pounds to the public schools of Boston.

Jane Mecom died in that house in 1794. Later her house was demolished to make room for a memorial to Paul Revere.

U.S. Population Landmarks

1915 - Margaret Sanger brought the diaphragm from the Netherlands to the U.S. It was the first truly effective birth control device under the control of women.

1916 - Margaret Sanger organized the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

1925 - Sanger's second husband financed the first manufacturing of the diaphragm in the U.S.

1950 - The U.S. population was 150 million.

1954 - The Hugh Moore Fund first used the term "population bomb" on their published pamphlet. He was a philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mantra was "Your cause is a lost cause unless you support family planning."

1960 - The "pill" was invented and became available to women for contraception.

1965 - Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending four decades of restricted immigration. This law, while removing limits based on country of origin, included provisions for family reunification, opening the door to "chain migration."

1965 - The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buxton and Griswold vs. Conn. legalized birth control for married couples offering "privacy of the bedroom."

1967 - U.S. population reached 200 million.

1968 - The Population Bomb, by Paul R. Ehrlich was published by the Sierra Club. This book laid the foundation for widespread concern about population growth among environmentalists and others that followed in the early years of the 1970's.

1968 - The organization Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was formed. There were dozens of local chapters throughout the country. ZPG later became Population Connection, with a focus on world population.

1970 - Earth Day was declared with population growth a major issue on the agenda. Dr. Mary Steichen Calderon, past medical director of the PPFA, established the Sex, Information and Education Council (SIECUS).

1972 - The Commission on Population and the American Future report, chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, stated "We have looked for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our economy does not depend upon it, nor does the vitality of business, nor the welfare of the average person." President Richard Nixon supported this and the National Security Study Memorandum 200 on population, both of which were defeated by Congress.

1972 - The Limits to Growth, is published by the Club of Rome. The book modeled the consequences of a rapidly growing population and finite resource supplies. The book was updated in 1993 and in 2004 under the name Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. In 1996 one of the authors, Donella Meadows, founded the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vt.

1973 - The U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade affirmed a women's the right to abortion.

US Ohio;: Women in Their 20s Lead Rise in Out-of-Wedlock Births

Up to 40% of last year's births among unmarried women, up from 29% in 1990. The birth rate among teens declined in 2006 to the lowest level on record. The increase has been led by women in their late 20s who have delayed marriage or are in live-in relationships. Behind are women in their 30s and 40s with college degrees and careers.

Appropriate partners may not be available due to death or incarceration. rw

Food for 9 Billion: Turning the Population Tide in the Philippines

This story also appeared on PBS NEWSHOUR. A related story can be found on American Public Media's Marketplace.

Fishing villages near the Danajon Double Barrier Reef off of Bohol Island in the southern Philippines are embracing birth control for the first time, not just as a means to plan their families but as a path to long-term food security, ensuring that future generations enjoy the same abundance of fish. The area is one of the richest marine biodiversity hot spots in the world. More than a million people depend on these fishing grounds for their main source of protein and livelihoods. As the population of this area has nearly tripled in the last three decades, the effect on the reef has been devastating.

Illegal fishing has become rampant. Many use dynamite or cyanide, indiscriminately killing everything within their reach.

The shift to smaller families in the rural fishing village Humayhumay is already paying dividends. Fishermen have created a marine preserve to help revive fish stocks. With smaller families, thinking about future generations is a luxury fishermen can afford.

Every year the Philippines, now with 100 million people, adds about 2 million more mouths to feed and isn't expected to stabilize its population until 2080, at 200 million. The country is already beyond its carrying capacity.

Jason Bostero: Family planning is helpful because if you control the number of your children, you don't need as many fish to support your family. If you have many children, it's difficult to support them." .. "My income is just right to feed us three times a day. It's really, really different when you have a small family."

Crisna Bostero: "In my case, we were really hard up before. Sometimes, we would only eat once a day because we were so poor. We couldn't go to school. I did not finish my school because there were just so many of us."

A community-based family planning programs has made birth control options like the pill accessible and affordable - at about 70 cents a month. Distributors are able to sell pills and condoms anytime. They are as easy as buying soft drinks or matches.

PATH Foundation Philippines, a group funded mostly through USAID, has made this possible, placing its emphasis on local partners and bringing access to the people. In just six years since the program was first established here, family sizes have dropped from as many as 12 children to a maximum of about four today.

The program shows how closely tied family planning is with environmental conservation and putting food on the table.

Jason and Crisna Bostero, both practicing Catholics, don't see a conflict between their religious beliefs and family planning. For them, it's about something much more immediate, like what kind of future they're going to pass on to their two children. " I don't want them to be like us, just to fish the sea, just to farm the land. This is not an easy way to earn a living."

Outside of Humayhumay, where birth control remains largely out of reach, the struggle to put food on the table from one day to the next dominates life. People have to collect government assistance checks for food.

Countries like Thailand and Indonesia have largely avoided this scene, thanks to state-sponsored family planning programs. But Congressman Walden Bello says in the Philippines, any efforts to do the same have faced stiff resistance.

The country is 80% Catholic and the Catholic church leadership opposes any form of artificial contraception and has rallied for a decade against a reproductive health bill in Congress that would guarantee universal access to birth control. Recently, it even threatened the president with excommunication for supporting the bill.

Filipino Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz says "if you have more mouths to feed, then produce more food to eat! Not the other way around."

But trying to produce more food tests the limits of ecosystems, both on land and sea. Today, the Philippines imports more rice than any other nation on the planet. And according to the World Bank, every major species of fish here shows signs of severe overfishing.

Technological advances to boost the food supply have not kept pace with the Philippine's surging population growth.

More than half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Instititute.

The future of the people in the Philippines could easily be overwhelmed by outside forces, in a world that's projected to have 9 billion mouths to feed by the middle of the century.

Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables, and Toxic Pollutants are Driving People from Their Homes

The Sahara desert is expanding in every direction, squeezing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria against the Mediterranean coast; moving into Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where farmers and herders are forced southward, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land. The desert is invading the Sahelian region of Africa -- the vast swath of savannah that separates the southern Sahara desert from the tropical rainforests of central Africa.

A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe.

In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water number in the thousands. In Brazil, some 250,000 square miles of land are affected by desertification, much of it concentrated in the country's northeast. In Mexico, many of the migrants who leave rural communities in arid and semiarid regions of the country each year are doing so because of desertification. Some of these environmental refugees end up in Mexican cities, others cross the northern border into the United States. U.S. analysts estimate that Mexico is forced to abandon 400 square miles of farmland to desertification each year.

In China, desert expansion has accelerated in each successive decade since 1950, with some 24,000 villages in northern and western China have been abandoned either entirely or partly, possibly resulting in tens of millions people migrating.

Since most of the 2.3 billion people that will be added to the world by 2050 will be born in countries where water tables are falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. Villages in northwestern India are being abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water. Eventually whole cities might have to be relocated, such as Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, home to 2 million people, and Quetta, in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, with 1 million.

Syria and Iraq have been overpumping their aquifers, and irrigation wells are going dry, forcing the abandonment of 160 villages In Syria, and uprooting more than 100,000 people in northern Iraq.

People who are trying to escape toxic waste or dangerous radiation levels are another category of environmental refugee. In the late 1970s, Love Canal in upstate New York was partially built on top of a toxic waste disposal site, resulting in a total of 950 families having to be permanently relocated. In the 1980s, the federal government arranged for the permanent evacuation and relocation of all 2,000 residents of Times Beach, Missouri, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered dioxin levels well above the public health standards.

China has more than 450 "cancer villages" and China's Ministry of Health statistics show that cancer is now the country's leading cause of death, and with little pollution control, whole communities near chemical factories are suffering from unprecedented rates of cancer. Young people are leaving for the city in droves, for jobs and possibly for better health. Yet many others are too sick or too poor to leave.

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion is another example. It spewed massive amounts of radioactive material were spewed into the atmosphere, showering communities in the region with heavy doses of radiation, requiring the resettlement of 350,400 people. In March 2011 a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan and badly damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

In general, environmental refugees are migrating from poor countries to rich ones, from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to North America and Europe. Some of the largest flows will be across national borders and they are likely to be illegal. The United States, Europe, and India are taking measures to prevent migration across their borders.

Maybe it is time for governments to consider whether it might not be cheaper and far less painful in human terms to treat the causes of migration rather than merely respond to it. This means working with developing countries to restore their economy's natural support systems -- the soils, the water tables, the grasslands, the forests -- and it means accelerating the shift to smaller families to help people break out of poverty.

Reality Vs. Wishful Thinking

Chris Clugston developed an analytical tool - "Societal Overextension Analysis" - that measured overshoot in a way that ecological footprint analysis did not, rendering it almost obsolete. In his analysis he has inventoried 89 metals and minerals that are critical to the operation of any industrial economy, and found that 69 of them are scarce and are getting scarcer. The Green Apostles of False Hope can imagine that substitutes will be found for one or two or even a dozen of them---but not most of them, and any one shortage can bring the industrial edifice down.

Industrialism is unsustainable; it doesn't matter if it is under capitalism or socialism. Are we going to build factories out of straw? And if they do that, then their next task is to demonstrate that any civilization is sustainable, given that agriculture itself is unsustainable.

Chris is not arguing that we should return to a pre-industrial society, but has found that "it's physically impossible going forward." What "we" want is irrelevant, because Mother Nature could not care less about our wants or needs. The fact is, we will not have affordably accessible natural non renewable resources available to enable that preferred lifestyle.

This civilization is going down. Deal with it. We are hooked to a resource utilization mix that can't indefinitely deliver the goods. Some will promise deliverance by tech fixes, but as Chris points out, you can't replenish an aquifer by fixing the pump - a more technically efficient extraction process will not offset the growing demand for the non-renewable resource that is in short supply.

We are conditioned to demand a happy ending. Even Al Gore needed to tack on a Hollywood ending to his documentary. The belief that "every problem has a solution" is, as he puts it, "part of our cultural DNA". The American "can do" spirit finds a voice even in people like Paul Ehrlich, who recently told Alex Smith that if America could transform its economy from building cars to building tanks and planes in just four years to win the Second World War, a similar transformation to a sustainable economy should also be possible. The problem is, these "solutions" worked during the epoch of "continuously more and more", they will fail in the coming epoch of "continually less and less."

Some of us say "If we live smaller and live simply, we can continue Business As Usual. in fact, we will enjoy more community and more intimacy." Others say, "If we share the wealth, all will be well". Or "If we can design a new banking system and a steady state economy, we can enjoy a new prosperity". Or "If we can secure our borders, we can reclaim American jobs for Americans". But the fact is that whatever we do to reduce, conserve, recycle and share, our current resource utilization behaviour is unsustainable. Ecological Footprint Analysis doesn't give us a comprehensive measure of overshoot because it fails to make the critical distinction between RNR-based (renewable natural resources) and NNR-based (nonrenewable natural resources) societies as Clugston does. The diminution of affordably accessible NNRs are the limiting factor. Environmentalists habitually accuse their critics of denial, but one might ask what kind of denial is it that raises the alarm bell at climate change but is seemingly oblivious to impending resource scarcities which will surely kill billions by privation and conflict long before rising temperatures and sea levels do their worst?

My goal? To promote the least painful transition. Rapid but managed de-growth.

A 'No-Growth' Boom Will Follow 2012 Global Crash

A systemic collapse of the global economy is coming - markets and capitalism - a collapse that may well eliminate billions of people from the planet. Only then, after that, a path to reform, recovery, a new boom. Investors should plan ahead for it.

The facts about the coming catastrophe are so obvious. Our planet's natural resources can reasonably support about 5 billion people but we have 7 billion today - 2 billion too many. We're consuming commodities and natural resources at a rate of 1.5 Earths, according to estimates by the Global Footprint Network of scientists and economists. Around 2050 we'll be 10 billion, according to the UN demographers. That's two times the 5 billion the Earth can reasonably support. Those 10 billion people will demand lifestyle improvements. That increases their consumption of scarce resources by 300% per person. Bottom line: 10 billion people will be consuming the equivalent of six Earths.

Thomas Friedman, author of "Hot, Flat, Crowded," writes: when we look back at "when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all ...: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we'd crossed some growth/climate/natural-resource/population redlines all at once?"

Paul Gilding, the author of a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World," wrote “The only answer can be denial," ... “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required."

Today his message is: “It's time to stop worrying about climate change. Instead we need to brace for impact." “If you grow an economy or any system up against its limits, it then stops growing and either changes form or breaks down … As our system hits its limits, the following pressures will combine, in varied and unpredictable ways, to trigger a system breakdown and a major economic crisis (or series of smaller crises) that will see us slide into a sustained economic downturn and a global emergency lasting decades."

Gilding predicts 1. Shocks. " series of ecological, social and economic shocks driven by climate change, particularly melting polar regions, extreme weather events…changes to agricultural output…severe economic stresses…a sense of global crisis." 2. Food. “Increasing demand and lower agricultural output driven by climate change ...sustained increases in food prices…economic and geopolitical instability and tension…developing countries blaming the West for causing climate change." 3. Water. " deeply degraded global ecosystem will further reduce the capacity of key ecosystem services, water, fisheries and agricultural land … impact food and water supply … political stability … global security."

4. Energy. “Rapid increases in oil prices as peak oil is breached. …enormous, system-wide economic and political pressure…great conflict." 5. Surprises. “For example, a serious global terrorist attack wiping out a major city...or a pandemic shutting down global travel...shocks upon shocks upon shocks." 6. Driven by panic, fear and uncertainty, waking up to long-term implications, perhaps driven by a series of major corporate collapses or national economic crises, resulting in re-price of risk leading to a dramatic drop in global share markets and a tightening of capital supply. Markets and economies will crash.

Gilding believes that mankind will follow this “Great Disruption" with a period of great cooperation where all nations of the world will come together to save the planet. Gilding does not say how this great disruption will stop population from growing to 10 billion or how the crash will scale Earth's existing population of 7 billion back to a sustainable 5 billion. Yet, that must happen to make the “new equation" work. New global wars, pandemics, famines, starvation and other cataclysmic events, may all happen during the crash.

Gilding and Jorgen Randers of Norway developed “One Degree War Plan" to “keep global warming below plus-one degree Centigrade over pre-industrial levels." These policies may not work today but after the coming crash, after a great realignment of the economic, political and environmental systems of the world, these are seen as essential policies for a new sustained global economy.

You can also see these as investment opportunities for entrepreneurs and financiers and forward-thinkers who are planning ahead for when the world community downsizes to create a new, sustainable lifestyle.

1. Cut deforestation and other logging by 50%. 2. Close 1,000 dirty coal power plants within 5 years. 3. Ration electricity, and rapidly drive new efficiency. 4. Retrofit 1,000 coal power plants with Carbon Capture Storage. 5. Erect a wind turbine or solar plant in every town. 6. Create huge wind and solar farms in suitable deserts. 7. Let no waste go to waste; recycle and reuse by-products. 8. Ration use of dirty cars to cut transport emissions by 50%. 9. Prepare for biofuels power stations using CCS technology.

10. Strand half of the world's aircraft. 11. Capture or burn methane from agriculture and landfills. 12. Move society away from diets of climate-unfriendly protein. 13. New methods of farming to reduce gas emissions, maximize soil carbon. 14. Launch a government- and community-led shop-less-live-more campaign.

U.S.: Knocked Up and Knocked Down; Why America's Widening Fertility Class Divide is a Problem

Two new studies bring the contrasting reproductive profiles of rich and poor U.S. women into sharp relief.

Childlessness has increased across most demographic groups but is still highest among professionals. The Pew Research Center says about one quarter of all women with bachelor's degrees and higher in the United States wind up childless. This is higher than in England, where 22% of all women are childless.

At the same time, the numbers of both unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women have climbed steadily in recent years. About half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, with poor women now five times more likely than higher-income women to have an unplanned pregnancy, and six times more likely to have an unplanned birth, according to the Guttmacher Institute's analysis.

Women with unplanned pregnancies are more likely to smoke, drink, and go without prenatal care. Their births are more likely to be premature. Their children are less likely to be breastfed, and more likely to be neglected and to have various physical and mental health effects. The very fact of having a child increases a woman's chances of being poor.

The declining fertility of professional women highlights the extent to which our policies are deeply unfriendly to parents. Europe has policies designed to make it easier to simultaneously work and parent, yet here, because our overall birthrate is robust, we have no national paid leave law in place and no decent childcare system.

The Center for Work-Life Policy report says that professional parents are working longer and harder, shouldering new responsibilities for aging parents, and striving overtime to provide their children with all that they, in many cases, had lacked—a smooth path of success and both parents by their side. The costs are steep and include anxiety and exhaustion.

Poorer women are having more unintended pregnancies. Only about 40% of women who needed publicly funded family planning services between 2000 and 2008 got them, according to the Guttmacher Institute. During that same period, as employment levels and the number of employers offering health insurance went down, the number of women who needed these services increased by more than 1 million.

With growing poverty rates and political attacks on already inadequate family-planning funding threatening to drive the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women even higher, and little effort being made to address the pressures driving other women away from having kids, the gap between professionals and poor women could widen. Still, both are struggling with the same problem: an untenable "choice" between children and financial solvency.

U.S.: The Cost of Raising a Child Has Risen 40% Over the Past Decade

Providing a child with the basics has become more than most parents can afford.

The cost of raising a child from birth to age 18 for a middle-income, two-parent family averaged $226,920 last year (not including college), according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was only $60,000 10 years ago. Just one year of spending on a child can cost up to $13,830. From buying groceries to paying for gas, every major expense associated with raising a child has climbed significantly.

Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute says "Many parents are working longer hours, or another job, and they are giving up time at home. It's a complete catch-22."

Food prices, in particular, have weighed on parents' budgets as rising demand for commodities like corn and wheat, along with other factors such as rising oil prices, drought and floods, have made even a box of cereal pricey.

Another increase has been in gas prices. Between 2000 and 2010, consumers paid an average of 85% more per gallon at the pump, according to AAA.

Employers have scaled back or even did away with medical coverage in recent years, while at the same time, costs for doctors visits, medications and other health services also climbed - for families with children rising 58% over the decade, said Mark Lino, a senior economist at the USDA.

Incomes are shrinking and unemployment is near an all-time high. Over the past decade, median household income has fallen 7%, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau.

In addition a large part of the paycheck must go for child care. In 2010, the cost of putting two children in child care exceeded the median annual rent payments in every single state, according to a recent report by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, or NACCRRA.

Also see: The anti-baby boom: Why the U.S. birth rate keeps falling - http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/11/pf/recession_birth_rate/index.htm?iid=EL Go to this link to see a great chart of birth rates from 1910 to present, linked to various economic downturns.

US Births Down for 3rd Year; Economy May Be Factor

Births in the U.S. had been on the rise for years, and the number hit an all-time high of more than 4.3 million in 2007.

Last year, the number of births fell 3%, according to preliminary figures released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The falling birth rate seemed to bottom out in October, November and December, so the decline could be slowing, but it's too early to say.

The lower birth rates may be because women who are unemployed or have other money problems feel they can't afford to start a family or add to it.

In 2008 and 2009, the only increase in births was in women older than 40 — considered more sensitive to the ticking of their biological clocks.

Another factor behind the decline may be a drop in immigration to the United States, blamed on the weak job market. "Hispanics have higher birth rates," said Dr. Roger Rochat, a researcher who has studied fertility and abortion trends.

U.S.: Studies Show Unintended Pregnancies Cost Public $11 Billion a Year

The Guttmacher Institute and the Brookings Institution Studies conducted independent studies, each finding that unintended pregnancies cost U.S. taxpayers about $11 billion a year. Another study by Guttmacher looked at unintended pregnancy rates at the state level.

In 2006, 64% of births resulting from unintended pregnancies were publicly funded, compared with 48% of all births and 35% of births resulting from intended pregnancies.

Elizabeth Nash, a Guttmacher public policy associate said the study shows that states legislation that would limit funding for non-abortion family planning services will have substantial impact to women having access to these services. "Women may end up with unintended pregnancies or not use the birth control that's best for them."

Planned Parenthood is suing Indiana, which has a new law that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood of Indiana. The suit claims the law could cost the state about $4 million in Medicaid family planning funds.

Other states considering limiting family planning funding include Kansas, Texas, North Carolina and Minnesota, Nash said.

The research showed that a publicly funded birth costs $11,647, on average.

Over 80% of unintended births are publicly funded in Louisiana and Mississippi, and the percentage was over 70% in Texas, the District of Columbia, North and South Carolina and Kentucky, Guttmacher found.

The highest number of unintended pregnancy rates were highest in the South and Southwest, including Mississippi and Florida, and in states with large urban populations, such as New York and California.

Global Ecological Integrity and Sustainable development: Cornerstones of Public Health

Humans, like other forms of life on Earth, are dependent upon the capability
both of local ecosystems and of the global ecosphere for maintaining health.
However, in relatively recent times, humans, particularly in industrialized
countries, have developed an erroneous perception of being separate from
nature's processes.

Many different measurement techniques show that current global patterns of
human activity - over-consumption, population growth and inappropriate use
of technology - are unsustainable and are likely to have profound
consequences for human health. Major changes in policies that govern society
are to be sought if emerging trends in ecosystem degradation resulting from
human activities are to be arrested. Rational changes in policy will require
the availability of scientific information appropriate to measuring global
changes.

Mainstream economics continues to assume that consumption-based economic
growth is the essence of development, persistently disregarding questions of
fairness and equity, and displaying an uncritical technological optimism.
The "technological fix" ideology reaffirms the unfortunate belief that
"human survival is independent of nature". Human population health under
such a model of development is placed at increasing risk as resources (i.e.

Potential solutions lie in models that focus more on social, informational
and service-based "development" than on "growth". The challenges for science
and society are unprecedented. Vigorous public discourse, engaging all
regions of the world and all sectors of society, is urgently needed. With
public support, policy -makers would be enabled to acknowledge the problem
and to implement corrective policies.

Bring on the Baby Boom

Judging by magazine stories on celebrity bumps, babies dominate pop culture these days. In 2007, the total fertility rate in the USA hit 2.12 births per woman, a bit higher than 2006, and much higher than the 1.74 in 1976.

The U.S. is one of the few developed countries to have a fertility rate above replacement level. Demographers debate the reasons, but there's a case to be made that not only is a high birthrate a good sign, we should be hoping it rises at least a bit more.

Surveying childbearing across the developed world, America is a fecund outlier. Demographers have many theories for our exceptionality. The USA has a high teen pregnancy rate and many unplanned pregnancies.

Across the developed world, many women say they want two kids. In the U.S., the average woman is likely to sometimes go over.

Compared with Japan's 1.2 rate, getting families to the desired two kids is noteworthy. Our fertility rate rose 22% from 1976 to 2007, as women's workforce participation rates rose an equal amount. In other words, women think they can manage jobs and families. More professional and educated women who 10-15 years ago felt like 'I can only handle one child' say 'I can have a second.'

Environmentalists fret that high birthrates strain the planet; a 3.8 would mean a billion-plus Americans within two generations. A rate of 2.1-2.5 keeps us growing manageably, and there's an argument for hoping it climbs within that range.

With fewer workers supporting an aging population, Social Security, for instance, will exhaust its trust fund about 2041.

A higher birthrate could ease that. The economic growth a rising population will shrink our debt to a more manageable percentage of GDP. rw

Sex Education Gets Directly to Youths, Via Text

ICYC (In Case You're Curious) by Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Sex-Ed Loop in Chicago, Sexetc.org, Hookup in California, and Real Talk in New York are all programs that use texting services as cost-effective ways to reach adolescents in the one classroom where absenteeism is never a problem: the Internet.

One high school senior said she liked ICYC for its immediacy and confidentiality. "You can ask a random question about sex and you don't feel it was stupid." ... "Even if it was, they can't judge you because they don't know it's you. And it's too gross to ask my parents."

An Illinois organization enlists Chicago teenagers to create text messages as well as blog posts and testimonial videos for its site.

Only 13 states specify that the medical components of sex education programs must be accurate. Shrinking budgets and competing academic subjects have helped push it down as a curriculum priority. In reaction, some health organizations and school districts are developing Web sites and texting services as cost-effective ways to reach adolescents.

Sex-Ed Loop is a program endorsed by the district that includes weekly automated texts about contraception, relationships and disease prevention. Hookup is a program where teens can text their ZIP codes to a number and receive locations for health clinics.

Sexetc.org, a national site run by and for teenagers, offers both privacy and communities where adolescents can learn about sexuality and relationships, particularly on mobile devices, eluding parental scrutiny. Services offer links to blogs, interactive games, moderated forums, and Facebook and Twitter pages.

The messages, rendered in teenspeak, can be funny and blunt: for Real Talk, a technology-driven H.I.V. prevention program run by the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York, teenagers made a YouTube video, shouting a refrain from a rap song, “Sport Dat Raincoat," during which a girl carrying an umbrella is pelted with condoms.

Proponents of abstinence-based sexual education argue that these digital services presume that sexual activity among teenagers is the norm, and do not spend enough time on alternatives. Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, said her organization hopes to kick off its online service for teenagers next year.

Although the teenage birth rate dropped 9% in 2010 from 2009, the United States still has one of the highest rates among developed countries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia among American teenagers continue to rise.

Most online services receive grants from philanthropies, like the Ford Foundation, and health and education agencies on the state and federal level.

Parents who fear that sex education will encourage a child to experiment are misguided, said Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a national sex education organization that oversees Sexetc. Studies show the opposite is true, she said.

Even though popular culture is saturated with sex, facts and advice can be hard to find. Making sure that Web-surfing teenagers find these programs, rather than pornographic sites, has been challenging.

“How do I write content that says ‘sex' 80,000 times so our page will pop up in a kid's search on Google near the top?" a Planned Parenthood director said.

Real Talk held a classroom contest to see which student could send the most texts containing this prevention message: “ROFL!!!" (Translation: rolling on the floor laughing). “STDs and HIV can spread as fast as this message. Still laughing? Pass on the message not HIV/STDs. 518-HIV-TEST." Within an hour, the message had been sent to nearly 450 phones.

U.S.: Young Women's Use of Reproductive Health Services Declines

A study found online in the American Journal of Public Health, from the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, reported that 8% fewer U.S. women ages 15 to 24 are receiving reproductive healthcare. 60% of young women receive services such as Pap tests, pregnancy tests, contraception prescriptions, tests for sexually transmitted disease and other gynecological and obstetric care.

Data was taken from the huge National Survey of Family Growth. The declines were seen across all demographic and socioeconomic groups. Overall, however, economically disadvantaged women are the least likely to get care.

This is in contrast to the period between 1995 and 2002, when reproductive health service use by young women had increased. Reasons offered for the decline: there has been a decline in public sector clinics serving economically disadvantaged women; increasing unemployment and the corresponding lack of health insurance; updated gynecological health screening guidelines that require fewer Pap tests; and legislation that has increased mandatory parental participation in adolescent sexual and reproductive health care.

The authors of the report suggest that new provisions for care under healthcare reform may bring some of those women back into care.

U.S.: Disparities in Unintended Pregnancy Grow, Even as National Rate Stagnates; Substantial Progress Among Higher-income Women Contrasts with Dramatic Increases Among the Poor

A report entitled "Unintended Pregnancy in the United States: Incidence and Disparities, 2006" shows that following a considerable decline between 1981 and 1994, the overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate has remained essentially flat, with about 5% of U.S. women having an unintended pregnancy every year.

However, the rate has increased dramatically among women with incomes below the federal poverty line, going from 88 per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1994 to 120 in 2001 and 132 in 2006—a 50% rise over the period. At the same time the unintended pregnancy rate has decreased substantially among women with incomes at or above 200% of the poverty line, falling from 34 in 1994 to 28 in 2001 and 24 in 2006—a 29% decrease.

The higher rate of unintended pregnancy resulted in high rates of both abortions (52 per 1,000) and unplanned births (66 per 1,000). In 2006, poor women had an unintended pregnancy rate five times that of higher-income women, and an unintended birth rate six times as high.

Of the 6.7 million pregnancies in 2006, nearly half (49%) were unintended. 43% of these end in abortion. Higher rates of unintended pregnancy are found not only among poor and low-income women, but also among women aged 18-24, cohabiting women and minority women. However poor women have high unintended pregnancy rates nearly across the board, regardless of their education, race and ethnicity, marital status or age.

In contrast, some women in the U.S. have had considerable success timing and spacing their pregnancies. Higher-income women, white women, college graduates and married women have relatively low unintended pregnancy rates -- one-third the national rate of 52 per 1,000, suggesting that women who have better access to reproductive health services have achieved their educational goals or are in relationships that support a desired pregnancy are more likely than other women to achieve planned pregnancies and avoid those they do not want.

"These data suggest that women who lead stable lives—women who are older, more affluent and better-educated—tend to have better reproductive health outcomes, while women whose lives are less stable, such as younger, poorer or less educated women, have higher rates of unplanned pregnancies, unwanted births and abortions," said Finer, one of the authors of the study.

Guttmacher Institute President and CEO Sharon Camp said: "At a minimum, however, we must ensure that all women, and particularly those who are most vulnerable, have access to the education and range of reproductive health services and counseling they need in order to plan the pregnancies they want and prevent the ones they don't."

For more information on the impact of unintended pregnancy on public policies and programs, see "Wise Investment: Reducing the Steep Cost to Medicaid of Unintended Pregnancy in the United States," -http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/14/3/gpr140306.pdf - by Rachel Benson Gold.

U.S.: IUDs, Implants Advocated for Birth Control

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reports that IUDs (intrauterine devices) and contraceptive skin implants are the most effective type of reversible contraceptive, and should be offered as options to most women seeking birth control.

IUDs, or intrauterine devices, are inserted into the uterus, where they release small amounts of either copper or the hormone progestin to prevent pregnancy. The contraceptive skin implant, about the size of a matchstick, is inserted under the skin of the arm, where it releases controlled amounts of progestin.

In the U.S., birth control pills and condoms are more popular than IUDs and implants, with IUDs used by only 5.5% of women using contraceptives - up from 1.3% in 2002 -, and implants, approved in 2006, not yet being tracked.

U.S. Family Planning Timeline

* 1800 average woman bears seven children over the course of her lifetime
* 1873 Congress passes Comstock law, an anti-obscenity bill used to prosecute those who distribute birth control
* 1916 Margaret Sanger opens the nation's first birth control clinic
* 1918 Condoms are legalized for disease prevention
* 1957 US fertility rate rises to a peak of 3.7 after servicemen return from WWII.
* 1960 FDA approves the birth control pill
* 1961 Estelle Griswold, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, the medical director, are arrested for counseling patients on contraception in newly opened birth control clinic
* 1965 In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court reverses the Connecticut Comstock law, recognizes a constitutional right to privacy and secures the right of married women to use contraception
* 1970 President Nixon signs into law Title X of the Public Health Service Act to provide access to family planning services for all women without regard to economic circumstance
* 1971 NFPRHA is founded to serve as an umbrella organization for family planning providers and supporters and to advocate for universal access to family planning services
* 1972 US fertility rate reaches 2.0
* 1972 In Eisenstadt v. Baird , the Supreme Court extends the right to use contraception to unmarried women
* 1977 In Carey v. Population Services International, the Supreme Court extends the right to use contraception to teens
* 1982 Due to the availability of effective birth control, 60% of women of reproductive age are employed in the U.S.
* 1988 NFPRHA successfully challenges the domestic gag rule regulations preventing family planning clinics from providing information on abortion
* 1990 FDA approves contraceptive implant, Norplant
* 1991 In Rust v. Sullivan, Supreme Court upholds gag rule
* 1992 FDA approves Depo-Provera
* 1993 President Clinton overturns the gag rule
* 1997 FDA approves regimens for emergency contraception
* 2001 FDA approves contraceptive patch, Ortho Evra, and vaginal contraceptive ring, NuvaRing
* 2004 More than one million supporters participate in a March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC
* 2011 A 15-year effort to misrepresent and dismantle family planning services culminates in a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to defund Title X, despite overwhelming public support for family planning.
Editor's note: I added 1957 and 1972 fertility rates

US Illinois: Senate Approves Teaching 'Age Appropriate' Sex Ed

The Illinois Senate passed legislation requiring "age appropriate" and "medically accurate" materials that emphasize not only abstinence but also contraception to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in sex education classes in grades six through 12. It was passed 30-28 over objections from some Republicans who want local school boards to decide what material is best to teach.

Democratic Sen. Heather Steans of Chicago, who sponsored the bill argued the measure is needed because significant numbers of Illinois high school students are having unprotected sex. Some argued the measure was necessary so students get updated sex education in schools because some parents can be shy talking about it.

Parents can ask to exempt their child from sex education classes without fear of academic or disciplinary punishment.

US Minnesota: Birthrate at 40-Year Low for Teens

Despite elevated birth figures for minorities, Minnesota saw its lowest teen birthrate in at least 40 years, according to a study from Teenwise Minnesota. The rate dropped even though teen sexual activity increased and condom use declined, so it was concluded that increased use of birth control pills must be having an impact.

Minnesota's teen birthrates had an increase in 2006 and 2007, but dropped in 2009 by 10% from 2008. It's the lowest rate since 1970, the earliest records go back.

While Minnesota's overall teen birthrate is far below the national average, its rates were higher than the national averages for Hispanics and Asian-Americans, and among the worst in the nation for African-Americans. Minnesota's teen birthrate for American Indians is nearly double the national average.

Brigid Riley of Teenwise Minnesota said disparities might persist because early childbirth is more of a norm for some racial and ethnic groups. However, she said, the current disparities are extreme -- born of inequalities in income, education and other factors.

She said school-based teen outreach programs in the metro area are "moving from strictly the plumbing lesson into the more nuanced conversation about healthy relationships."

Neighborhood HealthSource says it has succeeded in persuading adolescents in Minneapolis to delay childbirth.

The Minnesota Family Council said a key federal study found that two-thirds of teens ages 15 to 17 hadn't had sexual intercourse, claiming more kids are seeing the consequences of premarital sex -- STDs, emotional pain and impact on future plans.

Riley said abstinence still needs to be a part of any discussion, but in the context of talking with teens about what they want out of life. "The more we talk with them about all of these issues, the longer they do wait."

U.S.: Immigration Affects Environment, Too, Reports E -the Environmental Magazine; But Solutions go Deeper than Building Fences

Immigration has become a hot issue, but often for the wrong reasons. What's missing is frank discussion of its impact on overall population growth, the environment and on how to address its fundamental causes.

Largely because of immigration, the U.S. Census estimates that from 303 million today we'll grow to 400 million people as early as 2040, and 420 million by 2050. The U.S. is growing so fast it now has the third largest population in the world.

America is a nation of immigrants. We absorbed 25 million people between 1860 and 1920, and most observers believe we are a stronger nation because of it.

America's rapid population growth makes it nearly impossible to achieve sustainability. About 93% of U.S. increases in energy use since 1970 can be attributed to population growth. We pave over an area the size of Delaware every year, and every day we remove 3.2 billion gallons of water from aquifers that are not replenished by natural processes.

The energy and climate effects are little understood. Any efficiency gains we make are being swamped by rapid population increases.

With just 5% of the world's population, the U.S. is the top consumer of 11 of the world's top 20 traded commodities. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., which rose 13 between 1990 and 2000, mirrors the population increase. A huge percentage of climate emissions can be attributed to population growth.

Many people want to come to America from the overpopulated developing world. The swelling numbers abroad create pressures leading to "increased poverty, hunger, land degradation, a lack of health services and limited social and economic mobility."

How do we address these pressures without calling for the mandatory caps on U.S. immigration? The organization Population Connection wants to combine action at home (reducing teen pregnancy, ensuring contraceptive availability, defending reproductive rights) with foreign aid. If people see hope for better lives at home, they will feel less pressure to emigrate.

Such views have many supporters. If we and the governments of the countries they are coming from were to devote as much to improving their standard of living at home, they might not feel the need to come to America.

The obstacle is to get countries around the world to focus on eradicating hunger, infant mortality and poverty, and limiting births through universal access to family planning. A 20-year plan to address these issues has languished as donor countries, including the U.S., have fallen short of meeting their financial commitments.

In addition, the reinstatement of the "Global Gag Rule" which mandates that no U.S. family planning assistance be provided to foreign organizations that use funding to make abortion available, has had a severe impact. Cultural and religious opposition have also combined to thwart efforts.

Nevertheless, UNFPA, says that the process offers the best hope for reducing migration pressures. The growing poverty and demographic divide between rich and poor countries must be addressed. rw

Immigrant Human Katrina Flooding Into the United States

Obama, Hillary and McCain promise to give amnesty to 20-30 million illegal aliens, continue chain migration, double U.S. immigration from 1.0 to 2.0 million annually and accept millions of anchor babies. This means 70 million immigrants and their children will flood into America by 2040. The following interview with Dr. Albert Bartlett of Colorado University will give you plenty of reasons for taking action to prevent this.

Lake Mead which provides water for millions of people in the West, will dry up by 2023. The cause comes from drought, global warming and population growth. Lake Lanier, Georgia has already dried up in 2007 while Georgia expects to add six million more people in four decades.

We cannot change drought. At the same time, population growth devours water faster than it can be recharged. Everyone thinks population growth remains inevitable. False! Nature stops populations from growing when they cannot obtain enough water or food.

In America, corporations, political leaders, realtors and home builders salivate at the word growth. They pour concrete onto 6,000 acres daily and 2.19 million acres annually.

It's time to try again to correct the innumerate experts who say that growth is inevitable. They fail to recognize that after maturity, continued growth is either obesity or cancer.

The authors of growth would like us to believe that the battle against growth is lost, so our only role is to be the best losers. We should remember that Smart Growth and Dumb Growth both destroy the environment, but Smart Growth� destroys the environment with good taste.

Our leaders yank our leash into unending, unacceptable and relentless growth? Such growth yields chronic and painful ramifications for everyone in America regarding quality of life and standard of living?

What does growth really bring to you and me? It creates a few rich people. It brings more homeless and unemployed, more people living in poverty, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more and higher taxes, more fiscal problems for the state, more air and water pollution, higher utility costs, diminished democracy, crowded highways, growing costs of infrastructure maintenance, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment. You will encounter overloaded campgrounds, beaches, ski resorts, more litter, higher gas costs, greater housing costs, water shortages and loss of choices and personal freedom.

It's not clear why the government would think that people would want these known consequences of growth. Crude oil increased from $20 a barrel in 2002 to $100 a barrel in 2008. We could look at $500 a barrel in another six years.

Culprit? Immigration causes 80% of our growth!

By their continued promotion of growth, the innumerates are speeding the arrival of painful but predictable shortages and consequent rationing of gasoline, natural gas and water across America.

Bartlett concluded: The arithmetic of population, resources and growth is inexorable. The consequences cannot be avoided by believing that wishing will make it so. rw

Mexico: Toward a Green Agenda on Immigration

The debate in Congress over immigration, has touched very little on NAFTA. But the issues are related, for NAFTA stipulates that capital and goods must flow freely across the U.S.-Mexico border, while leaving policy about labor to the respective governments.

Right now, the battle is being waged between Republicans who want to punish undocumented Mexican workers and Republicans who want to exploit them. Kennedy will succeed in cobbling together a bill that preserves a militarized border, a guest-worker program and a large disenfranchised army of undocumented workers.

In the last decade, businesses have been able to easily relocate overseas. Meanwhile, workers fleeing Mexico's crumbling rural economy have been sneaking north. The argument that "they're taking jobs Americans don't want" doesn't tell the whole story. Illegal immigration has been a boon to Wal-Mart and its shareholders -- and not just because the retail behemoth has itself exploited it. Thus the global model embodied by NAFTA -- capital and goods move freely, while workers are restricted, has led to rising corporate profitability and stagnating wages.

The immigration boom is a legacy of the free-trade fervor that conquered the Mexican elite in the early 1980s. The U.S. investor class has reaped the benefits.

If we agree that a global economic system hinged on export and long-distance trade is energy-intensive, and that U.S. policy has worked to promote global trade, then a way forward comes into view.

An environmentalism that challenges this status quo has potential to bolster sustainability. By promoting local production for local consumption on both sides of the border, the U.S. economy can wean itself from its addiction to Mexican labor. And the Mexican economy can begin to work for its own citizens. To do so means challenging the assumption that state power exists to promote long-distance trade. One place: the 2007 Farm Bill, which will govern how the government subsidizes agriculture. Since the 1970s, the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars rewarding production of environmentally ruinous commodities like corn, which threaten rural livelihoods in Mexico.

Let's work to promote organic agriculture destined for nearby consumption. Ending the commodity-corn subsidy will instantly provide relief to rural Mexicans now contemplating a trip north. rw

U.S.: We Don't Need 'Guest Workers'

In 1964 Congress killed the seasonal Mexican laborers program despite warnings that its abolition would doom the tomato industry. Then scientists developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine and California's tomato output has risen fivefold. Now we're being warned again that we need unskilled laborers from Mexico and Central America to relieve U.S. "labor shortages." Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: We'd be importing poverty. They generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government's poverty line has risen 162%, while the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3% and blacks, 9.5%. What we have now is a policy of creating poverty in the US while relieving it in Mexico. It stresses local schools, hospitals and housing and feeds social tensions (witness the Minutemen). Some Americans get cheap landscaping services but if more mowed their own lawns it wouldn't be a tragedy. Among immigrant Mexican and Central American workers in 2004, only 7% had a college degree and nearly 60% lacked a high school diploma. Among native-born U.S. workers, 32% had a college degree and 6% did not have a high school diploma. The illegal immigrants represent only about 4.9% of the labor force. In no major occupation are they a majority. They're drawn here by wage differences, not labor "shortages." Most new illegal immigrants can get work by accepting wages below prevailing levels. Hardly anyone thinks that illegal immigrants will leave, but what would happen if illegal immigration stopped and wasn't replaced by guest workers? Some employers would raise wages to attract U.S. workers; others would find ways to minimize those costs. The number of native high school dropouts with jobs declined by 1.3 million from 2000 to 2005. Some lost jobs to immigrants and unemployment remains high for some groups. Business organizations support guest worker programs - they like cheap labor and ignore the consequences. Why do liberals support a program that worsens poverty and inequality? Poor immigrant workers hurt the wages of unskilled Americans. We've never tried a policy of real barriers and strict enforcement against companies that hire illegal immigrants. Until that's shown to be ineffective, we shouldn't adopt guest worker programs that add to serious social problems. rw

U.S.: Legal Induced Abortions Safer Than Childbirth, New Study Finds

A study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology showed that maternal deaths from childbirth are 14 times higher than deaths from legal induced abortions in the United States - 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions, compared to 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. Pregnancy-related complications and illness are also much more common for childbirth than for abortion, it said.

"Since the early 1970s, the public health evidence has been clear and incontrovertible: induced abortion is safer than childbirth," noted the co-authors Dr. Elizabeth G. Raymond of the Gynuity Health Projects and Dr. David A. Grimes of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Roughly half of the states have laws requiring that women seeking abortions must be given detailed, specific written or verbal information about potential risks from the procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute. For example women seeking abortions in Texas must be given a 23-page pamphlet listing 11 or 12 potential complications from abortion procedures and only six possible complications from vaginal delivery and eight for cesarean sections. Some of the statistics are often expressed in terms that are difficult to understand when they should be expressed in comparisons of deaths per 100,000 events.

Such biased mandated material thwarts informed choice and puts clinicians in the untenable position of having to be complicit in misleading their patients. "Every woman deserves factual medical information whenever she is facing a decision about a pregnancy," the authors said.

Reasons given for the difference: Pregnancies ending in abortion are shorter than those ending in childbirth, so there is less time for complications to develop. Many complications like hypertension and abnormal placentas show up only late in pregnancy, and early abortion avoids those hazards. A third of births occur by cesarean delivery, which has substantial risk of complications and death.

In fact, the authors said women who undergo abortion appear to be at higher risk from problems in pregnancy and childbirth than women who opt for delivery.

Satellite Studies Reveal Groundwater Depletion Around the World

Agricultural production will need to increase 70% by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since agriculture takes up much of our water use, we will see greater demands and strains on our water resources at a time when climate change is changing temperature and precipitation levels and patterns in unpredictable ways.

Groundwater levels have dropped in key agricultural areas such as southern Argentina, western Australia and the western US in the past nine years, according to a pair of studies of satellite gravity monitoring data. California, India, the Middle East and China show the most pronounced groundwater depletion. Water is being pumped out of underground groundwater aquifers faster than it's being replenished, with farming likely the primary cause.

"Groundwater is being depleted at a rapid clip in virtually of all of the major aquifers in the world's arid and semiarid regions," cautioned UC Center hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, whose team presented the results at a Dec. 6 meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), conducted jointly by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, has been taking monthly snapshots of global groundwater used in the two studies since 2002. GRACE's two satellites - Tom and Jerry - are pulled apart and pushed together by variations in the gravitational pull of the areas of the earth they pass over. Water moves over time and creates small fluctuations that the two satellites sense.

GRACE can detect changes in groundwater levels greater than one centimeter (~0.4 inches) over an area about the size of Illinois.

GRACE data shows that China's been underestimating groundwater use, with levels have been dropping 6 or 7 centimeters per year beneath the country's northeast plains.

Due to droughts, Patagonia and the southeastern US now store less groundwater than they did in 2002. Agriculture in northern India takes enough water to fill 7 million Olympic-size swimming pools, according to Science News.

California's Central Valley, which accounts for nearly 1/6 of irrigated land in the entire country, pumps nearly 4 cubic kilometers of water per year out from underground. The valley has been sinking for decades as more wells have been drilled and water pumped out, land subsidence that's also been occurring and causing increasing concerns, and costly remediation efforts, in Mexico City.

Aquifers in arid areas with fast-growing populations, such as the Middle East, are also being depleted, being pumped out faster than it's being replenished.

GRACE can only show changes in aquifer levels, not their total volume, so it is unknown how much water remains.

Better irrigation systems would help reduce water usage, as could channeling water runoff into aquifers during wet periods.

Managing a Growing World Population with a Shrinking Water Supply

Note: This is a photoblog with many thought-provoking pictures worth seeing. Click in the link in the headline above to see them.

No resource is more precious and vital than water. As world population grows, the amount of water available per person shrinks.

Yet the per-person consumption of resources grows exponentially in industrialized nations. Shifting rainfall patterns exacerbate the problem.

The International Water Management Institute (IMWI) predicts that by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will live in places suffering from severe water scarcity.

While Somalia's population has grown fivefold since 1950, precipitation is down about 25% over the last quarter century, says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "There's a devastating famine under way right now after two years of complete failure of rains, and [there is] the potential that this is entering a period of long-term climate change."

Conflicts over water shortages will happen as the rich take over the water and other resources of the poor.

IMWI says that nations must find ways to deliver food security across regions facing water scarcity and ensure that poor farmers who underpin global food production are resilient enough to cope with future challenges. Increasing agricultural productivity through effective management of water resources not only helps eliminate hunger, it also leads to long-term increases in rural wealth and lifts poor farmers beyond subsistence-level farming.

"There's quite a bit of land that could produce food if we had the water to go with it," said Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute. "It's water that's becoming the real constraint."

Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter Sues Government Over Indefinite Detention Bill

Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges has filed suit against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for signing the indefinite detention bill into law. The suit challenges the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed by the president Dec. 31. Under this act the military is authorized carry out domestic policing - for the first time in more than 200 years. As of March 3, 2012, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until "the end of hostilities."

The NDAA is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties. We must fight this act t if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.

Chris Hedges is a veteran war correspondent who met regularly with leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza visited the Palestine Liberation Organization leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, spent time with the Revolutionary Guard in Iran and was in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party - all labeled terrorist organizations by the U.S. These activities do not make Chris Hedges a terrorist.

Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups. We have already seen the persecution and closure of Islamic charity organizations in the United States that supported the Palestinians. Now the members of these organizations can be treated like card-carrying "terrorists" and sent to Guantanamo.

Chris suspects bill's real purpose is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. How many million people meet at least one of these criteria? Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process.

Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word "democracy" to describe our political system.

What Obama has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. Al-Qaida - which Hedges covered - poses only a marginal threat, despite the attacks of 9/11, posing no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. So why do these draconian measures need to be implemented?

This bill ignores our Fifth Amendment rights—"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"—as well as our First Amendment right of free speech.

The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn't support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. "The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.

Hedges suspects the bill passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

U.S.: The War on Contraception Gets Mainstream Attention

Podcast: Nancy Cohen explains how sex is polarizing Americans politically. The question of contraception comes up during the Republican debate, which sets the mainstream media ablaze on a subject we've been hammering for years.

U.S.: States Enact Record Number of Abortion Restrictions in 2011

Legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions (not bills or laws - there are multiple provisions in a bill) in the 50 states of the U.S., up from the 950 introduced in 2010. 135 of these provisions had been enacted in 36 states, up from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009.

68% of these provisions restrict access to abortion services. Last year only 26% of new provisions restricted abortion.

In 2011 voters in Mississippi rejected the ballot initiative that would have legally defined a human embryo as a person "from the moment of fertilization," setting the stage to ban all abortions and, potentially, most hormonal contraceptive methods in the state. Five states (AL, ID, IN, KS and OK) enacted provisions to ban abortion at or beyond 20 weeks' gestation, based on the claim that a fetus can feel pain at that point. These same five states plus Nebraska have adopted a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.

A South Dakota law would have required a woman to obtain pre-abortion counseling in person at the abortion facility at least 72 hours prior to the procedure; and it would have required her to visit a state-approved crisis pregnancy center during that time. The federal district court enjoined the law and it is not in effect. Texas now requires that women who live less than 100 miles from an abortion provider obtain counseling in person at the facility at least 24 hours in advance. North Carolina now requires counseling at least 24 hours prior to the procedure. A total of 26 states now mandate that a woman seeking an abortion must wait a prescribed period of time between the counseling and the procedure.

Five states adopted provisions mandating that a woman obtain an ultrasound prior to having an abortion, but two, in North Carolina and Texas, were immediately enjoined by federal district courts. Both of these restrictions would have required the provider to show and describe the image to the woman. However, in AZ, FL and KS, provisions are in effect which would require the abortion provider to offer the woman the opportunity to view the image or listen to a verbal description of it. Six states now mandate the performance of an ultrasound prior to an abortion.

Six states now limit abortion coverage in private insurance plans, including newly added Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah.

16 states have provisions restricting abortion coverage available through state insurance exchanges as part of the implementation of health care reform.

Four states enacted provisions directing the state department of health to issue regulations governing facilities and physicians' offices that provide abortion services. Supporters of the measures made it clear that the goal was to set standards that would be difficult, if not impossible, for abortion providers to meet. Enforcement of the proposed Kansas regulations has been enjoined by a state court.

Seven states (AZ, KS, NE, ND, OK, SD and TN) adopted provisions requiring that the physician prescribing the medication for a medication abortion be in the same room as the patient (disallowing telemedicine).

Family planning services escaped major reductions in nine (CO, CT, DE, IL, KS, MA, ME, NY and PA) of the states where the budget has a specific line-item for family planning. However FL, GA, MI, MN, WA and WI, family planning programs sustained deep cuts, although generally in line with decreases adopted for other health programs. Montana eliminated the family planning line item, and New Hampshire and Texas cut funding by 57% and 66%, respectively.

Indiana, Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina Texas and Wisconsin, meanwhile, moved to disqualify or otherwise bar certain types of providers from the receipt of family planning funds. New Hampshire decided not to renew its contract through which the Planned Parenthood affiliate in the state received Title X funds.

On the other hand, Maryland, Washington and Ohio took steps to expand Medicaid eligibility for family planning. With the approval of these two programs, 24 states have expanded eligibility for family planning under Medicaid based solely on income; seven have utilized the new authority under health care reform.

Regarding sex education, Mississippi adopted provisions that make it more difficult for a school district to include subjects other than abstinence, such as contraception, in order to offer a more comprehensive curriculum. North Dakota enacted an new requirement that mandates that the health education provided in the state include information on the benefits of abstinence "until and within marriage." Including North Dakota, 37 states now mandate abstinence education.

U.S.: 2011: the Year of the Abortion Restrictions

Very little related to health has made it through our polarized Congress after the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. An exception is reproductive health, and area where a lot did happen: States passed 83 laws restricting access to abortion, nearly four times the 23 laws passed in 2010. The 2010 elections brought in a bunch of Republican legislators and governors, resulting in an increase, from 10 to 15, in the number of states in which both the governor and the legislature oppose abortion rights.

Five states banned all abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. Seven now require an ultrasound, or the offer of one, prior to the procedure. Eight will no longer allow private insurance plans to cover the procedure. A few states are trying bar abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving government funds, even for the non-abortion services they provide.

A small minority of abortions happen after 20 weeks, meaning that a ban on such procedures won't touch most patients. Abortion rights supporters question whether a major legal fight over a late-term abortion law affecting relatively few women is their best strategy.

But restrictions like those that restrict private insurance coverage of the procedure, could stand to reshape what access to abortion looks like. 87% of providers currently do pay for the procedure (this number is disputed by anti-abortion groups), a Kaiser Family Foundation study from 2002 shows.

Americans United for Life have written up draft legislation on how to limit insurance coverage and now eight states (3 more than last year) bar any private insurance plan from covering abortion and five more will limit such coverage on the exchanges, the new health insurance marketplace.

Population Or Affluence?

Refering to the IPAT equation (Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology), there seems to be a never-ending squabble over which is heavier in making Impact: Population or Affluence. It's both. We need to freeze and cut both population and consumption.

However, without lowering population, cutting back on the high consumption can't do the job. Looking at the Ecological Footprint we see that the production and consumption of goods and services depends entirely on arable soils, forests, croplands, pasture lands, fishing grounds, clean waters and air, the atmosphere, ozone layer, climate, fossil fuels, and minerals - to perform the ecological services and provide the materials and energy and waste sinks that sustain civilization.

Those who see Affluence or consumption as the key use the Ecological Footprint as a yardstick for lowering their Impact, such as: * Drive less/Get a higher mileage car/Take the bus/Bicycle/Walk; or Buy food grown nearby/Eat organic/Grow your own/Eat lower on the food chain; or Make your house more energy efficient/Have a smaller house/Live with others.

Americans can lower their footprints by trimming fat - but they aren't going to give up too much. They may be willing to go to the leaner Japanese and Western Europeans lifestyles, but cutting back to how Mexicans or Nigerians or Bangladeshis live, is not an option that Americans will consider.

We can bring our per person footprint down, but not nearly enough for generous sustainability, which includes creating societies that leave sufficient natural resources for future human generations to live good lives; and sharing the landscape generously with nonhuman beings.

This leaves us with no choice but to freeze how many we are and begin to become fewer.

Environmentalists who think we can double or triple U.S. population without wiping out wildlife and scalping our last wildernesses, are living in a fool's paradise.

Research from Murtaugh and Schlax at Oregon State University shows that a hypothetical American woman who switches to a more fuel-efficient car, drives less, recycles, installs more efficient light bulbs, and replaces her refrigerator and windows with energy-saving models, would increase her carbon legacy by 40 times if she has two children.

Murtaugh and Schlax have shown well how overweight P is in I*PAT, not only for carbon emissions, but for the consumption of fresh water, for example. We can't lower Impact only by lowering Affluence.

And Americans have the biggest Affluence footprint per person of any people in the world. Any population growth in the United States, then, is growth of these big Affluence footprints, making U.S. population growth more harmful to the world than population growth anywhere else. The world cannot afford more Americans.

The author has more on this in his book, Man Swarm.

What to Do About the Upcoming Peak Oil and Food Shortage Crisis?

In 1956, a geologist working for Shell Oil named M. King Hubbert predicted that US petroleum production would peak in 1970, and steadily decline in the years thereafter. His prediction showed that, like many other natural phenomenon, oil production over time forms a bell-shaped curve.

It now appears that peak oil was in 2008 to 2010. Mr. Hubbert can be forgiven for missing the date, as he was a petroleum geologist, and geologists usually think in terms of millions of years.

Oil forms in basins on the edge of oceans that are anoxic (lacking oxygen), which prevents the oxidation of the constant rain of dead algae and animals that settle to the bottom of all oceans. The preserved remains, mixed with sand, clay and other accumulations, are then capped with an impervious layer and buried between 7500-15000 feet (1.5 to 3 miles) beneath the earth. At this depth, the temperature is high enough (about 175 degrees F) to "cook" the organic sediments into petroleum. Below this range, it is cooked so far that it all turns into natural gas. The petroleum, trapped by the impervious layer, will reside there, waiting for an industrious oil company to tap it with a well rig. Early oil companies found the "light, sweet crude" that would just push up to the surface when under pressure. 'Light' because it makes a lot of gasoline, and 'sweet' because it doesn't have much sulfur.

But other oils consist of heavy tar residue, or not have enough natural gas, and need to be pumped from great depths, or have high sulfur that takes a lot of processing to refine. Any of these flaws require energy to overcome so that the cost may rise. The Texas oil wells drilled in the early 1900's got 20+ barrels of oil for each barrel of oil it took to pump and process. Today the ratio is as low as 5 barrels of oil "costing" one barrel. If the ratio approaches one to one, there isn't any point in pumping the oil anymore.

A pound of petroleum contains more energy than most other equivalent energy sources, and some sources are very hard to contain, (think of batteries to store electricity compared to a gas tank in a car or truck). Hydrogen would require 7 tanker trucks to carry the energy equivalent of one tanker of gasoline.

For the last 100+ years or so, the production of oil increased almost every year. Now, there will begin to be a bit less oil every year. Over the long term, the price will increase because we are dependent on it and the cheap, easily refined oil has already been pumped. Using oil to replace human labor with machines became the basis for economic success. Now labor will become cheaper than machinery. But politicians don't mention this because a permanent decline in our economy would assure defeat at the polls.

Employment will initially decline, so it will be a tough economy to live in. Food, and every other commodity that depends on oil to be produced or shipped will cost more.

What can you do? Grow your own food if you can. Learn to enjoy cabbage, potatoes, and carrots in the winter. Try to move close to where you work. Get rid of the gas hog. Walk. Expect to pay lots for exotic fruit. Invest in a solar home, if you have anything to invest. Insulate. Stay healthy, and maybe think about alternative health care. Think of strategies to survive when you are poor.

The answers, most of them, have been part of the human condition for generations.

Many cultures have declined, but most haven't talked about it much. Rome in about 1 AD, the Maya of Central America in 700 AD, are examples. Both took involved a decade or two of decline followed by a decade or two of getting by. N

Expect hunger, disease and war - the 'Three Horsemen' to return. On the bright side, we do know more about causes of disease than in the past, and we know how clean water and sewage handling affect public health. Hunger won't be easy either - our current system of baking all the bread at one point and shipping it around the country is likely to get pretty pricy in a while. There just won't be the funds available to rebuild so quickly after an earthquake, flood or fire. One can already see it in the response to Hurricane Katrina, there are parts of the Gulf Coast that won't return for a very long time, if ever. More locally, living in California has some definite advantages as well as disadvantages. The potential for earthquakes in LA and the Bay Area is kind of scary. On the other hand, the agricultural potential of the Central Valley isn't going to disappear, though the water to irrigate may be a problem.

So, what strategies are likely to help? Learn a trade, grow some of your own food, make friends with your neighbors, you may need their help sooner than you think. A lot of the survival strategies are also just common sense. Look for opportunities to develop your local resources - everyone will still need to eat, drink and be merry, any way they can.

Some of the benefits to living in California - close to food sources, relatively warm climate, many Native Americans present during "Pre-European-American contact", indicating that California had a relatively high "carrying capacity", the ability for land to support people living without petroleum.

Some of the detriments to living in California - too many people, (though most of them are down South), fragile infrastructure supplying everyone, too many earthquakes, droughts, fires and floods.

Some benefits/detriments to living in the Sierra Foothills - lower elevations can support agriculture if water is available, lots of oak trees supplying acorns for people to eat, but, travel is difficult and slow, we need to learn to live with fire, and, this is where everyone from the Bay Area/Southern California will come if times get tough. If we ever have a flood like we did in 1862, the Central Valley will fill with water and many of those people will head for these hills.

From "Up and Down California in 1860-1864" by William H. Brewer: In the Winter of 1861, "The great central valley of the state is under water - a region 250 to 300 miles long and an average of at least twenty miles wide . . . Although much of it is not cultivated, yet a part of it is the garden of the state. Thousands of farms are entirely underwater - cattle starving and drowning.", and "An old acquaintance, came down from a ranch that was overflowed. The floor of their one-story house was six weeks under water before the house went to pieces. This was in the Sacramento Valley. . . . Nearly every house and farm over this immense region is gone. There was such a body of water - 250 to 300 miles long and 20 to 60 miles wide, the water ice cold and muddy - that the winds make high waves which beat the farm homes in pieces."

Any natural disaster during our decline is likely to cause immense personal losses, which will not be compensated by government. Locally, we can rely on natural resources such as timber and firewood which will still retain value. On the other hand, we very much need to learn to manage our forest - in the past we have cut the big trees and sold the wood. Now we have a dense, overgrown forest which desperately needs to be thinned. The people who lived here for thousands of years managed the forest with fire - they were after different products of course, but the cost of fire suppression is something we will not be able to afford in the future. Planned fire prevents wildfire, and learning to control fire will be one of our most important tasks.

Some references for readers: The Long Descent, by John Michael Greer, Beyond Oil, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes: Up and Down California in 1860-1864, by William H. Brewer, edited by Francis P Farquhar.

The World's Largest Bond Fund Dumped All of Its U.S. Government Debt - The Devaluing of the Dollar

PIMCO Total Return is the world's largest bond fund. It has dumped all of its U.S. government-related debt in the biggest signal yet of how negative investors have become about the U.S. Treasury market.

The move followed in the wake of a vicious Treasury market sell-off and just days after he questioned who will buy Treasuries once the Federal Reserve halts its latest round of bond purchases in June.

Bond prices have come under severe selling pressure because of a strengthening U.S. economy and as investors brace for what could happen when the U.S. central bank ends its controversial quantitative easing program.

PIMCO's co-chief investment officer has often railed against U.S. deficit spending and its inflationary impact. He has advocated buying bonds with "safe," higher yields -- such as emerging-market bonds -- that can withstand possible erosion of returns by inflation.

Income Inequality Pushes U.S. Down in Well-Being Ranking

The United Nations latest Human Development Index shows the gross domestic product isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all measurement of economic health. In addition to income, the Index looks at measures of health and education. In 1980, the U.S. was number one in the income ranking.

Today, the U.S. is number 4 for well-being behind Norway, Australia, and New Zealand. What has changed is that, for the first time, the rankings were also filtered for inequality, gaps between rich and poor. Consequently the overall Human Development Index fell by about 11%, which is quite significant, dropping the U.S. from 4th to 13th in the world. , Tamara Draut, who tracks U.S. income inequality and says "The middle class has lost ground and lower income households have just been clobbered. That is the story of the last couple of decades."

America's record on education, on the other hand, has helped its ranking on the Index.

American Psychosis: What Happens to a Society That Cannot Distinguish Between Reality and Illusion?...

Note: I admit that this is a very pessimistic, perhaps unrealistic article. But there many grains of truth to be found here. I know many people around me who seem to have blinders on, to be in denial. I believe Americans have gotten so accustomed to material goods, that they think they deserve them, when, in fact, they are exceeding the carrying capacity of the world ... Karen Gaia

The United States is a country entranced by illusions, captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. The virtues that sustain a nation-state and build community, from honesty to self-sacrifice to transparency to sharing, are ridiculed each night on television. In the cult of the self, we have a right to get whatever we desire. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism.

We seem to believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked.

A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies. The belief that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the accumulation of vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others is exposed as a fraud. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out.

America stays afloat by selling about $2 billion in Treasury bonds a day to the Chinese. It saw 2.8 million people lose their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions - nearly 8,000 people a day - and stands idle as they are joined by another 2.4 million people this year. It refuses to prosecute the Bush administration for obvious war crimes, including the use of torture, and sees no reason to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Deficits are pushing individual states to bankruptcy and forcing the closure of everything from schools to parks. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have squandered trillions of dollars, appear endless. There are 50 million Americans in real poverty and tens of millions of Americans in a category called "near poverty." One in eight Americans - and one in four children - depend on food stamps to eat. And yet, in the midst of it all, we continue to be a country consumed by happy talk and happy thoughts. We continue to embrace the illusion of inevitable progress, personal success and rising prosperity.

As the gap widens between the illusion and reality, as we suddenly grasp that it is our home being foreclosed or our job that is not coming back, we react like children. We scream and yell for a savior, someone who promises us revenge, moral renewal and new glory. A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually, emotionally and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans and will usher America into a new dark age. It was the economic collapse in Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in Tsarist Russia that opened the door for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. A cabal of proto-fascist misfits, from Christian demagogues to loudmouth talk show hosts, whom we naïvely dismiss as buffoons, will find a following with promises of revenge and moral renewal. And as in all totalitarian societies, those who do not pay fealty to the illusions imposed by the state become the outcasts, the persecuted.

The decline of American empire began before the first Gulf War or Ronald Reagan. It began when we shifted, in the words of Harvard historian Charles Maier, from an "empire of production" to an "empire of consumption."

By the end of the Vietnam War, when the costs of the war ate away at Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and domestic oil production began its steady, inexorable decline, we saw our country transformed from one that primarily produced to one that primarily consumed. We started borrowing to maintain a level of consumption as well as an empire we could no longer afford. We began to use force, especially in the Middle East, to feed our insatiable thirst for cheap oil. We substituted the illusion of growth and prosperity for real growth and prosperity. The bill is now due. America's most dangerous enemies are not Islamic radicals but those who sold us the perverted ideology of free-market capitalism and globalization. They have dynamited the very foundations of our society. In the 17th century these speculators would have been hung. Today they run the government and consume billions in taxpayer subsidies.

As the pressure mounts, as the despair and desperation reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to prevent civil unrest and instability. The emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the security state. This is why the Bush White House pushed through the Patriot Act (and its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of "extraordinary rendition," warrantless wiretapping on American citizens and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot- counting. The motive behind these measures is not to fight terrorism or to bolster national security. It is to seize and maintain internal control. It is about controlling us.

And yet, even in the face of catastrophe, mass culture continues to assure us that if we close our eyes, if we visualize what we want, if we have faith in ourselves, if we tell God that we believe in miracles, if we tap into our inner strength, if we grasp that we are truly exceptional, if we focus on happiness, our lives will be harmonious and complete. This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, by Hollywood or by Christian preachers, turns worthless mortgages and debt into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers offshore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the greatest democracy on earth. rw

'Greed Culture' Killing Planet

The average American consumes more than his or her weight in products each day, fuelling a global culture that is emerging as the biggest threat to the planet. In its annual report, Worldwatch Institute says the cult of consumption and greed could wipe out any gains from government action on climate change or a shift to a clean energy economy.

"Until we recognise that our environmental problems, from climate change to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises."

Humanity is burning through the planet's resources at a reckless rate. The world now digs up the equivalent of 112 Empire State buildings of material every day to meet surging global demand.

The consumer culture has spread from America across the globe, with excess now accepted as a symbol of success in developing countries.

China this week overtook the US as the world's top car market.

Such trend are the result of efforts by businesses to win over consumers.

The average Western family spends more on their pet than is spent by a human in Bangladesh.

Encouraging signs are that schools are trying to encourage healthier eating habits among children; a younger generation is also more aware of their environmental impact; and US corporations such as Wal-Mart were stocking organic produce and sustainably raised fish.

It said a wholesale transformation of values and attitudes was needed to end the world's obsession with conspicuous consumption. rw

U.S.: Blocking Build-Build-Builders

It is frustrating to fight overzealous builders house by house, in local zoning battles. So Lesley Blackner and Ross Burnaman, both lawyers, created Florida Hometown Democracy, a proposed amendment that asks: Before turning the bulldozers loose on the environment, wouldn't you like to vote on it? If approved, Florida would become the only state in the nation requiring democratically elected urban sprawl.

The campaign is blessed by near-perfect timing, with Florida on the edge of a depression with plunging home prices, rampant foreclosures and abandoned houses rotting in the heat and dragging down neighborhoods. There are 300,000 empty houses in Florida.

What is more extreme than the build more-more-more mentality? "They had everything they wanted for the last five to six years. They crashed the economy. They have no solution other than bring the bubble back. Hometown Democracy is the only genuine reform on the table that can change the politics of growth once and for all," says Blackner.

Office vacancies are skyrocketing. The state's population is declining for the first time since World War II. Yet there are requests pending to build more than 600,000 more homes, along with millions more square feet of commercial space. There are plans to create massive new cities in the middle of nowhere.

Our development pandemic threatens the economy as much as the environment. Building more houses when the number of buyers has not increased deflates the value of houses that is going to linger for years and years.

Biodiversity: Next Steps: More of Us = Fewer of Them

As the world's population counter keeps ticking higher, more and more species are being driven toward extinction.

Just as we reached 7 billion the Vietnamese Javan rhino, the last mainland Asian rhino, was declared extinct. And this past week, its related western black rhino species in Africa was also declared extinct. Like so many rare species, these rhinos simply ran out of places to live. More humans meant fewer of them, until the last of their kind vanished.

We recently posted a new report on 10 U.S. plants and animals threatened by the effects of overpopulation: loss of habitat, freshwater scarcity, pesticide bombing and an ever-expanding network of roads that keep the threats traveling: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/overpopulation/7_billion_and_counting/species.html . Find out about imperiled species near you with our online Species Finder: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/overpopulation/T_and_E_map/index.html.

We're also hashing it out and keeping you updated on a new Twitter feed, @EndSpcsCondoms.

U.S.: Don't Let Nevada Water Hogs Drain the Great Basin

The Great Basin ecosystem in Nevada and Utah is under attack by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which is trying to export groundwater via a 300-mile pipeline to Las Vegas -- a city hoping to expand in the driest desert in North America.

This is obviously a bad bet, and we need to say so right away.

The proposal would cut the lifeline of a wild area the size of Vermont. Species that are dependent on the Great Basin ecosystem, like the imperiled greater sage grouse (pictured here), would be hurt, while some fish and springsnails that live nowhere else on Earth could die off completely.

Please ask the Nevada state water engineer to deny the Southern Nevada Water Authority's applications.

There are better options for securing water for Las Vegas than laying waste to the heart of the Great Basin.

Click on the link in the headline to see more and to take action.

U.S.: Help Save Alaska's Beluga Whales From the Pebble Mine

U.S. Tells California to Cut Water Use to Save Fish

Salmon and other fish have been pushed to the brink of extinction by Californians' demand for water, ruled the National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency. Officials were ordered to cut water supplies by 5-7% to cities and farms.

To turn southern desert into productive farmland, a monumental system of dams and pipelines were built, leaving less water for trout, salmon, sturgeon and other fish.

With the state in its third year of drought, and climate change and a growing population, the fate of some salmon runs looks untenable without change.

If water conservation, recycling and groundwater use do not offset the cuts, the state may be more tempted to build more dams and canals to capture the last trickles that bypass the system.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation regional director said the mounting restrictions on water "just cannot be offset in any given year and maybe over time." State and federal water projects this year have slashed deliveries to about 40 percent of most requests, due to drought, and agricultural losses are expected near $1 billion.

The fisheries agency plans to keep more water behind big dams during the year to ensure a supply of cold water in which salmon spawn, restrict some pumping, and find ways for fish to get to historical spawning grounds upriver from dams.

Supreme Court Hears Case on Navy Sonar, Whales

The Supreme Court was closely split on whether environmental laws can be used to protect marine mammals from the Navy's use of sonar. An administration lawyer urged the court to throw out a Los Angeles judge's order that requires the Navy to turn off its high intensity sonar whenever a whale or dolphin is within 1.2 miles of a ship.

This order disrupts the Navy's war-game exercises. U.S. Solicitor Gen. Gregory Garre disputed claims that the sonar causes harm to the whales.

But lawyer Richard B. Kendall said beaked whales dive deeply to escape the sound, and sometimes suffer bleeding and death when they try to resurface. He also said the order has had a minimal impact on the Navy. Only on a few occasions have ships been forced to turn off their sonar.

The case has turned into a major dispute over whether judges have the power to stop the government from conducting a crucial exercise because it had not carried out an environmental impact statement.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wondered "Why couldn't you work this out?" rather than having a court resolve the dispute. rw

U.S.: Endangered-Species Protections Reinstated for Gray Wolves

A federal judge ruled that wolves should be returned to the endangered-species list, derailing plans for wolf hunts in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The 2,000 or so gray wolves that inhabit the three states were removed from the endangered list in March; environmentalists sued to get them back on, saying populations were not yet stable. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, over 100 gray wolves have been killed by hunters in the days since they were delisted. The federal judge will decide if the relisting should be permanent. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may appeal. rw

Death of the Bees: GMO Crops and the Decline of Bee Colonies in North America

There are many reasons given to the decline in Bees, but one that matters most is the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and "Terminator Seeds" that are being endorsed by governments and utilized as our agricultural needs of survival.

Genetically modified seeds are produced by biotech conglomerates who manipulate government agricultural policy with a view to dominance in the agricultural industry. American conglomerates have created seeds that reproduce only under certain conditions, often linked to the use of their own brands of fertilizer and/or insecticide.

The genetic modification leads to the concurrent genetic modification of the flower pollen. When the pollen becomes genetically modified or sterile, the bees will become malnourished and die of illness due to the lack of nutrients and the interruption of the digestive capacity of what they feed on.

There are arguments that the blame be placed on mites, pesticides, or cell phone radiation, but digestive shutdown due to hard material in the digestive tract that compromises the immune system points to GMO flower pollen.

This increased epidemic of the bee colony collapse has risen significantly since the use of GMO in our foods. It is also suspect in the rise of new cases of medical ailments in humans such as colon cancer, obesity, heart disease, etc.

The Ecological Impact of horizontal gene transfer and increase of rampant disease is not fully examined and if so, is kept silent by these Conglomerates. Organic farming is relatively untouched as the bee crisis. The economic impact that the scarcity of bees will potentially have on our society is very worrisome. rw

Human Impacts of Rising Oceans Will Extend Well Beyond Coasts

Researchers Katherine Curtis and Annemarie Schneider from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that identifying the human impact of rising sea levels is far more complex than just looking at coastal cities on a map. Basing on current, static population data can greatly misrepresent the true extent - and the pronounced variability - of the human toll of climate change, they said.

The researcher's report will be published online in the peer-reviewed journal Population and Environment. It will examine the impacts of rising oceans as one element of how a changing climate will affect humans. Economic and social vulnerability was linked with environmental vulnerability to better understand which areas and their populations are most vulnerable.

Existing climate projections and maps were used to identify areas at risk of inundation from rising sea levels and storm surges, then coupled those vulnerability assessments with projections for future populations.

"Future climate scenarios typically span 50 to 100 years or more. That's unreasonable for demographic projections, which are often conducted on the order of decades," explains Schneider. The researchers worked to better align population and climate data in both space and time, in order to describe social and demographic dimensions of environmental vulnerability.

Four regions susceptible to flooding were studied: the tip of the Florida peninsula, coastal South Carolina, the northern New Jersey coastline, and the greater Sacramento region of northern California. Using current patterns of population change to predict future population demographics in those areas, and patterns of movement to or from those areas, they were able to determine that, by 2030 more than 19 million people will be affected by rising sea levels in just their four study areas.

Through these migrations networks, "environmental impacts will have a ripple effect," Curtis says. For example, people who would have moved to Florida would have to remain where they started or move elsewhere if Florida floods.

A population's demographic, social, and economic profile affects the ways in which people can respond to local disaster, she adds. For example, children or elderly require a different approach to evacuation and resettlement than a largely working-age population, while workers from the agricultural lands of northern California will face different post-displacement labor challenges than those from the industrial corridor of New Jersey.

"As we anticipate future events, future natural disasters, we've learned how dramatic it can be -- and there are things that can be done in advance to mitigate the extent of damage in a location," Curtis says.

U.S.: BP Disaster in Gulf: One Year Later

It is the one year anniversary of the explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then we all came to realize the full, nightmarish extent of the oil spill catastrophe -- and the extent of political corruption, mismanagement and weak regulation in the offshore drilling industry.

The Center for Biological Diversity has become the nation's leading critic of the offshore industry, uncovering rampant disregard for environmental regulation and petitioning for the protection of multiple species affected by the spill.

The BP spill was the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history and should have been a wake-up call. But unfortunately, regulation of the offshore industry is the same as it was in April 2010 and the Department of the Interior just recently began issuing new offshore drilling permits.

More than 200 million gallons of oil and 225,000 tons of methane were spilled into the Gulf and oiled more than 1,000 miles of shoreline.

More than 82,000 birds; about 6,000 sea turtles; nearly 26,000 marine mammals, including dolphins; and an unknown, but no doubt staggering number of fish and invertebrates may have been harmed by the spill and its aftermath.

More than 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants were sprayed into the Gulf -- which may actually be making waters more toxic for species -- without regulators ensuring the chemicals wouldn't harm endangered wildlife or their habitats.

The Center for Biological Diversity has launched nine lawsuits, including a pending $19 billion suit against BP and Transocean for violations of the Clean Water Act, and ratcheted up the pressure on politicians to reform offshore oversight, halt dangerous drilling, save imperiled species and hold the federal government and BP accountable.

It's vital that we seize this moment marking the one-year anniversary of the Gulf disaster to push ahead for real, long-term reforms that ensure people, wild places and wildlife are safe and protected.

Here is our interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

U.S.: Chesapeake Bay is Still Hurting

There was little good news in the 2006 Assessment put out by the Chesapeake Bay Program. The report found degraded water quality, a decline in the blue crab population, contaminated rivers and huge losses in bay grasses.

The University of Maryland offered a river-by-river report card for water clarity, dissolved oxygen levels and quality of life for small clams and worms. The results were equally dismal. The flush tax, which former Gov. Ehrlich Jr. signed into law in 2004, is expected to raise about $65 million a year to upgrade sewage treatment plants to reduce pollution.

Dozens of scientists in the region are studying the bay's creatures and looking at ways to help them thrive in an increasingly toxic environment.

Many said they have grown weary of hearing the same gloomy assessments of the bay's health.

The VP of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said state and federal officials have long known what to do but have not the political will to do it.

State leaders should be working to secure federal aid for the bay. Agriculture is the 800-pound gorilla when you're looking at nutrient pollution, but population growth is the 8,000-pound gorilla waiting in the wings. rw

California, Oregon and Washington Plan to Lobby Bush, Congress

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced a pact to safeguard the ocean and lobby Congress and the president.

Gov. Schwarzenegger signed seven bills that his office said would "extend the state's leadership" on ocean protection.

Our Western states have started to work together to fight global warming and protect our air, and we now join forces to make sure we are doing everything to maintain clean water and beachess, Schwarzenegger said. Members said their efforts would bolster economies by protecting coastal tourism and enhancing fisheries.

Key concerns include pollution from urban runoff and the environmental effects of off-shore oil drilling.

The U.S. Geological Survey announced a report that shows 66% of California's beaches have eroded over the past few decades. The states want more money to deal with the problems.

Protecting the oceans isn't likely to leapfrog to the top of the national agenda.

The agreement was crafted during the past six months. Similar collaboration goes back to 2004, when the three states started trading ideas for slashing air pollution. In coming months, experts from the participating states plan to meet with environmental and business leaders to develop initial recommendations.

The governors intend to send a series of statements to the president and Congress, urging them to:

Provide money for programs aimed at curbing urban runoff. Expand funding for key regional research efforts.

Request that federal agencies, including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, are directed to provide technical assistance. The governors intend to oppose expansion of offshore oil and natural gas exploration.

Similar agreements have been negotiated among Great Lakes, Gulf Coast and New England states.

California's marine problems have been building for years as people cram the coast with development and pollutants endanger sea life. rw

California Seal Pups Beat Kids in Battle Over Beach

This week San Diego officials roped off a prime stretch of the La Jolla shoreline to keep people from disturbing the harbor seals who have taken up residence.

Any move can spook the animals to flee into the ocean and abandon their newborn babies, violating federal marine mammal protection laws.

Seals need adequate sun and sand time in order to maintain good health. The city was urged to act after receiving an increase in complaints that angry residents were harassing the marine mammals.The council voted to erect the barrier each year from January 1 through May 1. Federal officials have installed 24-hour surveillance cameras to watch for people deliberately swimming, kayaking or sunbathing in the area.

Many residents said they were undeterred as it's the only place around with a lifeguard station and bathrooms. A steady stream of tourists and environmental activists clusters around the roped area, unfazed by the stench. The cove has been a popular La Jolla spot since the early 1930s. Nobody knows why the animals began flocking to the shore in the late 1990s but about 200 seals live there. The rope barrier is also meant as a warning to stay away from seal fecal matter and birth byproducts.

A California judge ordered the city to dredge and clean up the beach but the decision has been tied up in litigation and a foul fishy stench remains.

San Diego Council president Scott Peters said he did not feel there was evidence of seal harassment. "The issue isn't so much that people can't get along with seals, it's that people can't get along with people," Peters said. rw

State of the Environment - North Carolina's Most Urgent Environmental Challenge

If projections from scientific experts are remotely accurate, North Carolina is in for significant change within our lifetimes related to global climate change. One estimate says 770 square miles of the coast could submerge. Air quality may worsen as temperatures rise, and the health of citizens could decline. Some will die of heat stroke. Environmental Defense, among others, has suggested a series of strategies to limit the harmful impact and prepare its residents to make some money off the changes. This year, air quality drops out of the top 10 problems because there were fewer bad air days, because controls on smokestack pollution have begun to take effect. Each of these assessments is subjective, not scientific. Summers have been getting drier, while falls have been getting wetter. As a consequence, North Carolinians have less water available than they did 100 years ago and a future with insufficient water in some areas as the state continues its dramatic urbanization. Raleigh has problems with one of its key reservoirs. Falls Lake which has been below normal level, forcing Raleigh to think about asking for a transfer from Kerr Lake. Concord and Kannapolis have sought to drain 38 million gallons a day from the Catawba River. Storm runoff, nutrients and sediment remain a top concern. Development is overwhelming the ability to keep pollution out of water supplies but the state is losing the war to protect water quality and the environment in North Carolina and America. Rapid growth and inappropriate development has been near the top of the list for 10 years. Residential growth consumes farmland, green space and forests, putting new strains on air quality and water quality. But sprawling low-density development and quality-of-life concerns could interfere with future prosperity. Growth and development has threatened places where no one ever imagined. A growth surge in coastal counties has caused problems and the land use planning program for the coast is totally broken. The very people who depend on waterfront availability for their economic survival can no longer afford that access. How North Carolina will meet its energy needs at an affordable cost will dominate debate affecting the environment. Utilities are interested in building more nuclear plants and pressure grows for the state to rescind its opposition to offshore natural gas exploration. While some fish stocks have made recoveries in N.C. waters, others have declined in alarming ways. River herring have become so depleted that catches failed to reach a quota limit. Oysters, bay scallops and blue crabs are species of "concern" because of low catches. Population growth has increased the amount of garbage going into landfills while the state might begin importing garbage in landfills proposed for sparsely populated areas an environmental threat. The state continues to search for solutions to large-scale hog farm waste. Thousands bought up the shoreline and built out-of-scale mansions to replace the fish camps and clapboard cottages. The loss of natural areas to upscale residential developments has changed what North Carolinians see from our windows. Litter accumulates along our highways, costing the state millions in collection costs and providing volunteers with more work than they can keep up with. Utility poles and wires mar the viewscape. Environmental concerns fail to consider long-term implications and doesn't recognize the interdependence of conservation and development. North Carolina has more than 17 million acres of forests and large stands of trees in national and state forests, parks and wildlife reserves. But the huge stands of hardwoods and regal longleaf pines are now a small fraction of what they once were. In a state where development has gobbled up 100,000 acres of forested lands and natural areas per year, recent legislation may make it harder for local governments to preserve land at a time the state's population continues to grow and consume more natural areas. rw

Hard Choices Seen in Efforts to Help Louisiana Wetlands

Restoring Louisiana's wetlands, or maintaining those that remain, will be impossible, according to the National Academy of Sciences. The time has come for state and local governments, businesses and citizens to start talking about which wetland areas can be preserved and which must be abandoned. The proposal put forward by the state and the Army Corps of Engineers had worthwhile elements but would not come close to halting wetland loss. The panel considered an area of about 12,000 square miles from Texas to Mississippi. Wetlands support fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, much of the nation's oil and gas production, a growing eco-tourism industry and Louisiana's Cajun culture. But since the 1930's, 1,900 square miles of marsh has been lost beneath the waters of the gulf. Many consider the wetlands a major defense against storms like Katrina, an idea panel members discounted. Marshes may dampen the effects of minor storms, but for Katrina it would not have made any difference. The panel was charged with evaluating a proposal developed after the White House complained that the 30-year, $13 billion Louisiana Coastal Area study, was too large, cost too much and looked too far into the future. The revised proposal, comprises five projects, with an estimated cost of $1.9 billion, that could get under way in 5 to 10 years. The Corps of Engineers said the narrow time frame was a response to the Bush administration, and there was wide agreement in the corps that you need to think where you go long term. The projects are: an embankment along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a canal from the river at New Orleans southeast to the gulf; levee culverts to carry river water into the Maurepas Swamp, and three projects south of New Orleans, a river diversion to support wetlands in the Barataria Basin, improvements to channel banks, weirs and pumps along Bayou Lafourche and a project to rebuild beaches, dunes and marshes near Port Fourchon. The canal is reviled as having accelerated marsh loss but panel members said that this could not be demonstrated but it would be a mistake to reinforce the canal before the corps decides whether to decommission it. The panel said the other projects are scientifically sound, but estimated that in aggregate they would slow marsh loss by only 20%. Wetland loss peaked in the early 1980's, when Louisiana lost about 40 square miles a year. Its annual loss now is 12 to 20 square miles. rw

U.S.: Save the Frogs

April 29 was Save the Frogs Day, and we would like your help to protect frogs from one of the biggest threats to their survival. Please ask the Environmental Protection Agency to ban a widely-used weed killer called atrazine that is threatening frog populations.

Frogs are especially sensitive to chemicals in their surrounding environment. Their numbers have been plummeting around the world, and one of the major causes is the widespread use of pesticides like atrazine. Frogs act as an indicator species for the overall health of the environment.

In agricultural areas, as much as 75% of all waterways contain some level of atrazine. Atrazine in our environment isn't good for us either. The European Union has already phased out its use entirely.

California Wildlands at Risk

The Tioga Pass into the Sierra Nevada Range, the vast Sonoran Desert, the San Francisco Bay/ Delta and all of the Pacific Coast beach areas are at severe risk, according to a recent publication by the Endangered Species Coalition (ESC).

While the report is primarily about risks caused by potential climate change, it states that the direct cause of damage and threat in the desert is due to unsustainable water use from explosive population growth; in the Sierra, population growth, recreation and changing land use, and in the Bay/ Delta, unrealistic human demands on water.

UCLA geography professor Hartmut Walter said, "Land coverage change, and the rapid increase in people who need places to live and things to eat, drastically changes the ecosystems rapidly." ... "Climate change is a fact, but I believe right now in the near future the threat to California's ecosystems comes from changing land use practices and development."

Conservation International said, "Human population pressures have rendered California one of the four most ecologically degraded states in the country, with all or part of the nation's eight most threatened ecosystems represented." They estimate that only 25% of the original vegetation of the region remains in more or less pristine condition.

The population of the city of Indio in Riverside County has nearly quadrupled since the 1980 census, for example.. Merced, "The Gateway to Yosemite," and now home to a new University of California campus, has experienced a nearly 20% growth rate over the last census period. Population growth in Southern California affects the Bay/Delta region, which is the major conduit for north/south water transfers. More than 60% of California's population lives in Southern California and largely depends on northern water.

In some of these areas, including Southern California, more than 30% of that population is foreign-born, somehow leading the author to conclude that the answer is to reduce immigration.

Center for Biological Diversity Announces Support for Global Population Speak Out

The Center for Biological Diversity supports a collaborative effort to highlight overpopulation in efforts to restore the planet's ecological health. For many years human population size and growth has been the elephant in the room. Overpopulation is at the root of virtually all of the ecological threats facing our planet. Species extinction, pollution, resource depletion, and climate change can all be traced back to unsustainable population growth.

The Center has won protection for more than 350 species and hundreds of millions of acres of habitat. But that could be overwhelmed as too many people compete for too few resources and create too many burdens for ecosystems. The correlation between human population growth and species extinction has been clearly documented.

Humans use up to 40% of the world's Net Primary Productivity, a measure of energy from the sun that is converted into life-sustaining resources by photosynthesis. A range of extinctions can be tied directly to the energy, housing, food, and other resource demands of our population. The extinction crisis threatens to grow exponentially with climate change, and energy demands of a rapidly growing global populace. rw

U.S.: Envisioning a Sustainable Chesapeake

It's been most inspiring to see discussions begin to address the future of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay.

They prompt us to ask: "What does a sustainable Chesapeake really mean?"

My vision is built upon a balanced, vibrant ecosystem teeming with fish, shellfish, underwater grasses and clear, healthy waters. But to be truly sustainable, the Chesapeake ecosystem needs to exist while also supporting the region's human population.

Creating a sustainable Chesapeake will not be easy. But as we look around the state, we're seeing more and more positive steps being taken.

Recently, the Maryland Commission on Climate Change made recommendations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving energy throughout the state. These actions will require that we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25% within the next 12 years.

An initiative was introduced that will seek to instill a sense of environmental stewardship among the 28,000 students graduating each year. It will also foster research and prepare the new "green" workforce.

By changing our own actions, each of us has the ability to reduce our impact on the bay and the planet.

As long as the region's population continues to grow, and we develop lands faster than needed to accommodate that growth, we make it more difficult to maintain the sustainability equation.

We have struggled more than 20 years to reduce the amount of pollution flowing into the bay and we are still far from where we need to be. Another 10, 20 or 30 years of pollution-fighting efforts will still not be enough. Bay restoration efforts will be needed in perpetuity.

We need to manage for sustainability by remaining aware of what will cross our path in the future. rw

Tree Huggers Embrace Eco-Friendly Logging

The Conservation Fund, a 21-year-old Arlington, Va.-based organization, strives to balance natural resource protection with economic goals. Timber sales will be used to pay for forest and watershed restoration.

The Conservation Fund is banking on transforming the sustainable production and sale of timber that has grown back on previously logged land into dollars that can be used to permanently shield the property from development while improving wildlife habitat and providing jobs.

After buying 24,000 acres along the Garcia for $18 million in 2004, the Conservation Fund is purchasing an additional 16,000 acres in two nearby watersheds for $48.5 million, mostly with state financing. And the group hopes to buy 165,000 acres more, which would make it one of the biggest timber concerns on the North Coast.

Private forest ownership is held by half a dozen companies and families, but is struggling, with land values rising. We are talking about very low density…development but it alters the ecosystem. Lots of animals do not like dogs, cats, horses and cars coming in and out all the time and the land still provides valuable habitat for wildlife.

Financially stretched government agencies often cannot afford to make large-scale acquisitions to create parkland.

Two years ago, the organization bought the Garcia lands for $18 million in partnership with the state Coastal Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Board and the nonprofit Nature Conservancy.

Now the Conservation Fund has designated 35% of the property as forest reserve. On the rest, it plans to continue commercial timber production. Foresters say this would promote sustainable forestry, but it is hard to get society to accept this notion. The land has been logged repeatedly, and most trees are less than 2 feet in diameter. The key, said forester Craig Blencowe, is "cut less than you grow and leave good trees."

The problem is the strategy might not produce enough timber to cover annual operating costs.

When a plan was submitted to the state for logging a few hundred acres, local environmentalists questioned the proposed use of herbicides to kill tan oaks that have taken over previously logged areas.

The proposal was withdrawn for revisions and herbicides will not be used.

But forest activists applaud the Conservation Fund's responsiveness and its decision to run a working forest rather than a park, partly because the region needs the jobs.

The Conservation Fund hopes to close a $48.5-million deal with Hawthorne Timber Co to acquire 11,600 acres in the Big River watershed and 4,345 acres in the Salmon Creek watershed.

The state water board recently approved a $25-million loan for the project. The Conservation Fund wants the property because it provides habitat for endangered species and is vulnerable to development. rw

US Florida;: $310m Purchase Finalized; State Officials Accept Deed to Nearly 74,000 Acres of the Property

Florida's biggest-ever land purchase, 74,000 acres of wild land bought by the state for over $350 million, comes with a catch, 17,000 acres of adjoining property will belong to developer Syd Kitson, who plans to build a new city. The purchase will preserve about 80% of the Babcock Ranch in the southwest of the state. It will create a corridor for wildlife, from Lake Okeechobee nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. Other green groups lament the development which clears the way for a new community with 19,500 homes, 6 million square feet of office space, and potential for 50,000 residents. The Sierra Club sued to stop the purchase, but dropped the lawsuit when Kitson promised to leave the most sensitive parts of the land undeveloped. rw

US Florida: Overpopulation is the Real Culprit

Overpopulation is the culprit. Fishing was still going pretty strong in the late 1960s when lots of fish could be caught by trolling in Tampa Bay. But it had all gone to hell by 1980. Mackerel stocks had collapsed, and redfish were decimated. For a long time, like many people concerned with the environment, I was convinced the problem was habitat destruction and overexploitation. If we could just convince people to use less of the resources and preserve as much habitat as we could, things would work out. But the environmental messes we see all around us are only symptoms of the real cause, way too many people in many parts of the country, and a looming tidal wave of overpopulation that threatens to swamp any hope that our great-grandchildren will be enjoy the kind of outdoors pursuits we do. Florida's population is nearing 20 million, and some projections say it will double in 20 years. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is having an awful time trying to manage the state deer herd, but the problem doesn't lie with the deer. The problem is that when you have roughly 800,000 deer hunters, all of whom want a good chance to kill a deer, you can't satisfy the demand and still maintain a deer herd in line with what the habitat will support. Trying to preserve habitat and stop pollution is a losing battle with the kind of population growth America is experiencing. Some projections that the U.S. population will double to more than 600 million in 100 years. Do you think we could continue to maintain the kind of wildlife habitat we have now will the best efforts at controlling air and water pollution do more than slow the rate of degradation? The issue of population growth and its effects on the natural world will become more important with every passing year. rw

U.S.: An Unfair Fight for Renewable Energies

By Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California

More energy from the sun hits Earth in one hour than all the energy consumed on our planet in an entire year.

In those terms, it is absurd that our federal government spends tens of billions of dollars annually subsidizing the oil industry, which pulls diminishing resources from underground, while the industry focused above ground on wind, solar and other renewable energies is derided in Washington.

Federal support for development of new energy sources is lower today than at any other point in U.S. history, and our government is forcing the clean-energy sector into a competitive disadvantage. To bring true competition to the energy market, ensure our national security and create jobs here rather than in China or elsewhere, we must level the playing field for renewable energies. In this presidential primary, Americans need to hear where the candidates stand on this critical issue.

When the oil, gas and nuclear industries were forming, federal support for those energies totaled as much as 1 percent of federal spending. Subsidies available to the renewables industry today are just one-tenth of 1 percent.

To read more, click on the link in the headline above.

Facing Limits: Jobs

Regardless of whether the majority of the world's adults want to work or not in order to gain an income and have job satisfaction, the world cannot support full-time jobs for everyone because many jobs are based on ravaging the natural world to turn living things into dead products (i.e., forests into cardboard boxes and other packaging materials, disposable newspapers and chopsticks, etc.), and we have too many people to maintain such behaviors on the scale needed. Simultaneously the conversion of life into products is destroying habitats for forest residents (including indigenous tribes) and many species in other environments so that they die off at a high rate.

How the U.S. is Becoming a 3rd World Country - Part 1

The U.S. is experiencing high unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, low wages, widespread poverty, extreme concentration of wealth, unsustainable government debt, control of the government by international banks and multinational corporations, weak rule of law and counterproductive government policies -- all fundamental characteristics that define a 3rd world country.

While other factors such as public health, nutrition, and infrastructure rank the U.S. above 3rd world countries, they are below European standards, and will rapidly deteriorate in a declining economy.

The evidence suggests that, without fundamental reforms, the U.S. will become a post industrial neo-3rd-world country by 2032.

Offshoring of manufacturing, outsourcing of jobs and deindustrialization are aspects of globalization, shoving the U.S. labor market into a long-term downward trend. The U.S. workforce has declined by approximately 6.5% since its year 2000 peak to roughly 58.2% of working age adults and the U.S. now suffers chronic unemployment of 9.1%. Although the workforce grew in the 1980s and 1990s, as dual income families became the norm, the size of the workforce is shrinking due to a lack of economic opportunity.

Before the Clinton administration, unemployment measures included workers who are now no longer counted as part of the workforce. Thus, while the official long-term unemployment is 16.5%, using pre-Clinton measurements, unemployment exceeds 22%, only 3% below the worst point (24.9%) of the Great Depression, and not far from Armenia at 28.6%, Algeria at 27.3% and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip both at 25.7%. The highest unemployment for countries with over 2 million population is Macedonia with 33.8% unemployment.

Young Americans are being left behind in terms of economic opportunity. Student loans exceed $1 trillion while the labor force participation rate for those aged 16 to 29 who are working or looking for work fell to 48.8% in 2011, the lowest level ever recorded. The fact of millions of unemployed college graduates and lack of economic opportunity for other young Americans, is a political wildcard reminiscent of countries like Tunisia.

American workers cannot yet directly compete for jobs with workers in countries like China and India. In China, for example, gross pay, in terms of purchasing power parity, is equivalent to approximately $514 per month, 57% below the U.S. poverty line. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. trade deficit with China alone caused a loss of 2.8 million U.S. jobs since 2001.

The cost of living is rising faster than wages, leaving Americans who earn more dollars poorer in terms of purchasing power. If household income is adjusted for inflation, most American families have grown significantly poorer over the past ten years. While wages have risen slightly, when adjusted for inflation, the wages of most Americans have not kept up with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Also, according to economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, CPI systematically understates inflation.

Prices rise when the money supply is increased faster than population or sustainable economic activity. Apparent economic growth created through credit expansion, i.e., by increasing the money supply, has a temporary stimulative effect but also causes prices to rise.

The decline in real household income has set Americans back to 1996 levels, despite many households now having two incomes rather than one. The poverty rate in the United States rose to 15.7% in 2011, having risen sharply since 2006 and continues to climb. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as "food stamps," now feeds 1 in 8 Americans and nearly 1 in 4 children.

The household income and wealth of the wealthiest Americans has increased sharply, despite the overall deterioration of the U.S. economy.

Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned that concentration of wealth undermines the consumer base of the economy, causing GDP to decline and resulting in unemployment, which reduces living standards.

Economic data from several sources, including the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), show that wealth and income in the United States have become increasingly concentrated with the wealthiest 1% of Americans owning 38.2% of stock market assets, e.g., shares of businesses. For the wealthiest 1% of Americans, household income tripled between 1979 and 2007 and has continued to increase while household wealth in the United States has fallen by $7.7 trillion.

The Gini Coefficient, a measurement of disparity in income distribution, the United States is now at parity with China and will soon overtake Mexico, a still developing country. Even though the U.S. remains a far wealthier country overall, if the current trend continues the U.S. will resemble a 3rd world country, in terms of the disparity in income distribution, in approximately two decades, i.e., by 2032.

How the Economy is Killing Americans

Follow the link in the headline for an informative chart on current American health.

In the last year, there's been a .6% increase in Americans who smoke, a 2% decrease in Americans who say they eat healthfully all day, a 1.9% decrease in those who eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables 4 days a week, and a .7% decrease in those who exercise for at least 30 minutes 3 days a week.

77% of workers say they constantly feel "burned out" at work, and 43% report their on-the-job stress level has increased in the last half year. This also costs the economy $300 billion a year in no-shows, accidents, insurance and medical claims.

Medical patients feel the economy has affected their health, including 35% of people with heart disease, 21% of cancer patients and 39%. 19% of diabetics have skipped or put off medical appointments for financial reasons, while 15% have postponed tests. 18% have said they can't follow the prescribed diets for their condition, either.

Almost 25% of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes patients have incurred credit card debt in order to pay for their care.

Almost 33% of Americans say the economy has affected their sleep, and economic woes account for about 30% of calls made to suicide hotlines. The strongest mental impact of job loss and pay cuts is depression, which 71% of laid off/fired people and 51% of recipients of a pay cut experienced. One in six Americans can't afford the food they need-there are 49 million Americans without enough food, and 16 million of those are children.

Philippines: Too Many Mouths?

Click on the link in the headline for the audio version of this article.

Kai Ryssdal: Over the past 50 years, the amount of food that we as a planet produce has doubled. So too has the number of people who depend on that food. There are 7 billion of us now. The United Nations says we're on the way to 9 billion by the middle of the century. So that's what we're calling our year-long series on how we're going to feed them all. Food for 9 Billion is a partnership with Homelands Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS NEWSHOUR.

Last month, we took you to Egypt and the realities of food and revolution. Today, the Philippines, where a growing population means the country can't feed itself anymore. And that leaves them with two options: Increase supply and try to do something about demand. From outside Manila, Sam Eaton reports. Sam Eaton: There's a saying in the Philippines, "pantawid gutom." It means to "cross the hunger." When a family can't afford rice, they'll water down a pack of instant noodles or feed their babies brown sugar dissolved in water to ease the hunger pangs. The fact that this saying even exists should tell you something about what it means to be poor here. Clarissa Canayong is 42 years old. She has 10 surviving children -- the youngest only a year old. And she lives in an urban Manila slum called Vitas, at the edge of a garbage dump.

Which Countries Match the GDP and Population of America's States?

We Americans like to think we live in a rich country, but looking at it state by state, you will be surprised. This map of the United States shows an equivalent country in terms of GDP. California's GPD is nearly the same of Italy, and Idaho's is nearly the same as Sudan, for example.

A second comparison is done with population, but it would have been useful to do a map with per capita GDP equivalencies.

A Punch to the Mouth: Food Price Volatility Hits the World

2011 saw yet another enormous increase in damages from natural disasters. During the past few decades the frequency of weather-related disasters (floods, fires, storms) has been growing at a much faster pace than geological disasters (such as earthquakes). Insurance group Munich Re noted in a late 2010 letter that weather-related disasters due to wind have doubled and flooding events have tripled in frequency since 1980. This has broad-reaching implications particularly for food.

Factors such as population growth, urbanization, the decline of arable land per person, and the upgrading of diets have produced higher food prices. But more damaging than food inflation has been the pushing of global food prices out of their long, quiet envelope of stability.

In the UN Report on the World Food Situation, the FAO Index shows that, while prices are once again down from a peak, a troublesome volatility started to affect food prices this decade. These are the very prices that caused social instability in countries like Mexico in 2007-2008 (pressure on corn prices, owing in part to US corn ethanol mandates) and more recently in northern Africa (Arab Spring).

There has been a rough correspondence of food prices with oil prices - understandable since inputs to food production are heavily composed of fossil fuels. High volatile oil prices play havoc with economies, and so do food prices and marginal speculation in food.

The average oil high of 2008 was at $99.67 a barrel and 2011 also saw the highest average oil prices since then, at $94.81 per barrel. In between was a crash in oil prices -- and most commodities.

The USDA has forecast that the CPI for all food is projected to increase 3.5%, with more to come next year. This falls on top of a deeply under-utilized US economy in which tens of millions derive income from government transfer payments, most of which are not sufficiently ratcheting higher from "inflation-adjustments." Food Stamp recipients, for example, are not seeing food inflation adjustments in their benefit checks that would compensate for the price increases.

Milk is up 40% in the futures market, beef prices are up 9.8%, egg prices are up 10.25%, and potato prices are up 12%. The Food Stamp benefit is basically flat year-over-year. In December of 2007, just after the declared start of the "recession," national participation in SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) stood at 27.385 million. As of the latest data, this has ballooned to 46.268 million.

The chart of Los Angeles County SNAP users (click on the link in the headline to see it) echoes the FAO chart from the United Nations. Upward-moving volatility in energy is concurrent with wild swings in food prices and waves of people in need of public assistance. Wages in the US have remained flat while millions of workers remain either unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, urbanization in the developing world has continued apace, forcing food prices and energy prices up at the margin.

When demand begins to hit a resource whose supply cannot be easily increased, then price moves to ration demand and price becomes more volatile. The US is not running out of oil, or corn, and the world is not running out of coal, or copper. Industrialization in the non-OECD, have combined to put an unexpectedly large burden of demand on world resources -- at a rapid rate. Meanwhile, many natural resources, such as copper and oil in particular, had already reached a more difficult place in the arc of their own extraction history when this started to unfold.

In a study of urbanization in China's Pearl River Delta and its aggregate effect on climate and precipitation it was found that paving over the earth decreases rainfall. Photos from NASA show comparing satellite views of the Pearl River Delta over a 14-year period from 1979 to 2003. The loss of arable farmland per capita in China has placed enormous pressure on the global food system and all of its inputs, especially fertilizer. There are limits to the miracle of the food (Green) revolution. We can only convert so much farmland to urbanscape while making up the difference with Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (fertilizer) before we lose resiliency in the global food system. It did not used to be the case that a bad wheat crop in Australia or the Ukraine would hit global wheat prices so hard.

Stagflation has now entered the US economy - flat wages and rising food prices. Will Americans be able to afford to pay what the world can afford to pay, for food?

EPA Silently Continues Support for Corn Ethanol, Bumping Target for 2012

Under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the power to push alternative fuel targets, with a hard target of reaching 36 billion gallons of production by 2022.

The target for corn ethanol was increased 3.39%, cellulosic biofuel (derived from woody plant waste) 31.06%, biomass-based diesel (e.g. refined spent cooking oil) 25%, and advanced biofuel (sugarcane ethanol, algal oil, etc.) 48.15%. Total renewable fuel 8.96% (after adjustment for volume.

Click on the headline above for the article, a descriptive chart and infographic.

The corn ethanol increase was disappointing for those pushing for oil independence and lowered emissions. It's broadly known that corn ethanol both increases greenhouse gas emissions and increases food prices. The EPA appears to be in the minority of remaining federal supporters. Congress recently finalized the cut to corn ethanol's tax subsidy.

Since the EPA now has the right to force importers and refiners to use a certain amount of corn ethanol, regardless of how expensive it is, the corn ethanol industry will likely push the issue by simply raising prices to recoup their lost subsidy.

The cellulosic ethanol figure was orders of magnitude smaller than the original EISA proposal - cellulosic ethanol startup companies like Coskata seemed promising, but difficulty in establishing a solid food-chain to deliver biomass stock and finding the funding to scale laboratory work to production-scale designs has led to the great cellulosic ethanol fizzle. However, there is still hope for this novel technology, which turns non-viable biomaterial (woody waste) into fuel. In 2012 the EPA is increasing the cellulosic ethanol target from the prior year - possibly a signal that the industry is making progress.

The U.S. Navy's deep investment in algal fuel cut costs from $424/gallon last year to $26.67 this year, which would account for the steep rise in advanced biofuel.

From the comments at the bottom of the article 'm15' said that, to provide enough corn ethanol to fulfill our needs for vehicle fuel would require more (1.7 to 6 times) than the total agricultural land area available in the US. Corn ethanol uses almost as much energy to produce the fuel as the fuel itself contains.

Corn ethanol uses an extensive amount of water and intensive tilling, which causes top soil loss. 1 inch of topsoil is lost every 5-10 years and takes 500 years to replace. We are sacrificing our future food growing farmland to make biofuels now.

Can the United States Feed China?

In 1994, after an article in World Watch magazine entitled "Who Will Feed China?" came out, it was reposted in Washington Post's Outlook section with the title "How China Could Starve the World," which unleashed a political firestorm in Beijing. The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture denounced the study and said advancing technology would enable the Chinese people to feed themselves. The leaders in Beijing are survivors of the Great Famine of 1959-61, during which some 30 million people starved to death. As a result of that traumatic experience, no leader could acknowledge that China might one day have to import much of its food.

China launched an all-out effort to maintain grain self-sufficiency. The government instituted a 40% rise in the grain support price paid to farmers, an increase in agricultural credit, and heavy investment in developing higher-yielding strains of wheat, rice, and corn, their leading crops. They offset cropland losses in the fast-industrializing coastal provinces by plowing grasslands in the northwestern provinces, a measure that contributed to the emergence of the country's massive dust bowl. In addition to overplowing, they expanded irrigation by overpumping aquifers.

China decided to abandon self-sufficiency in soybeans and concentrate their agricultural resources on staying self-sufficient in grain. China now imports four-fifths of its soybeans.

In response to China's decision to import soybeans, the United States now has more land in soybeans than in wheat. Brazil has more land in soybeans than in all grains combined. Argentina, with twice as much land in soybeans as in grain, is fast becoming a soybean monoculture. In North and South America, there is now more land in soybeans than in either wheat or corn.

The United States, Brazil, and Argentina account for more than 80% of the world harvest and nearly 90% of soybean exports, with 60% of that going go to China.

Soil erosion, overpumping of aquifers, paving of land for automobiles, urbanization, overplowing and overgrazing are hampering China's grain production. The numerous dust storms originating in the region each year in late winter and early spring are now regularly recorded on satellite images. For instance, on March 20, 2010, a suffocating dust storm affected over 250 million people. Wang Tao, one of the world's leading desert scholars, reports that from 1950 to 1975 an average of 600 square miles of land in China's north and west turned to desert each year. By the turn of the century, nearly 1,400 square miles of land was going to desert annually.

Satellite images show two deserts in north-central China expanding and merging to form a single, larger desert overlapping Inner Mongolia and Gansu Provinces. To the west in Xinjiang Province, two even larger deserts-the Taklimakan and Kumtag-are also heading for a merger. An estimated 24,000 villages in northwestern China have been totally or partially abandoned since 1950 as sand dunes encroach on cropland, forcing farmers to leave. Unlike the U.S. Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when many farmers in the Great Plains migrated to California, China's "Okies" do not have a West Coast to migrate to. They are moving to already heavily populated eastern cities.

Water tables are falling and wells are starting to go dry under the North China Plain, which produces half of China's wheat and a third of its corn. The overpumping of aquifers for irrigation temporarily inflates food production, creating a food production bubble that eventually bursts when the aquifer is depleted.

Earth Policy Institute estimates that some 130 million Chinese are being fed with grain produced by overpumping - by definition, a short term phenomenon. Underground water now meets three fourths of Beijing's water needs. The city is drilling 1,000 feet down to reach water-five times deeper than 20 years ago. A World Bank report on China's water situation foresees "catastrophic consequences for future generations" unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.

China is also losing cropland to residential and industrial construction, and to paving land for cars as their numbers multiply at a staggering rate. In 2009, vehicle sales totaled 14 million, surpassing those in the United States for the first time. In 2010, sales jumped to 18 million, and in 2011 they are projected to reach 20 million, the highest ever for any country. Adding 20 million cars to the fleet means paving one million acres for roads, highways, and parking lots.

In addition, as industrial wages rise, it becomes more difficult to find young people to work at low-return jobs in rural areas. As the rural labor supply shrinks, so does the potential for labor-intensive double-cropping (such as planting winter wheat and then corn as a summer crop in the north or producing two rice crops per year in the south), a practice that has dramatically expanded China's grain production.

In November 2010, the food price index was up 12% over a year earlier. It seems likely that China soon will turn to the world market for massive grain imports, as it already has done for 80% of its soybeans.

If China were to import only 20% of its grain, it would need 80 million tons, an amount only slightly less than the 90 million tons of grain the United States exports to all countries each year. This would put heavy additional pressure on scarce exportable supplies of wheat and corn.

If China enters the U.S. grain market big time, as now seems inevitable, American consumers will find themselves competing with 1.4 billion Chinese consumers with fast-rising incomes for the U.S. grain harvest, driving up food prices. This would raise prices not only of the products made directly from grain, such as bread, pasta, and breakfast cereals, but also of meat, milk, and eggs, which require much larger quantities of grain to produce.

If China were to import even one fifth of its grain, there would likely be pressure from U.S. consumers to restrict or to ban exports to China, but the United States has sold over $900 billion worth of U.S. Treasury Department securities to China finance the U.S. fiscal deficit. China is our banker. Restricting grain to China today may not be possible. For Americans, who live in a country that has been the world's breadbasket for more than half a century, a country that has never known food shortages or runaway food prices, the world is about to change. Like it or not, we are going to be sharing our grain harvest with the Chinese, no matter how much it raises our food prices.

U.S.: Shucking Corn Ethanol Subsidies Would Save Taxpayers Billions

The Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit Repeal Act would save taxpayers $6 billion a year by eliminating ethanol subsidies.

"At a time when Congress is considering deep and painful budget cuts across the board, wasteful and duplicative tax credits for corn ethanol, which cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year, should be the first to go," says Julie Sibbing, Director of Agriculture Programs, National Wildlife Federation

Blenders of ethanol and gasoline receive a 45-cent-a-gallon tax credit. In 2010, these subsides cost over $5.4 billion, giving ethanol producers free money to do something they have to do by law. It also increases food prices and harms wildlife and the environment. Refiners could buy cheaper, environmentally-friendly ethanol from overseas, and foreign companies would not be able to pocket American ethanol subsidies.

US Corn Crop Shrinks, Smallest Stocks in 14 Yrs

The U.S. corn crop is likely to be far smaller than expected. The corn stockpile will shrink to less than a four-week supply by next fall. The U.S. Agriculture Department cut its corn crop estimate 4% and soybeans 2%, based on conditions Oct. 1.

With the harvest in full swing, USDA reported a downturn in corn yields from Ohio to Nebraska. It pegged the average yield at 155.8 bushels per acre, down 4% from its prior estimate. USDA cut yields by 14 bushels an acre in Illinois, by 10 bushels an acre in Iowa, the No. 1 state; and by 9 bushels in Nebraska.

On the Chicago Board of Trade, prices of corn, wheat and soybeans all rose by the maximum amount allowed in a day. Livestock and ethanol prices also rose, as did shares of fertilizer companies.

With high demand, the corn surplus will shrink to 902 million bushels by the end of this marketing year, the smallest since 883 million bushels in 1996/97. The stocks-to-use ratio would be a tight 6.7%.

USDA's estimate of wheat end stocks, 853 million bushels, was 2% lower than traders expected.

Private consultant John Schnittker said USDA's steep reduction in corn yields "is almost unprecedented" and added that the stocks-to-use ratio "is pretty low, putting real pressure on acreage and yield next year."

The projected corn crop would still be the third-largest on record, and the soybean crop would be the biggest on record. Ethanol makers and corn growers said corn supplies will be adequate, although smaller.

U.S. live cattle and hog futures surged as an inducement to producers to fatten livestock in the face of rising feed prices.

Fertilizer shares also rose, with analyst Edlain Rodriguez of Broadpoint Glecher saying farmers will need nutrients to boost production. Bids for cash ethanol jumped 12 cents a gallon but there were no offers. Corn is the main feedstock for U.S. fuel ethanol.

On Sept 30, USDA said there were 1.708 billion bushels in reserve as this year's harvest began, far more than expected. That report ended a rally and knocked corn prices below $5 a bushel for a week. rw

U.S.;: Family Feud Why Agribusiness Giants Are Facing Off Over Corn Ethanol

The rapid price increase for corn, inspired by federal policies that encourage transforming corn into ethanol, is jacking up food prices and squeezing low-income people.

This has given rise to a "food vs. fuel" debate. You either support cheap corn, and a food supply that serves the poor, or you support the ethanol boom, whose goal is to "break our dependence on foreign oil."

A report by The Wall Street Journal outlines the growing rift within the agribiz lobby.

When corn was cheap and overproduced the entire agribusiness lobby rallied around the ethanol cause. But now that ethanol is taking food from feedlots, the community has grown less friendly. Tyson has been complaining about corn prices. Its CEO told the Wall Street Journal that elevated grain prices, linked to ethanol, would add $300 million to the company's costs this year.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association is raising its voice as well. It finds government intervention and the group has demanded an end to government tax credits for ethanol and a cut to the import tariff on foreign ethanol. They are demanding free markets and free trade. The growing rift in the agribiz lobby is concerning the politicians who cater to it. Presidential hopefuls feel compelled to favor the allegedly fuel that's going to free us from Middle East oil, but support for corn-based ethanol is starting to wane.

Legislators continue to aid ever-increasing ethanol use, but more of them are capping the amount of corn that can be used. The shine is off corn ethanol, and its explosive growth appears to have peaked.

The corn-based ethanol never had a shot at significantly reducing petroleum use. Its energy-saving potential is thin, if not imaginary. The backlash plays into Tyson and its peers, who hate ethanol because it interferes with feeding cheap corn to confined animals.

Last fall, U.S. farmers scrambled to plant corn anywhere they could and will likely harvest the largest corn crop in U.S. history.

If Congress pulls back support for ethanol, the corn price will tumble and will mean a windfall for feedlot operators, and will likely spur government commodity payments to corn growers under the farm bill.

In essence, we're being asked to choose between low-quality food and low-quality fuel. We should reject both. rw

U.S.: We Don't Need 'Guest Workers'

In 1964 Congress killed the seasonal Mexican laborers program despite warnings that its abolition would doom the tomato industry. Then scientists developed oblong tomatoes that could be harvested by machine and California's tomato output has risen fivefold. Now we're being warned again that we need unskilled laborers from Mexico and Central America to relieve U.S. "labor shortages." Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: We'd be importing poverty. They generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government's poverty line has risen 162%, while the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3% and blacks, 9.5%. What we have now is a policy of creating poverty in the US while relieving it in Mexico. It stresses local schools, hospitals and housing and feeds social tensions (witness the Minutemen). Some Americans get cheap landscaping services but if more mowed their own lawns it wouldn't be a tragedy. Among immigrant Mexican and Central American workers in 2004, only 7% had a college degree and nearly 60% lacked a high school diploma. Among native-born U.S. workers, 32% had a college degree and 6% did not have a high school diploma. The illegal immigrants represent only about 4.9% of the labor force. In no major occupation are they a majority. They're drawn here by wage differences, not labor "shortages." Most new illegal immigrants can get work by accepting wages below prevailing levels. Hardly anyone thinks that illegal immigrants will leave, but what would happen if illegal immigration stopped and wasn't replaced by guest workers? Some employers would raise wages to attract U.S. workers; others would find ways to minimize those costs. The number of native high school dropouts with jobs declined by 1.3 million from 2000 to 2005. Some lost jobs to immigrants and unemployment remains high for some groups. Business organizations support guest worker programs - they like cheap labor and ignore the consequences. Why do liberals support a program that worsens poverty and inequality? Poor immigrant workers hurt the wages of unskilled Americans. We've never tried a policy of real barriers and strict enforcement against companies that hire illegal immigrants. Until that's shown to be ineffective, we shouldn't adopt guest worker programs that add to serious social problems. rw

US Michigan: Detroit, Green City

Urban planners say the best way to turn an industrial city into a green city may be to just leave the city be.

At a presentation three areas were said to become the focal points for future development. The most important was population density and building up is a great way to minimize land waste.

Studies show walkable cities are the goal, so developing the city around pedestrian traffic is another way to gain more density. Mass transit is vital; Detroit is without a system.

Mass transit means that residents without cars could have a reliable ride to work, there would be fewer cars, and a reduced need for parking and a turnaround in air quality. Light-rail stations may help attract investors and mixed-use buildings that house both businesses and people. With people come density, more transit options and a boom for economic development.

Mixed-use buildings are efficient and have proved to be places people want to be. Parking lots are are seldom full, they absorb money and resources. Traditional development leads to lower density and greater infrastructure costs. These practices are not economically feasible. Population density is the key to a sustainable city.

The third aspect to sustaining a green city is reuse and preservation of buildings. The carbon footprint of demolition, waste transportation, and rebuilding is enormous. Building preservation and adaptive reuse are the best ways to employ sustainability.

The recent emphasis on being environmentally responsible and the financial benefits may spark investors to build green.

There is increasing evidence that green buildings cost less in the long run, mainly through better energy and water efficiency, but also by reducing waste, improving indoor air quality and through lower operation and maintenance costs. A change in lifestyle is necessary for green urbanism. rw

USA Today: Where Will Everybody Live?

The USA is growing faster than any other industrialized country in the world. The USA added 100 million people in the past 39 years and around 2040, the population will be past 400 million.

The USA trails only China and India in population. Space itself isn't the issue. But people want water in the desert, plentiful fuel to power long commutes, energy to cool and heat bigger houses and clean air and water. How and where they live could determine how well the nation and the environment will handle the added population.

People who work on smart growth development issues say there's no way we can continue over the next 40-odd years without severe consequences to the environment. We have to find different ways to reside on the land. Each American occupies almost 20% more developed land (housing, schools, stores, roads) than 20 years ago. The rate of land consumption is twice the rate of population growth.

The major growth patterns of the past 50 years are being challenged by changing demographics.

Americans are reconsidering traditional retirement paths. More are eyeing downtown condos, households are smaller and townhouses more appealing.

More immigrants are arriving, increasing mass transit ridership and carpooling in a country where driving alone still dominates.

The next 100 million people will create 73 million new jobs, about 70 million new homes and 100 billion square feet of non-residential space. Urban town centers that combine condos, shops and offices in pedestrian-friendly settings are sprouting in suburbia. Residential construction in downtown districts is on the rise. Areas are are investing billions in light-rail lines. It takes more money to heat and cool a big house, when you factor in the true cost including transportation and energy, Americans will change how they live.

Growth issues are manifesting themselves in traffic congestion, loss of open space and more water and air pollution.

The paper then goes on to describe in great detail some of the transit and building changes already under way. rw

Around D.C., a Cheaper House May Cost You; Longer Commutes Outweigh Savings of Living in Outer Suburbs

A study of metropolitan areas found that the costs of one-way commutes of 12 to 15 miles cancel any savings on lower-priced homes.

People tend to focus on the price of a closer-in house compared to one in the outer suburbs, but they don't realize how much they're spending on commuting costs

The average cost of owning a Toyota Camry and driving it 15,000 miles a year works out to $7,967 according to AAA.

The study found that a lack of affordable housing in the Washington area and elsewhere forces low- to moderate-income families to live in outer suburbs where transportation costs are high.

Of the 20 fastest-growing counties in the US, 15 are located 30 miles or more from urban centers. Many communities have identified a lack of affordable housing as critical. We need to have regional solutions about both housing and transportation. Most people in the outer suburbs pay so much for transportation because they have to use their cars for nearly every errand.

The study noted that 62.1% of the U.S. metropolitan population lived in the suburbs in 1996, up from 55.1% in 1970.

The median national household income has been outpaced by housing and transportation costs. The data highlight a disconnect between where people live and work. A three-car family puts a lot of money into depreciating assets, instead of into mortgages and college educations. rw

US Georgia: Few Willing to Tackle Georgia's Most Pressing Issue - Growth

The most terrifying but potentially most beneficial issue facing Georgia is population growth. Most politicians don't like to discuss the population explosion - it's too complex. Georgia is having trouble coping. The infrastructure, from health care and education to law enforcement and traffic control, is breaking down. No one dares speak the unspeakable but runaway growth may kill us if we don't deal with it. State Supreme Court Justice Harris Hines outlined the challenges "They're talking about making I-75 23 lanes wide in a few years in Cobb County, and in the next 20 years, Georgia will increase its population by 50%." The prison population has risen from 15,200 in 1983 to 46,900 in 2003. Recent estimates show growth is continuing at an even faster pace, with about 60% from new people moving into the state. Georgia, with 8.4 million people, has the ninth-largest population of any state. Georgia has 2.2 million, 28.7% blacks, highest of any state. Hispanics 13%, Asians 2.1%. The median age for all Georgians is 33.4 and will have one of the fastest rates of growth of the elderly. Georgia has low educational attainment and income. More than 21% did not graduate from high school. Among blacks, 27.5% failed to finish high school. Per capita income is $28,523, No. 25 in the country. From 1990 to 2002, 36% of all Georgia births were to unwed mothers, 25% of births to white women were to unwed mothers, and 66% of births to black women were to unwed mothers. Georgia has four problems, high school dropouts, diabetes, substance abuse and gambling. The lawmakers take bows for denying some state services to hordes of illegal aliens without inflicting much pain on the corporate employers who induced them to come here. rw

US Illinois: Chicago is 2nd City of Clog

Chicago is the No. 2 spot for roadway congestion. The analysis says it took drivers 57% more time to get to their destinations during peak travel times because of traffic congestion. The cost of to the regional economy is almost $4 billion or $1,000 per rush-hour commuter. Road construction and mass-transit services are failing to keep pace with population growth in suburban areas. The term "rush hour" has become meaningless in urban areas where workers must leave earlier in the morning and spend more time on the road later at night. The roadways handle traffic volumes beyond the system's capacity. Each driver in the Chicago region wasted 58 hours stuck in traffic in 2003, up from 55 hours in 2002, equivalent to spending about 1 1/2 workweeks a year sitting in traffic. Delays for the Chicagoland region exceeded 252 million hours in 2003. The cost was $4.3 billion in lost time and $151 million in excess fuel. The service provided by the CTA, Metra, Pace and the South Shore Line reduced annual delays by more than 94 million hours. CTA service reductions would have an effect similar to a major snowstorm. The growth in congestion is occurring at a rate that is unnoticeable to many people, resulting in commuters' routinely making accommodations and sacrifices in their lifestyles. Most experts agree that congestion will never be solved. It will only be kept within limits as the region's population increases. In the long term, major reforms will be needed in roadway construction, regional planning and land-use issues that determine where people live in relation to their jobs. rw

End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream

Since World War II North Americans have invested in a suburbia that promises space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. Suburbia has become the American Dream. But now serious questions emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. As global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply the consequences of inaction in the face of this crisis are enormous. As energy prices skyrocket, how will suburbia react? Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of tomorrow? And what can be done now, individually and collectively, to avoid The End of Suburbia? For the DVD, send a money order for $24US or $30CAN, with your name and address to: Electric Wallpaper, c/o VisionTV, 80 Bond St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 1X2 rw

Population: Local Growth Rates Among Tops in Maryland

All three Southern Maryland counties rank among the fastest growing in the Washington region. In a one year period, Calvert County was one of the nation's leaders in population growth, with its population rising 3.9% to 84,110. Charles County recorded the second-fastest growth rate rising 3.3% to 133,049. St. Mary's grew 2.9% to 92,754. Calvert County is among the 100 fastest-growing counties up 12.8% from 74,563 people in 2000, the 83rd fastest-growing county in the US. A revision of local zoning regulations limits the total number of dwellings in the county to the 37,000, 8,400 more than exist now. But those revisions will need time before they affect population growth. The biggest increases were among school-age children: up 48.6% for ages 5 to 9; 71% for ages 10 to 14; up 54.6% for ages 15 to 19. In 2001, Commissioners enacted regulations that halted the creation of new subdivisions in Calvert. The restrictions are designed to stem development in communities where public schools are full, driven by the county's struggle to meet the costs of new schools. Calvert's school enrollment rose by 5,700 to more than 15,000 and required nine new schools plus the new Huntingtown High School. County commissioners moved to toughen the regulations that blocked developments if the county had not remedied school crowding within five years. The commissioners extended that period to seven years. The measures have restricted how many lots are created for residential construction. rw

U.S.: The Coming Mega Drought

Over the last decade Australia experienced the worst and most consistent dry period in its recorded history. The Murray River failed to reach the sea for the first time ever in 2002. Fires swept much of the country, and dust storms blanketed major cities for days. Australia's sheep population dropped by 50%, and rice and cotton production collapsed in some years. Tens of thousands of farm families gave up their livelihoods. The drought ended in 2010 with torrential rains and flooding.

What happened in Australia could happen in the U.S. Southwest, with devastating consequences to the region and to the nation. However, we can learn from Australia's experience.

There is a resemblence between the southwestern U.S. and parts of Australia before the drought. Both include arid regions where thirsty cities and irrigated agriculture are straining water supplies and damaging ecosystems. The Colorado River no longer flows to the sea in most years. Water levels in major reservoirs have steadily declined over the past decade; some analysts project that the largest may never refill.

In Australia average rainfall has decreased 15% since 1950, while from 1995 to 2006 average temperatures over southeastern Australia were 0.3 to 0.6 degree Celsius higher than the long-term average. The combination of higher evaporation and lower precipitation depletes soil moisture and reduces runoff, making droughts more intense and more frequent. Australian scientists forecast a 35 to 50% decline in water availability in the Murray-Darling river basin and a drop in flows near the mouth of the Murray by up to 70% by 2030.

Australians responded to this Millennium Drought with a wide range of technical, economic, regulatory and educational policies. Urban water managers in Australia have been forced to put in place aggressive strategies to curb water use and to expand sources of new and unconventional supplies. They have subsidized efficient appliances and fixtures such as dual-flush toilets, launched public educational campaigns to save water, and more. Between 2002 and 2008 per capita urban water use declined by 37%.

Other efforts include reuse of gray water, cisterns to harvest rooftop runoff, sewage treatment and reuse, and desalinization by the country's five largest cities, which will meet 30% of current urban water needs. The government has continued with plans to restore rivers and wetlands by cutting withdrawals from the Murray-Darling river basin by 22 to 29%.

The southwestern U.S. states would do well to push for these kinds of reforms before a similar disaster strikes.

U.S.: Water for Energy: Future Water Needs for Electricity in the Intermountain West

A Pacific Institute study examines the water requirements for current and projected electricity generation within the Intermountain West, which is the area bound by the Rocky Mountains in the East and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains in the West. While water and energy conflicts are increasing across the United States, the Intermountain West is of particular interest due to a growing population, a diverse fuel mix for power generation, and existing water constraints and limitations that are expected to worsen.

By 2035, water withdrawals and consumption for electricity generation in the region are projected to increase by 2% and 5%, respectively, from 2010 levels.. In addition to the water needed for electricity generation, population and economic growth will increase demands for water resources, even as climate change makes the available water supply less reliable.

To significantly reduce water requirements while permitting increases in electricity production, solutions are: expanding energy-efficiency efforts, installing more dry cooling systems, and relying more heavily on renewable energy, such as wind and solar PV, the new analysis shows.

The Pacific Institute report recommends: 1) improve data, information, and education on the impact of the energy sector on water resources; (2) accelerate water and energy efficiency improvements; (3) accelerate development and deployment of renewable energy systems; (4) establish cooling technology requirements that limit water use; and (5) promote switching to alternative water sources (such as wastewater and industrial water).

Power Plants Chop Fish and Waste Water

U.S.: Overdraft, Saltwater Intrusion Strain the Floridan Aquifer

Six of the Hilton Head Public Service District's dozen wells to be sealed in the last decade due to saltwater displacing fresh groundwater, signaling a potentially dangerous new trend for the water supply of millions of people in the Southeast. Another two wells are expected to be spoiled in the next year and all the wells to close by 2020, as salt water plumes move inland.

The district's general manager said "We are the canary in the coal mine for the coastal area. This is a regional issue. Anyone using the Floridan Aquifer is subject to these threats."

A pipeline to the mainland was built in 1999 to bring water from the Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority and last year opened a desalination plant to treat brackish water.

The scope of the threat from saltwater intrusion is still being studied, according to Bruce Campbell, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey. But that water from the aquifer is being withdrawn faster than it is replenished is undeniable.

The Floridan Aquifer underlies all of Florida, as well as parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. A semi-permeable layer divides the porous limestone aquifer into an upper and lower section, each of which contains multiple water-bearing zones. Most of the more than 3 billion gallons withdrawn daily are taken from the upper section. That water is used by thousands of small towns and large cities such as Orlando, Jacksonville, St. Petersburg and Tallahassee in Florida, and Brunswick and Savannah in Georgia.

Coastal areas, like Hilton Head, S.C., are concerned about saltwater intrusion. Georgia, for example, established a groundwater permitting plan in 2006 for counties on its coastal plain. According to the document, red zone counties have to reduce their pumping by 5 million gallons per day compared to 2004 levels. Yellow zone counties can increase pumping only by 5 million gallons per day.

But last spring Georgia's Environmental Protection Division released a study according to which groundwater withdrawals would need to be cut by 90% in the Savannah-Hilton Head area to stop further saltwater penetration.

The water taken from the Floridan is much cheaper than other supplies. Thunderbolt, a town near Savannah, pumps groundwater at 49 cents per 1,000 gallons while water from the city's surface diversion would cost $1.61 per 1,000 gallons. Tampa Bay Water, a regional wholesaler in Florida, blends water from three sources: groundwater, at $1 per 1,000 gallons; surface water, at $2 per 1,000 gallons; and desalinated water, at $3.50 per 1,000 gallons.

Cheap groundwater, if not managed, creates a tragedy of the commons situation in which municipalities use low-cost water over surface supplies to the detriment of their neighbors. Excessive pumping from the Floridan has created a cone of depression around Savannah, exacerbating the flow of saltwater into the aquifer near Hilton Head.

As a remedy, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources suggested a regional pricing scheme in which all water suppliers pay the same price, but the idea has yet to be studied seriously.

Eighty percent of the state of Florida drinks from the Floridan, but the trend is for less to come from the aquifer.

According to demand Florida's northeast Atlantic coast will run short of water by 2020. Desalination is also an option being considered. A proposed plant similar in size to Tampa Bay's would produce water for $4.50 per 1,000 gallons. Transmission lines and infrastructure would add $1.16 per 1,000 gallons.

Three water management districts have set up the Central Florida Coordination Area to manage the shared aquifer. Groundwater allocations in the CFCA will be capped at the demonstrated 2013 demand. Any new water supplies will have to come from surface water, wastewater re-use or desalination.

Continued pumping would cause lake levels to fall, springs to stop flowing and chloride concentrations to rise from saltwater intrusion. rw

U.S.: Water Wars in the Southeast: Are Georgia, Alabama and Florida Fighting Over Water Or Over Growth?

Average yearly rainfall in the three states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida exceeds 40 inches. Georgia and Alabama abound in lakes and rivers. Florida has almost 1,200 miles of coastline. But rapid growth in the region has put pressure on its water supply, and the three states are battling over water from two big river basins, the Apalachicola- Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) and Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT), the outcome of which may shape the area's development for decades.

Metropolitan Atlanta is about 80 miles from the headwaters of the Chattahoochee, so far upstream that its water supply is particularly vulnerable to floods and drought. In the mid-1940s Congress authorised the construction of Buford Dam to create Lake Lanier, an immense reservoir divided among the five counties north-east of Atlanta. The purposes of the dam were: flood control, power supply, ensuring an adequate downstream flow for navigation and "assure a sufficient and increased water supply for Atlanta."

But between 1956 and 1969 the number of houses doubled within two-and-a-quarter miles of Lake Lanier and between 1960 and 2008 the population of metro Atlanta rose from just over 1 million to nearly 5.4 million. In 1990 Alabama and Florida sued the Army Corps of Engineers over withdrawals from Lake Lanier by Georgia. Since then the states have veered between negotiations and lawsuits; both have proved fruitless.

Alabama wants to ensure a steady supply of water from the Chattahoochee, which forms much of the border between it and Georgia, and from Lake Allatoona and Weiss Lake, which sit near the two states' borders in the ACT basin. Florida wants to ensure an adequate flow to the Apalachicola river, formed by the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee. The Apalachicola basin is an area of great biodiversity, and Apalachicola Bay, where it meets the Gulf of Mexico, is home to a thriving oyster industry. Georgia's downstream farmers also want to ensure an adequate supply for irrigation, making this more a battle with Georgia, Florida and Alabama one one side versus metro Atlanta on the other.

In 2009, a federal judge ruled that Congress must approve withdrawals from Lake Lanier and that those must be frozen at current levels pending either congressional authorization or a negotiated solution. Should neither be in place by 2012, then withdrawals would revert to their "baseline" levels from the 1970s, before the Corps of Engineers started issuing interim contracts (and when metro Atlanta had less than a third of the number of people it has today). In his ruling, the judge dryly noted, "The Court recognizes this is a draconian result."

Congressional authorization seems unlikely, but a negotiated settlement appears inevitable since the alternative is escalating the fight to the Supreme Court. Some in Atlanta see the battle not as a legitimate fight over water, but a way to redirect growth towards Alabama and southern Georgia. rw

US Georgia: Atlanta Case Raises Questions About Water Supply

A federal judge ruled that Atlanta has been illegally tapping Lake Lanier for years as its primary water source. Unless Congress reclassifies the lake as a water supply, the judge ruled, Atlanta will be cut off by 2012.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which sells water from 135 federal reservoirs around the country, recently gave Congress a preliminary list of 40 projects in 14 states that were not authorized for supplying water but are being used for that purpose.

Georgia leaders are trying to rally other states as allies in pursuing new classification from Congress for all the Army Corps' lakes. But little success has been realized. At least 500,000 people in eastern Wisconsin rely on Winnebago for water, even though the corps has said that its use is not authorized.

In southern Kentucky, over 10,000 people rely on water from Laurel River Lake, which was originally built for hydropower and recreation.

In Atlanta, only after rapid population growth has the corps turned to water supply. The shift has often come on shaky legal ground.

Lanier serves about 3 million people.

The Atlanta ruling could set off a wave of new legal challenges. That's especially true with demands on water supplies growing and river systems becoming increasingly strained. rw

U.S.: Southeast Drought Study Ties Water Shortage to Population, Not Global Warming

Research from Columbia University shows that the 2005 - 2007 drought in the Southeast resulted from random weather events, not global warming, and its severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns.

The population of Georgia alone rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990.

Richard Seager, a climate expert at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said "our conclusion was this drought was pretty normal and pretty typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century".

Similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results.

Although the 2005-7 drought was the worst in the region since the 1950s, there have been worse droughts before.

Some climate models developed suggest that the Southeast will be wetter in a warming world. But it would be unwise to view climate change as a potential solution to future water shortages. As the region's temperature rises, there may be more rain, they wrote, but evaporation will increase, possibly leaving the area drier than ever.

Creating greater water storage capacity could mitigate drought effects in areas where population was rising. "If you have more people and the same amount of water storage, you are going to increase the impact of droughts."

The Pig in the XL Pipeline; Insider Reveals Concealed "Error" in Pipeline Safety Equipment That Could Blow Away the GOP's XL Pipe Dream

A 'PIG' is a robot Pipeline Inspection Gauge, required by Federal law, that passes through oil and gas lines. It has a GPS and it beeps as it rolls through, electronically squealing when it finds a problem.

But a whistleblower has come forth to reveal that the PIG's software engineers on the XL Keystone Pipeline project were told to calibrate it to ignore or minimize deadly problems. And when the whistleblower's team found the life-threatening flaw in the program, they immediately created a software patch to fix it. But then their supervisor ordered them to bury the fix and conceal the problem from regulators.

The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected - and that saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements. But pipes with cracks and leaks can explode - and kill.

Recently, President Obama refused to issue a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, but invited its owner, Trans-Canada, to re-apply. The GOP claims that that slowing the Canada-to-Houston pipe for a full safety review is a jobs killer.

But it's the Pipeline that's the killer. On September 9, 2010, a gas pipeline exploded, incinerating 13-year-old Janessa Greig, her mom and six others. An untampered PIG would have caught the bad welds in the old pipe.

Trans-Canada says that Keystone XL won't contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer, the Plains states' crucial water source. Keystone's permit application boasts that we can rely on XL's "full pigging capability."

Last summer, an ExxonMobil pipeline burst and poisoned parts of the Yellowstone River - only months after a PIG had been installed.

New gas fields opened by hydraulic fracking will require over 100,000 miles of new transmission pipe.

Children of the Corn: the Renewable Fuels Disaster; How government policy can push more than 100 million people below the extreme poverty line

The ethanol tax credit has expired, a reason to celebrate, one might think, considering that the tax credit gave $0.45 ethanol producers for every gallon they produced and cost taxpayers $6 billion in 2011. However, now we have the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which creates government-guaranteed demand that keeps corn prices high and generates massive farm profits. Removing the tax credit but keeping the RFS is like scraping a little frosting from the ethanol-boondoggle cake.

At least 37% of the 2011-12 corn crop must be converted to ethanol and blended with the gasoline that powers our cars, under RFS, causing corn demand to outstrip supply by more and more each year, such that even the slightest production disturbance will have devastating consequences for the world's poor.

It is time for the federal government to stop requiring cars to burn food. The RFS mandate requires a massive quantity of corn to be converted to ethanol each year regardless of available supply or what the market price would be without it.

Starting in 2005, ethanol mandates prompted the construction of ethanol plants across the country. By the end of 2005, 4.3 billion gallons of ethanol-producing capacity existed and one year later, capacity under construction had tripled and represented more production than existed at the time. A record number of corn acres were planted in 2007 but production has been unable to keep up with demand, driving prices up to almost triple the pre-mandate level. Ethanol consumes about 16% of the total U.S. supply of corn.

Returning 16% of the supply to the food system would reduce corn prices by about 32%. (See the entire article for details). A decline in corn prices would also stimulate declines in prices of other food commodities such as wheat, rice, and soybeans, which are substitutes for corn on both the supply and demand side. Michael Roberts of North Carolina State University and Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University estimate that reducing corn ethanol production to zero would lower the price of calories from corn, soybeans, wheat, or rice by 20%.

Corn price increases have relatively small effects on grocery prices in the United States, which are dominated by processing and marketing costs. However, consumers in the poorest parts of the world spend a high proportion of their budget on food commodities such as corn. World Bank researchers estimated that the ethanol-induced price spike between June and December 2010 forced 44 million people below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 per day and that price increases from 2005-08 forced 105 million people below the extreme poverty line.

The difference in corn price between the tax credit spurred corn production and the mandate spurred production would drop prices by only 3.4%. If the 2012 crop is even slightly smaller than expected, then prices will rise even further and plunge millions more people into extreme poverty. If they were unconstrained by mandates, ethanol producers would reduce their use of corn in response to high prices.

Legislation has been introduced that would allow the mandate to be reduced when corn stockpiles are low. This is not enough. Mandates should be remove completely, letting the ethanol industry stand on its own feet.

U.S.: Plans Moving Ahead for Drilling Near Underground Atomic Blast

Colorado: Noble Energy Production is moving forward with plans to drill 78 gas wells at a site south of Rifle where in 1969 an underground atomic bomb was set off in an effort to boost natural-gas production.

The experiment, Project Rulison, did increase natural-gas production — but the gas was not marketable because it was radioactive.

The federal Bureau of Land Management and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission have approved parts of Noble's plan.

To view the entire article, follow the link in the headline.

Fracking for Support: Natural Gas Industry Pumps Cash Into Congress; New Report Details 10-year Spending Campaign by Fracking Interests to Avoid Regulation

Natural gas interests have spent more than $747 million during a 10-year campaign - stunningly successful so far - to avoid government regulation of hydraulic "fracking," a fast-growing and environmentally risky method of tapping underground gas reserves, according to a new study by Common Cause.

A faction of the natural gas industry has directed more than $20 million to the campaigns of current members of Congress and put $726 million into lobbying aimed at shielding itself from oversight, according to the report, the third in a series of "Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets" reports produced by the non-profit government watchdog group.

“Players in this industry have pumped cash into Congress in the same way they pump toxic chemicals into underground rock formations to free trapped gas," said Common Cause President Bob Edgar. "nd as fracking for gas releases toxic chemicals into groundwater and streams, the industry's political fracking for support is toxic to efforts for a cleaner environment and relief from our dependence on fossil fuels."

The study - which includes inserts for the fracking-heavy states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan - found that the natural gas industry focuses its political spending on members of the Congressional committees charged with overseeing it. Current members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have received an average of $70,342 from the industry; Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the former committee chairman, has collected a whopping $514,945, more than any other lawmaker.

What's more, the industry's political giving also heavily favors lawmakers who supported the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Current members who voted for the bill received an average of $73,433, while those who voted against the bill received an average of $10,894.

The report comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to publish new, preliminary findings about the potential dangers of fracking in 2012, giving the industry a powerful incentive to increase political spending now in an attempt to shape public opinion and the debate over fracking in Congress, as well as affect the outcome of the 2012 congressional elections.

“Thanks to the Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, the natural gas industry will be free to spend whatever it likes next year to elect a Congress that will do its bidding," Edgar said. “The industry's political investments already have largely freed it from government oversight. Controlling the flow of that money and other corporate spending on our elections is critical to protecting our environment for this and future generations."

U.S.: The Myth of Renewable Energy

While the words "clean" and "green" are wide open to interpretation and misappropriation, the phrase "renewable energy" is not. People across the enviro-political spectrum seem to agree what renewable means: It's an energy category that includes solar, wind, water, biomass, and geothermal power. As the US Energy Department explains it to kids: "Renewable energy comes from things that won't run out -- wind, water, sunlight, plants, and more. These are things we can reuse over and over again. … Non-renewable energy comes from things that will run out one day -- oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium."

Renewable energy has its limitations, though:

• Solar power needs photovoltaic panels are not renewable. Nor is desert groundwater. Even after being redesigned to use air-cooled condensers that will reduce its water consumption by 90%, California's Blythe Solar Power Project, which will be the world's largest when it opens in 2013, will require an estimated 600 acre-feet of groundwater annually for washing mirrors, replenishing feedwater, and cooling auxiliary equipment.

• Geothermal power also depend on groundwater; rainwater does not replenish as quickly as it boils off in turbines. At the world's largest geothermal power plant, the Geysers in California, for example, production peaked in the late 1980s and then the project literally began running out of steam.

• Wind power: all the 5,700 turbines installed in the United States in 2009 required approximately 36,000 miles of steel rebar and 1.7 million cubic yards of concrete. The gearbox of a two-megawatt wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium - rare earth metals that are found only in scattered deposits, and are difficult to extract.

• Biomass: while biomass produced by thinning wildfire-prone forests or from perennial switchgrass plantings seems renewable, expanding energy crops will mean less land for food production, recreation, and wildlife habitat. In many parts of the world where biomass is already used extensively to heat homes and cook meals, this renewable energy is responsible for severe deforestation and air pollution.

• Hydropower, which supplies about 16% of the world's electricity, require a tremendous amount of concrete and steel, and dams have an unfortunate habit of hoarding sediment and making fish non-renewable.

All of these technologies also require electricity transmission from rural areas to population centers. Wilderness is not renewable once roads and power-line corridors fragment it. The life expectancy of a solar panel or wind turbine is shorter than a conventional power plant. Even dams are typically designed to last only about 50 years.

Meeting the world's total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today's largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems.

Jane C. S. Long in Nature magazine did the math for California and discovered that even if the state replaced or retrofitted every building to very high efficiency standards, ran almost all of its cars on electricity, and doubled its electricity-generation capacity while simultaneously replacing it with emissions-free energy sources, California could only reduce emissions by perhaps 60% below 1990 levels -- far less than its 80% target.

Long doesn't mention the biggest obstacle to meeting California's emissions-reduction goal: The state's population is expected to grow from today's 40 million to 60 million by 2050.

There are now seven billion humans on this planet. Until we find a way to reduce our energy consumption and to share Earth's finite resources more equitably among nations and generations, "renewable" energy might as well be called "miscellaneous."

The Fracking Industry's War on the New York Times -- and the Truth

Note: this is an excellent article, well worth reading. To see the entire article, follow the link in the headline

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President, Waterkeeper Alliance; Professor, Pace University writes about how the New York Times is being attacked by the natural gas industry (like Exxon and Chesapeake) for its superb investigative journalism into the irresponsible practices involved in the fracturing (fracking) of gas rich shale beds.

This natural gas coalition is using slick PR firms, industry funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio to avoid public disclosure and reasonable regulation.

In 2009, before Kennedy found out the truth about fracking, he wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times predicting that newly accessible deposits of natural gas had the potential to rapidly relieve our country of its deadly addiction to Appalachian coal and end forever catastrophically destructive mountaintop removal mining. At that time geologists were predicting that new methods of fracturing gas rich shale beds would provide enough gas to power our country for a century.

These rich reserves would have allowed us to replace 336 gigawatts from antiquated coal fired electric plants with energy from the underutilized capacity of existing gas generation plants, and reduce U.S. mercury emissions by 20%-25%, cutting deadly particulate matter and the pollutants that cause acid rain and slash America's grid based CO2 by an astonishing 20%. Gas could have been a critical bridge fuel to the new energy economy rooted in America's abundant renewables and could have helped free us from our debilitating reliance on foreign oil now costing our country so dearly in blood, national security, energy independence, and two pricey wars that are currently running tabs $2 billion per week.

Kennedy sits on the New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo's High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel. Because this natural gas coalition has successfully battled regulation and stifled public disclosure while bending compliant government regulators to engineer exceptions to existing environmental rules, the Panel has to sort truth from the web of myths spun about fracking by fast talking landsmen, smarmy CEOs, and federal regulators.

Public skepticism toward the industry and its government regulators is at a record high. There are over 40,000 highly motivated anti-fracking activists in New York alone; popular mistrust of the industry is presenting a daunting impediment to its expansion.

Recent studies show that fracking is not all it's promoted to be:

* Releases of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas, may counterbalance virtually all the benefits of CO2 reductions projected to result from substituting gas power for coal.

* The human health impacts (breast cancer) of gas extraction on local communities may rival those associated with coal.

* The USGS just slashed its estimate on the amount of gas in the Marcellus Shale by 80%, raising doubts about all the industry's positive economic projections.

* Only a small percentage of the land in each shale gas field turns out to be highly productive, even at the start. Nevertheless, companies routinely pretend that all of their acreage will be equally promising.

* Contaminated well water, poisoned air, nuisance noise and dust, diminished property values and collapsing quality of life are often the predictable collateral damage of gas shale development in the rural towns of the east.

* The industry says it cannot pay localities the costs of roads damaged from the thousands of truck trips per wellhead, leaving those ruinous costs to local taxpayers, many of whom will see no benefits from the shale boom.

* For the most part, the industry has demonstrated a disturbing fervor for secrecy while advocating regulatory policies that favor the most irresponsible practices and the worst actors.

The Times' reporting has found that sewage treatment plants in the Marcellus region have been accepting millions of gallons of natural gas industry wastewater that carry significant levels of radioactive elements and other pollutants that they are incapable of treating. . For many of us on New York State's fracking panel, the one bright light has been the presence of Southwest Energy's Vice President and General Counsel Mark Boling. Boling is bullish on shale gas but his passion for public disclosure and a rigorous and rational regulatory framework, his candor about the perils of certain practices and his honest assessments of the costs and benefits of gas shale extraction have inspired trust and confidence among his fellow panelists. The panel's confidence in his integrity is the one thing that might allow us to go forward with recommendations regarding a regulatory scheme that could allow certain kinds of fracking to proceed in New York State.

NASA Scientist Hansen Arrested at Tar Sands Protest - a Grim Sign of the Times

In the 1970s, the "blue marble" photo of Earth from space taken by Apollo 17 - suggesting how fragile and precious our planet really is - galvanized the environmental movement. Today the image of the world's best known and most outspoken climate scientist, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, handcuffed and hauled off to jail is a potent symbol of our times.

Hansen was taking part in a civil disobedience action at the White House organized to halt the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will bring dirty oil from the Canadian tar sands down to US refineries in the Gulf. Nearly 1000 protesters have been arrested in this action began on August 20.

Hansen said of President Obama: "If he chooses the dirty needle it is game over [for the earth's climate] because it will confirm that Obama was just greenwashing, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians with no real intention of solving the addiction," ... "Canada is going to sell its dope, if it can find a buyer. So if the United States is buying the dirtiest stuff, it also surely will be going after oil in the deepest ocean, the Arctic, and shale deposits; and harvesting coal via mountaintop removal and long-wall mining. Obama will have decided he is a hopeless addict."

The photo tells you everything you need to know about why, more than 30 years after Hansen first warned us that burning fossil fuels is heating up the planet, we have essentially done nothing to change our ways.

Protect Our Waterways From Pesticides

Pesticides in our waters are linked to higher cancer rates, hormone disruption and other serious health effects in people. Fish and amphibian populations have been devastated by these toxics, which can be the last straw for endangered species already in crisis.

Right now chemical and agribusiness lobbyists are pushing a radical revision of our clean-water laws - H.R. 872 - that has already passed in the right-wing-dominated House of Representatives but we may be able to stop this disastrous polluter bill from passing in the Senate.

Our water supply is too precious to poison. Please take five minutes to call your senators and tell them to protect the Clean Water Act. Senate Bill 718 is a hazard to all life in the United States, and should be rejected, along with any companion bill to House Resolution 872, proposed by Sen. Pat Roberts. Tell them to support the EPA's safeguards against pesticides through the "pesticide general permit" process. This protects our environment and public health.

Click here to find the number for your senator: http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/getLocal.jsp Let us know you were able to get through by clicking here: http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=6391

U.S.: Mothers' Pesticide Exposure Linked to Kids' IQs

Three independent studies published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives indicate that children exposed before birth to a common class of pesticides can have lower IQ levels when they reach school age. The pesticides, known as organophosphates, are widely used in agriculture.

One of the studies, from California, involved several hundred women and children who live on or near farms where pesticides are sprayed on crops.

The mothers with the highest pesticide levels during pregnancy had children with IQs 7 points lower - the equivalent of lowering the mental age from 7 to 6-1/2 - than those with little or no exposure.

The effect on developing brains is similar to high lead exposure.

Another study indicated that the IQ's of children of city dwellers were affected by a specific pesticide named chlorpyrifos, which was found in many household products. Chlorpyrifos is now banned for household use.

A third study found that about 1 in 3 people is more genetically susceptible to the pesticide risk than others. But there's no easy way to tell who they are.

Some of the crops are more likely to retain traces of pesticides. That includes fruits such as apples, strawberries and blueberries, and vegetables like celery, sweet peppers and potatoes.

Wyoming's Smog Exceeds Los Angeles' Due to Gas Drilling

In western Wyoming's Upper Green River Basin, ozone levels in January exceeded the worst days in major U.S. cities in 2009, due to its boom in natural gas drilling. Local residents complain of runny eyes, nosebleeds and shortness of breath and say the air is hazy.

Ozone levels recently got as high as 124 parts per billion, which is two-thirds higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's maximum healthy limit of 75 parts per billion and above the worst day in Los Angeles all last year, 114 parts per billion. In 2009 there were also days when ozone levels exceeded Los Angeles' worst for 2009.

Wyoming is trading off health for profit, critics claim. It has one of the nation's lowest unemployment rates, 6.4%, and is expected to run a budget surplus this year.

Gas industry officials say they're trying to curb smog by reducing truck traffic and switching to drilling rigs with pollution control equipment, and they report fewer emissions contributing to smog than in 2008.

U.S.: Warning to Gulf Volunteers: Almost Every Cleanup Worker From the 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster is Now Dead

CNN reported that the vast majority of those who worked to clean up the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska are now dead, and that the life expectancy for those who worked to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill is only about 51 years. Considering the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is many times worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster, who would want to be on a cleanup crew. What we have out in the Gulf of Mexico is a "toxic soup" of oil, methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide, other toxic gases and very poisonous chemical dispersants such as Corexit 9500.

The true health toll of this oil spill is not going to be known for decades.

Already a large number of workers cleaning up the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico report that they are suffering from flu-like symptoms. Exposure to the oil disaster has resulted in 162 cases of illnesses reported to the Louisiana state health department.

400 people have sought medical care for upper or lower respiratory problems, headaches, nausea, and eye irritation after trips to Escambia County beach.

If the Exxon Valdez oil spill is any indication, a lot of people are going to end up dying early deaths. But if we all refuse to participate, who will clean it up? rw

U.S.: New Mexico Dairy Pollution Sparks 'Manure War'

Across the country, big dairies are coming under increased criticism for polluting the air and the water.

More and more milk comes from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where large herds live in feedlots.

The average cow produces six to seven gallons of milk and 18 gallons of manure daily. With New Mexico's 300,000 milk cows, the manure is enough to fill up nine Olympic-size pools each day.

But none of these factory farms have a sewage treatment plant. What happens is the muck is hosed off the concrete floor of a milking barn, and it flows into a plastic- or clay-lined lagoon where the liquid evaporates. Then waste from the feedlot is collected and used as fertilizer for grain crops.

However the New Mexico Environment Department reports that two-thirds of the state's 150 dairies are contaminating groundwater with excess nitrogen from cattle excrement. Either the lagoons are leaking, or manure is being applied too heavily on farmland.

Adding to the problem is the tendency of large dairies to cluster together. On one stretch of road between Interstate 10 between Las Cruces, N.M., and El Paso, Texas, more than 30,000 cows live on 11 farms, which have been repeatedly cited for violating the Clean Water Act because manure-laced stormwater was washing into tributaries of the Rio Grande.

There is a big problem for the residents there: the odor, the flies, and contaminated well water.

Commodity agriculture, including dairies, is toward fewer and larger farms, which concentrates more manure in smaller geographic areas.

A dairy industry spokesman suggests that critics suggests that "They may have a septic tank that's leaking. That is the No. 1 reason why domestic wells in New Mexico are contaminated." Dairymen "want to make sure that their families that live on these dairies can drink that water, can bathe in that water and their animals are healthy as well."

The dairy industry is big in New Mexico, a poor state with little private industry.

Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone

As the population of the world grows, so does our demand for food and thus the need for large scale agriculture, which in turn demands fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides for crops and large confined animal facilities to raise livestock.

In the U.S., the runoff from farms along the Mississippi river of waste water and fertilizer, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus, pour billions of pounds of excess nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone, where waters rich in mineral and organic nutrients promote the growth of algae, reducing the dissolved oxygen content and causing the extinction of fish and other marine life starting from the mouth of the Mississippi River and spanning sometimes all the way to the Texas border.

The Dead Zone was first recorded in the early 1970's. It originally occurred every two to three years, but now occurs annually, and over the past five years has covered 6,000 square miles.

The Gulf of Mexico dead zone threatens valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries that generate about $2.8 billion per year. Commercial fishermen are forced to fish elsewhere or stop altogether. Some species of HABs have been proven to cause negative health effects on humans. Advancements in science and management have been made, yet no real difference has been made to the size of the dead zones.

US Oregon: Emission Goals Prove Elusive; as Population Grows, Caps on Greenhouse Gases Look Hard to Reach

In Tualatin Oregon, the nation's first highway solar project has operated since 2008, but it may not be enough to meet future demand, due to population growth.

While the state of Oregon and the city of Portland have goals to reduce emissions believed to cause global warming, Portland General Electric says it needs to increase greenhouse gas emissions from its power plants to meet customer demand for additional energy during the next 20 years.

Environmentalists complain that PGE and the council are not trying hard enough to fight global warming, but the projections are consistent with what governments and utilities have experienced as they�ve tried to reduce greenhouse gases.

Portland was supposed to reduce emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2010. Emissions have fallen approximately 17% per capita since 2001, but due to population growth, the net reduction is likely to be 1 to 3% below 1990 levels � and some of that will be the result of the recession that curtailed driving, construction and employment.

Japan ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to cut its emissions by 6% below 1990 levels. But Japan�s emissions are at a 16% above its reduction goals.

In its Draft Integrated Resource Plan, PGE predicted that population and job growth will increase electricity demand within its service district by 2.3% a year � or 20% by 2020. Some of the increases can be met by conservation, energy efficiency and new renewable energy resources, including wind and solar power.

To meet demand on peak days, PGE must increase its share of the power produced by the coal-burning plant in Boardman and build two new natural gas-powered plants.

The Sierra Club denounced the draft, but PGE must have reliable power sources to meet peak demands.

The population in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana is predicted to increase around 1% a year, driving up energy demand.

The draft estimates that conservation measures can meet only 85% of future demand growth.

The 2007 Legislature approved emission reduction goals 10% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 75% below 1990 levels by 2050. But the 2009 Legislature did not approve a cap-and-trade policy to help meet those goals.

The Portland City Council and Multnomah County commissioners want to cut emissions in the county 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. As currently written, it predicts that in the future, conservation and energy efficiency measures can more than overcome the effects of population growth.

U.S.: Closed Military Bases Can Leave Behind Pollution Problems

Only a small fraction of the site of the army's Fort Ord in California has been developed because of scarce and contaminated freshwater; the presence of endangered species; fear that development would increase sprawl and traffic; and unexploded munitions. With the Defense Department poised to release a new round of base-closures, possibly the largest number ever, the lesson from Fort Ord is that they can harbor environmental hurdles. While they may have a grand vision of what this property can become, the reality is that decades of working with weaponry and toxic substances has left the Defense Department with tracts of land that are unfit for most kinds of human habitation without costly environmental cleanup. Unexploded ordnance contaminates an estimated 10 million acres. There is not great technology for finding unexploded ordnance, people have to dig and walk the land using metal detectors. The Defense Department has spent nearly $12 billion on environmental cleanup at bases closed during previous closures. A third of the land at closed bases has yet to be converted to civilian control primarily because of contamination; there are still a lot of challenging environmental cleanup projects left. Some communities have had an easier time, and more than 10,000 people live and work in new communities on the former Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. In less desirable areas, finding replacements for the tax base generated by closed installations can be a struggle for local officials. In low-income neighborhoods bordering the former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, nearly 300 purple crosses have been erected in front of homes where residents are afflicted with or have died of cancer. Residents want the Air Force to clean up a plume of toxic chemicals in the groundwater. Federal studies have found no link between pollution and local health problems but a recent study did not rule out the possibility. rw

Kentucky Sewage System Worst in Nation

Kentucky is last in in national rankings on education, income, and now plumbing. 40% of Kentucky homes rely on septic tanks or "straight pipes" that discharge waste into streams and rivers. Ridding the state of "straight pipes" could cost $3 billion, but the main problem is lack of information to find these pipes. Eastern Kentucky PRIDE is a program that funds sewage treatment plants and sewer lines. rw

US Rhode Island: Locals Pour Energy Into Cleansing Water

The Blackstone River in Rhode Island has suffered 200 years of pollution. Over the past 30 years volunteers hauled tons of trash from the river, more than two dozen dams were brought down, and fish species rose from 2 to 36. New parks have been built along the river's banks, old mills converted into housing, and plans prepared for riverside hotels and eateries. There are problems to be tackled of stormwater runoff, sewage drainage, toxic sediments, but Blackstone boosters aim to make the river safe for fishing and swimming by 2015. rw

What Drives U.S. Population Growth?

Between 1990 and 2000, 33 million people were added to the U.S. population, 40% from immigration. 67% of future U.S. population growth will be due to immigrants and their progeny. Differential mortality and fertility rates between Canada and the U.S. can be attributed to the Canadian health care system as folks are more likely to seek treatment in that country than they are in the U.S. The Canadian government prevents drug company price-gouging, so more women in Canada are likely to be using the Pill which costs half as much as in the U.S. and is used much more often in that nation. The U.S. will add 140 million people by 2050. The fertility rate in the U.S. was higher than that of 70 other countries, including China, Korea, Thailand, Iran, Cuba, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.
The population of illegal immigrants is larger than the population of many states. In 1980, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy proposed a cap on immigrants of 425,000 per year. Some conservative senators thought the numbers were too high and opposed an amnesty for illegal immigrants. In 1986, an amnesty was passed without a cap on legal immigrants. Legal immigration is over twice the level called for in the above-cited amendment. Population growth makes other environmental problems harder to solve. 33 million more people requires over 12 million housing units, 15.8 million more passenger cars that will consume about 825 million barrels of oil a year, all of the recoverable oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in less than four years. Over 75 million acres of forest will be needed to supply 33 million people with paper and wood, an area larger than that protected under the forest conservation rule. rw

U.S.: Gargantuan Large Investment in Infrastructure Needed, Experts Say

A nationwide transportation system built in the middle of the 20th century is falling apart, burdened with a system that has deteriorated after decades of deferred maintenance, according to a general consensus at a transportation conference that heard from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood; House Transportation Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.) and his predecessor as chairman, and others.

The U.S. population is forecast to grow by 100 million - a 30% increase - before the middle of the 21st century. There isn't enough money to arrest the transportation system decline, and the public is largely oblivious to the need.

To the average consumer the transportation system appears to be working reasonably well but the amount of money needed to restore and expand it is so enormous that few taxpayers can relate.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that an investment of $1.7 trillion (and the Urban Institute says $2 trillion) is needed between now and 2020 to rebuild roads, bridges, water lines, sewage systems and dams that are reaching the ends of their planned life cycles.

Fail to invest now, and the cost will increase later. Already, the civil engineers said, infrastructure deficiencies add $97 billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in travel delays that cost $32 billion.

In the meantime Congress grapples with taming a massive deficit, talking about $45 billion a year in the House and $54 billion in the Senate.

If the nation does not fix these infrastructure deficiencies it will not remain competitive with other countries.

U.S.: Who Will Care for the Onslaught of Aging Baby Boomers?

As the 78 million baby boomers live longer with more chronic illnesses, the country will face a shortage of professionals trained to meet the special needs of the elderly.

Not just the elderly will be affected by this shortfall. Fewer medical practices will accept new patients and people will face longer waits to see physicians -- if they see them at all.

If current graduation and training rates continue, the United States could face a shortage of about 130,000 physicians by 2030, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The physician shortage will likely be exacerbated by the aging population, which uses more health care, and the possibility of having as many as 32 million newly insured Americans by 2014 under the new national health plan.

About 7,100 physicians are certified geriatricians nationwide -- or about one specialist for every 2,546 older Americans, according to a study by the Institute of Medicine. By 2030, when all the boomers will have turned 65, an estimated 36,000 geriatricians will be needed, a figure unlikely to be reached considering that the number of geriatricians has dropped by 25% in the past decade.

\About 4% of social workers specialize in geriatrics, one third of the number needed. And less than 1% of physician assistants, pharmacists and registered nurses are certified in geriatrics.

Healthcare workers in general are inadequately prepared to deal with the complex issues of elderly patients.

Society is in "general denial" of what it will take to maintain a growing number of older people in the community. A study released last fall by the National Center for Health Statistics showed that people 45 and older -- boomers are 45 to 65 years old -- made up 38% of the U.S. population in 2008. But they were responsible for 57% of doctor's office visits and 70% of prescribed medication.

There's a shortage of data on aging compared to other life stages. Clinical studies have not been done on older people.

The typical elderly patient often has chronic conditions that require management, not cures; the possibility of overmedication to treat those conditions and the resulting effects on balance, cognitive understanding and independence.

Geriatricians make far less money than specialists. A large number of social work students indicate they do not want to go into geriatric work.

"Increasingly young people are not connected to older adults." The average salary of a home health aide is $10.12 an hour -- often less than an office or house cleaner.

Can We Save California's Water?

An effort is under way to save The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California's least-known environmental jewel, a unique ecological, economic and cultural resource. The Delta is also a source of drinking water for two-thirds of California's 37 million residents.

The Delta is in crisis. The levees providing flood protection and secure water supplies are crumbling. The complex system by which water is moved through the Delta is over-subscribed and under the jurisdiction of federal and state court judges.

Seismologists predict a one-in-three chance of a catastrophic earthquake in the next 50 years that would damage or destroy major portions of the levee system and revert the Delta to an inland salt sea. Federal experts warn that Sacramento is now the most flood-prone city in the nation, exceeding New Orleans.

There is agreement that the Delta is unsustainable and unacceptable. Political gridlock has prevented California's leaders from fashioning a solution, and those problems have mushroomed into a crisis as government leaders have failed to act.

Governor Schwarzenegger appointed a Delta Vision Task Force to develop an independent vision for the Delta. The seven-member group began its work last March, advised by expert scientists and a group of stakeholders reflecting every conceivable interest. The resulting Delta Vision, recommends state actions approved unanimously. but will not be universally popular. It speaks some harsh truths, notably, that each day brings California closer to a major disaster. Task Force members noted that "what the nation learned from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina is the terrible price of waiting."

Protection of the Delta's ecosystem and a reliable water supply for California should be primary goals. Among recommendations sure to spark controversy: Repairing the Delta is likely to require reduced water diversions -- or changes in the pattern and timing of diversions; New, coordinated water conveyance and storage facilities are needed. Conservation and water system efficiency are the cornerstones of better water management; Urbanization must be halted, and the landscape should be dominated by agricultural, environmental and recreational uses. The locally-dominated governing structure must be changed, in favor of a single authority.

The Task Force is embarking on fashioning a plan it has presented to California's political leaders. That promises to be equally daunting. But the future of the Delta, and those who depend on it, will require equally bold thinking and actions in 2008. rw

Gore Warns of Dangers of Sacrificing Science to Ideology

America is inviting problems when it disregards science and reason in favor of ideology and power, Gore told a Planned Parenthood gatherin. He suggested the country's leaders had ignored warnings from generals who said invading Iraq with too small of a force invited disaster, and warnings from meteorologists before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

"I believe the climate crisis can only be solved by addressing the democracy crisis," he said. The event raised over $300,000 for Planned Parenthood.

Gore asserted that the opposition Planned Parenthood encounters comes because its foes set aside science, reason and logic.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life contends its positions are supported by science. It's a scientific fact that a unique human being begins life at conception, we believe life needs to be protected.

Planned Parenthood operates 23 clinics in Minnesota and two in South Dakota that serve nearly 60,000 patients per year. rw

US Alabama: Population Growth Outstrips Fire Departments

Fire departments are growing to provide services in Shelby County, where the population has nearly doubled since 1990. Pelham and Helena will spend more than $1 million to pay salaries and buy gear for two new fire stations. Calera has added a third station, but didn't get a federal grant to pay the $500,000 to hire 10 to 13 firefighters. Almost 7,800 new homes will have been built including 3,315 new single-family dwellings. Chief of the Shelby Fire Department, said fire departments are drained as the population expands. But almost all others outside Alabama's largest cities fall short of national standards that say a fire department will be within 1.5 miles of a built-up area and that 90% of the time the team responding within four minutes include four trained firefighters. Impact fees and developers can bring money for a station, but city revenues or outside grants, would have to pay for personnel and gear. The Chief of Columbiana's volunteer fire department said that we have 30 volunteers, and as long as we have no money, we'll stay that way. The North Shelby department has 26 full-time and 12 part-time staffers, a number not within the national staffing standard. Fire departments try to turn to options that won't add a burdensome cost. Wider use of mutual-aid agreements allows other cities to respond to emergencies near jurisdictional lines. rw

Infant Mortality on the Rise in Texas; in Travis County, Rate Increased by 33 Percent From 2000 to 2003

Almost 2,500 Texas babies died before their first birthdays in 2003, a 17% increase since 2000. More than 377,000 were born in Texas in 2003; a mortality rate of 6.6 per 1,000 births, compared with 5.8 in 2000. An important factor is the mother's access to prenatal care. About 30% of babies born to black or Hispanic mothers receive little or no prenatal care. Research has shown that with more prenatal visits early on, mothers have better nutrition, can better monitor their babies' growth and can keep at bay some of the problems that happen during pregnancy. Causes include birth defects, prematurity, sudden infant death syndrome and accidents, but it's hard to know why infant mortality is becoming more common. Texas cut maternity coverage for some patients on Medicaid, but experts caution against linking such cuts to the rise in infant mortality. One factor is the increasing number of multiple births, which have become more common because of in-vitro fertilization. That means that more babies are born prematurely. The high incidence of infant mortality among African Americans follows nationwide trends. Too many African American babies are being born too soon and doctors aren't sure why. The Texas March of Dimes launched an initiative to increase awareness of premature births among African American women, who are twice as likely to deliver prematurely than white women. Premature birth is the leading cause. The report found more than one in five children, 1.3 million, live below the federal poverty level. The report shows improving conditions for Texas teenagers: The dropout rate declined by 46% from 2000 to 2004 and the birth rate declined by 10% from 2000 to 2003. The rate of violent deaths was down by 33% from 1990 to 2003. rw

U.S.: We Talk Up Women's Rights but Won't Ratify Equality Amendment?

72% of U.S. citizens believe the Equal Rights Amendment is a part of our Constitution; however, the required 38 states never ratified the ERA. The amendment was proposed in 1923, but it wasn't until 1943 that Congress provided "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification." On March 22, 1972, the proposed amendment was sent to all states for ratification. By 1982, 35 states had ratified the amendment but 38 is the number needed and we are three states short. Last May 6, concurrent resolutions supporting ratification of the ERA died in both the Florida Senate and House of Representatives. Because both resolutions died in committee, neither made it to the floor. But all is not lost we must become engaged and call, fax, write or e-mail our representatives and senators, and let them know we support the ERA being a part of our Constitution. rw

Women's Rights Fading in U.S.?

In 1920, U.S. women won the right to vote but other rights are in peril. The right to birth control and abortion is under ceaseless attack by religious conservatives. Roe v. Wade has been chipped at by parental-notification and consent laws, 24-hour waiting periods and other requirements. Two-thirds of states deny abortion coverage to needy women. Abortion providers are found in only 13% of counties nationwide. Since 1993, antiabortion zealots have killed seven abortion physicians, clinic workers and volunteers as part of the campaign against abortion rights. Foes of abortion are targeting the right to contraception. Efforts to make emergency contraception available over-the-counter nationwide have stalled. A majority of states do not require insurance companies to cover contraception. As a senior legal adviser to President Ronald Reagan, Roberts once endorsed a controversial service for aborted fetuses as "an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy." The lack of women's status and value is clear from the Democratic capitulation on Roberts' nomination. Senators should be objecting to Roberts on the basis that his appointment would ensure only one female justice on a court of nine. The Canadian Supreme Court, has four women justices out of nine. Why should U.S. women, be so underrepresented on our nation's high court? rw

U.S.: 1 in 20

In the US, 1 out of every 1,000 people are HIV-positive. In the capital, it's closer to 1 in 20 - an estimate calculated using a formula based on national trends. If the District were a country, it would rank 11th in the world in between Mozambique (1 in 14) and Tanzania (1 in 23). Few statistics are available on the number of HIV cases in the District. The city's HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA) does report AIDS cases, but it has not yet published information about HIV infections and how they were transmitted. HAA ought to have at least three years' worth of HIV data. Why not release it? Part of the problem is staffing shortages. New leadership should direct resources to existing clinics where same-day HIV tests should be offered; to public schools so youth can receive information on how to prevent the spread of the disease; and to treatment providers in need of assistance in navigating the complicated grant process. The District's failure to produce data as well as the mismanagement of programs put funding, and lives at risk. rw

U.S.: All for Want of a Few Veggies

A Bay Area-based group called SustainLane was set to rank Portland the No. 1 city in sustainability practices. But new information emerged, and San Francisco is 1st, and Portland is 2nd. Portland, San Francisco and other cities are achieving things that are incredible in environmental protection and renewable energy. Saltzman said that whether Portland is No. 1 or No. 2, he's glad to see other cities follow Portland's sustainability with economic development. SustainLane, a for-profit group that specializes in gathering information on sustainable practices, collected data from 20 public and private organizations for the survey. It ranked 25 cities in 12 of transportation, air quality, drinking water quality, food and agriculture, land use, zoning, planning, green building, energy, solid waste, city innovation and knowledge base. Berkeley took third place and Seattle fourth. Portland and San Francisco are in a class by themselves. SustainLane launched a Web site that targets Portland and other West Coast cities with resources and community discussions on things such as how to build a greenhouse and thoughts on owning a hybrid Toyota Prius. rw

Family Planning Losing, Anti-Abortion Gaining

Almost $5 million will be cut from health services and given to groups that counsel women against abortion in Texas. Another $20 million will be diverted from family planning programs. The shift was criticized as shortsighted by family planning groups that said the $100 million their programs receive every two years is enough to serve only 25 percent of eligible women. Lawmakers hate abortion but are creating an environment where it will happen. Romberg criticized shifting $5 million to crisis pregnancy centers, while family planning programs offer contraceptive services as well as diagnose diabetes, cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. Proponents of the funding shift said crisis pregnancy centers could provide services for women who don't want an abortion. Those centers offer counseling for women who want to carry their baby to term. The budget move came before the Senate approved a measure requiring pregnant teenagers to obtain their parents' written consent to have an abortion. On the family planning side, the loss of $2.5 million a year will mean 3%, will not be able to receive those services. Federally qualified health centers offer family planning services, but shifting $20 million from current providers to those centers will put existing clinics in danger of closing down or cutting back their services. The centers draw down a high federal match to serve patients in medically underserved areas. rw

Requested Sterilization Often Not Performed

Only about half the women who desire sterilization following delivery undergo the procedure. The findings are based on a study of 712 women who desired postpartum sterilization between March 2002 and November 2003. 327 of the women did not undergo the operation. In addition to young age and African American race, a sterilization request in the second trimester rather than in the first or third, and a vaginal delivery rather than a C-section, were also factors that predicted sterilization would not be performed. rw

U.S. Leads in Sexually Transmitted Disease Rate

Early death and disability attributed to risky sexual behavior are three times higher in the U.S. than other developed nations. This precludes the AIDS in many African countries. American men die as a result of having a sexually transmitted disease, but more cases are reported in American women. A survey found that half of all deaths in the U.S. in 1990 were attributable to nine factors that included sexual behavior that accounted for 30,000 deaths. The new study doesn't provided a complete picture, given that STD's are associated with infertility, psychological trauma and stigma. Also factored in were premature deaths and "disability adjusted life years" (DALYs), indicating years cut short by premature death and loss of healthy living years as a result of disability. In 1998, sexual behavior accounted for about 20 million adverse health consequences, equivalent to more than 7,500 per 100,000 people and 29,782 deaths 1.3% of all deaths. Sixty-two% of "adverse health consequences" and 57% of "disability adjusted life years" were among women. Curable infections and their consequences accounted for more than half of these health problems. Viral infections mostly HIV accounted for almost all deaths among men and women. 66% more men than women died due to STD's but if HIVS were not considered, then 89% of deaths attributed to sexual behavior would have been among women. HIVS was the leading cause of death among men, while cervical cancer and HIV were the leading causes of death among women. Everybody is having sex in the world, but some places have a low HIV prevalence. Not everybody is getting tested for HIV. The consequences of "sexual behavior are totally preventable, if you have protected or safe sex, you are not going to have these. rw

Make Research on Black Infant Deaths a Top Priority; State and Federal Governments Must Cooperate to Find Causes and Remedies for High Mortality Rate

State and federal officials need to expedite programs to reduce the infant mortality rate among black families which is higher than whites, and studies are underway to determine why. For every 1,000 black children born in suburban Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, 19 will not survive their first year. The comparable figure for whites is 5. The problem is a complex knot of social and economic factors. In Pontiac, a quarter of the population is poor, while black families in Southfield have higher incomes. But African-American infants die at high rates in both cities. A federal grant and 10-year contracts totaling more than $100 million, are supporting infant mortality studies, but a lot is already known, thanks to previous work. Stresses during pregnancy including being poor, contribute to the problem, compounded with the pregnancy being unintended. Of 1,600 women who gave birth in 1996, 44% were unintended. Black infants die at high rates in Southfield, even though black there have incomes better than the regional average. Other factors including cultural differences and matters of assimilation. New studies should determine the precise causes and develop effective solutions. rw

More Women Opting Against Birth Control

Buried in the government's latest analysis of contraceptive use was that the number of women who had sex in the previous three months - but did not use birth control - rose from 5.2% in 1995 to 7.4% in 2002. That means 11% are at risk of unintended pregnancy. The increase is significant and that merits further study. Although unintended pregnancies can be welcome surprises, the danger from a public health and societal standpoint is that many of the women are financially or psychologically unprepared for parenthood. Half of all unintended pregnancies occur among the more than 95% of women who used contraception. That means the other half of unintended pregnancies came from the population not using birth control. The pill is the popular choice, followed by sterilization. Preliminary information found a slight increase in the birth rate in 2003, most notably in women older than 30. Because the number of uninsured has increased, these women might find the cost of contraceptives burdensome as since 2001, the number of uninsured Americans has risen by 4 million. It is unconscionable that women have a co-pay of $20 or $25 a month for contraceptives and men are getting off scot-free. Drug companies "have cut way back" on free samples. Many physicians put partial blame on federally funded abstinence-only education that prohibit discussion of contraceptives. Women don't want to use birth control because of the side effects and a lot of men refuse to use a condom. A growing number of women, especially teenagers, are using condoms with another form of contraception. This suggests they are concerned about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. rw

USA in a Fragile State of Health, Report Says Obesity, Infant Mortality Slow Progress Since 2000

After 15 years of improvements, progress in health in the US has stalled. Obesity and infant mortality are the primary problems. An analysis of indicators reveals that healthy strides are slowing. Driven partly by smoking-reduction programs, the nation became 17% healthier since 1990, but since 2000, improvements leveled off, rising only 0.2% each year. The growth in obesity is up 97% since 1990 and threatens the nation's health. Nearly 23% of the population has a body mass index of 30 or higher, which is 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight. But while the effect of excess weight is largely still to come, the infant mortality rate is a trauma being felt now. More than 75 infants die each day and are a sad reminder that the nation is not as healthy. The USA ranks 29th in the world in infant mortality directly related to mothers having access to both prenatal and pediatric care. But other maternal factors include obesity, smoking, infection and stress. The healthiest states and their percentage above the norm: Minnesota, 25%; New Hampshire, 23.9%; Vermont, 22.8%; Hawaii, 17.7%; and Utah, 17.6%. The least healthy and their percentage below the norm: Arkansas, -12.1%; South Carolina, -12.9%; Tennessee, -13.1%; Mississippi, -20.2%; and Louisiana, -21.3%. With rising rates of obesity and higher infant mortality rates, three problems are slowing health progress. *Percentage of people without health insurance. * Declining high school graduation rates. * Increased child poverty. rw

Coming Soon: The Vanishing Work Force

Half the workers who maintain the grid at Duquesne electric utility will be eligible to retire by the end of the decade. Half the 6,500 nurses at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center will hit 55 in the next seven years. At Westinghouse, which maintains nuclear power generators, the average age of engineers is the late 40's. A declining and aging population places at risk the stability of the work force and opportunities for economic progress. Older workers may have to stay on longer than planned. Pittsburgh has surplus workers, with an unemployment rate that jumped to 5.7% from 4.2% three years ago. Their power industry has shed 40% of jobs in the last 10 years. Yet more than 16% of Pittsburgh's population is over 65. By 2012, Pennsylvania could face a shortage of 125,000 workers. This is an example of a drama unfolding across the nation. Those from 16 to 54 will have grown by six million from 2002 to 2012 but the 55-and-over will have expanded by 18 million. By 2030, 55 and older will be 37% of the adult population, 15% today. 13% more people will retire from 2003 to 2008 than in the previous five years. Some companies are scrambling to secure tomorrow's work force. Duquesne Light set up a program to train new line workers. The University of Pittsburgh is trying to recruit new nurses and retain veterans. The restaurant industry is lobbying for easier immigration. Many companies are outsourcing jobs. To deal with the aging of America's labor force, workers will probably have to work longer. Alan Greenspan suggested that Social Security and Medicare benefits be curtailed to keep workers on the job longer. The aging of the work force has more to do with a decline in the production of young people. The fertility rate dropped from 3.5 children per woman in the mid-1950's to about 2 in the 1970's. Aging is not just an American issue. By the time America's median age reaches 40, half of all Italians will be over 52. The US has drawn new immigrants who accounted for 47% of the increase in the labor force from 1990 to 2000. Yet the poor countries are getting older, too - by 2050, Mexico's median age will rise to 42. The expansion of the labor force will be 0.6% a year over the first half of the 21st century, from 1.6% in the second half of the 20th. In 2000, there were five people aged 20 to 64 for each person 65 or older. By 2030, the ratio will be less than 3 to 1. An economist at the University of Pennsylvania contends that unemployment leaves a big pool of workers and the abundance of baby-boomer labor wasn't so great for workers. Hourly earnings in fell by more than 15% from the early 1970's to the mid-1990's. If labor markets tighten, wages will rise and productivity accelerate, sustaining economic growth. Higher wages may draw older people into the job market. A 1998 study found that the rise in the dependency ratio could shrink US living standards by 10% by 2050. Our older people are staying on longer because they can't afford to retire. Over the past 50 years, corporate and federal policies have encouraged workers to retire as early as possible. Pension plans had favored early retirement. In 1950, 87% of men 55 to 64 and 46% over 65 were working. By 2000, this had dropped, to 67% and 17%. Employers could make it easier for older workers to stay, through flexible schedules and phased retirement. The government should offer Medicare as primary insurance to the elderly employed and readjust rules to allow employers to offer older workers sliding scales of benefits for part-time or occasional work. Rising medical premiums are rough on employers, but make it harder for people to leave before Medicare kicks in at 65. According to the 2004 Retirement Confidence Survey, barely 36% of workers are confident that they will have enough money to take care of basic expenses during retirement and those who expect to retire before 65 has dropped to 37% from 495 a decade ago. We are living longer but people haven't saved enough to afford the lifestyle we want, so are staying longer in the work force. rw

Administration Backs Off Clean Water Act

EPA announced that the administration would not revise the 1972 Clean Water Act since many urged the administration to abandon it. The construction industry warned it would have a negative effect on builders. The EPA had announced they were proposing a rule that would redefine which streams, lakes and wetlands would be protected after a Supreme Court ruling limiting federal jurisdiction over isolated, nonnavigable, intrastate waterways and wetlands that were protected because migratory birds use them. The EPA received 133,000 comments most urging them not to go forward. State and federal officials estimated that up to 20 million acres of wetlands could have lost protection. In the majority of the cases, the courts have taken a narrow view of the ruling, finding that even some drainage ditches should be granted protection. Construction industry officials said that without a new rule the Corps would inconsistently apply the Supreme Court ruling. But the Supreme Court may have more to say as it has been asked to hear four cases on the subject. rw

Average Age of First Birth Reaches Record High of 25, CDC Report Says

The average age at which a woman has her first child rose from 21.4 in 1970 to 25.1 in 2002. The teen birth rate declined 30% since 1992 to 43 births per 1,000 females. The birth rate among black teens decreased from 114.8 births per 1,000 females in 1991 to 66.6 per 1,000 in 2002, a drop of more than 40%. The drop in teen pregnancy is linked to public health awareness campaigns. There were mild concerns about the rise in the number of women giving birth to their first child in their 30s and 40s; being the highest in more than 30 years. Women who give birth after age 35 have a higher risk of birth defects and other complications. rw

Government Admits Role in Klamath Fish Die-off

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service admits that low river levels caused migrating salmon to succumb to disease in warm, stagnant water with depleted flows from the Upper Klamath Basin when the administration gave farmers a full allocation of water. This underscores the competing water demands of wildlife and agriculture. A biologist said it was the combination of a large salmon run, warm weather and low rainfall that turned deadly. Bush officials never doubted that more water might have aided fish. More water from the Trinity River in Northern California would also feed into the Klamath River if it were not diverted to California's Central Valley. The administration won permission to direct more water down the Trinity into the Klamath if needed to avert another die-off. Protections for fish in Upper Klamath Lake and River left little water for farms during the drought of 2001. Flows fell to low levels in September 2002, and were 41% below average since 1960. Flows from the Trinity River into the Klamath were near their historical norm. Warm water temperatures may have put the fish under extra stress together with slow-moving water created conditions for disease. Fish and Wildlife estimated the fish death toll at 34,056, 98% of which were salmon, of which 98% percent were chinook, and 1% coho. rw

Percentage of Childless U.S. Women Up Since 1976, Census Bureau Report Says

The percentage of U.S. women of childbearing age who have not had children has increased since 1976. 44% of women of 15 to 44 were childless in 2002. 18% of women 40 to 44 were childless, compared with 10% in 1976. Women 40 to 44 had 1.9 children in 2002, less than the 1976 average of 3.1. 71% of childless U.S. women 15 to 44 were in the labor force in 2002. 54.6% of women with children under age one were in the work force in 2002, down from 58.7% in 1998. Delaying childbearing can sometimes result in no childbearing. The decline may also be linked to increased access to contraceptives. Women in the work force are delaying childbearing, and some are no longer able to get pregnant when they decide to have children. 60% of all births in the year ending June 2002 were to non-Hispanic white women, 20% to Hispanic women, 15% to black women and 5% to Asian or Pacific Islander women. * 33% of all births in 2002 were to unmarried women, a percentage that is constant since 1998. 8% of all births were to women in "cohabiting unions." * 89% of births to teenagers were to unmarried teens, while 12% of women between ages 30 and 44 giving birth in 2002 were unmarried. rw

Proposal Plots to Drain Florida's Water Wealth

A proposal to create a statewide water commission with the power to drain water from rural counties and pipe it to metropolitan areas has drawn thumbs-down reactions from rural counties. The proposal came via a group of business leaders that advises the governor who approves their membership and the issues it studies. They named a Clearwater developer to head a task force to look at Florida's future water needs that includes developers, agricultural interests and newspaper publishers. They recommend Gov. Bush to make water as important as protecting the environment. The proposed commission, including seven members appointed by the governor, would identify water-rich areas and consider a statewide distribution system. Water belongs to the public in Florida and changing that could provide big profits for the private sector. Now, five water management districts regulate how much water is pumped and who pumps it. Utilities can charge to deliver it. The commission would oversee the water districts, settle distribution disputes and plan to meet future needs. The task force recommends encouraging private water development on state-owned land that could find favor with a governor determined to give private companies every opportunity to profit. Draining rural areas to support growth elsewhere is a no-win proposition for everyone but developers. rw

US Montana: Montana Teen Pregnancy Rate Drops More Than 30% Over Past 20 Years

Montana's teen pregnancy rate dropped 32.6% from 1981 to 2000, twice the national rate. The state's teen birth rate also dropped 26.4% and the teen abortion rate 44.3%. Teenagers are waiting longer to start sexual activity, having sex less frequently and using contraception more often. However, the declining rates are still among the highest in the developed world. State schools, community centers and public health programs should continue to offer sex education that emphasizes abstinence and also teaches teenagers about responsible decision making and contraception. rw

The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization

US Wisconsin: Sturgeon Warning

There are more sturgeon in and around Lake Winnebago than anywhere on the planet. In the 1970s and '80s management and lake cleanup set the stage for a rebound of the Winnebago sturgeon. The success attracted potential poachers, and wardens couldn't adequately protect the species. In 1987, the state asked for volunteers, and the Sturgeon Guard was born. Volunteer guards are fed a meal at Fish Camp, issued a cell phone, and sent to spawning hot spots. During spawning season, the fish are oblivious to anything else. Lake Winnebago sturgeon spawn upstream in the Wolf and Embarass rivers, to locate rocky shoals suitable for mating. The males swim in small packs, the females arrive and release eggs; the males release sperm. Most eggs are scarfed up by turtles and fish. rw

US Colorado: High and Dry

Colorado is suffering a three-year drought. The average snowpack was half of normal, and streams the lowest in 100 years. The majority of the water comes from the Western Slope of the Rockies and the drought is responsible for development constraints, wildfires, declining tourism, and some of the state's $900 million deficit. Municiple officials say there is no way around building new reservoirs and diversion pipelines. Environmentalists claim this could cost billions and wreak havoc on rivers and forests; they claim the needs can met through reduced consumption. The state government believes that the long-term issue is storage, because they can't store all the water they are entitled to. Enough to supply 2 million families flow out of the state, much of the lost water leaves through the Colorado River and is used by Arizona and California. State officials and developers are backing the Colorado Aqueduct Return Project, that entails building a 200-mile long pipeline to pump Colorado River water to the Front Range to be recycled. The river would then carry a stream of used water to farms and towns on the Western Slope. The pipeline would cost at least $5 billion. To West Slope communities and environmentalists, the project is absurd. The legislature approved $500,000 for a study, but the project could be derailed due to its price and environmental impact. A state bond issue exists for water projects and cities can purchase existing rights from farmers for less money than any new development. The lack of provisions such as requiring that conservation measures be considered before any new development may encourage towns to build dams and reservoirs. Colorado's environmental organizations promote "Smart Storage" and "Smart Supply" instead of new development and say conservation goals can meet Front Range water needs over the next 40 years. But the legislature balked at conservation. Agriculture accounts for 85% of water use and bills to enable the sharing of agricultural water with thirsty cities are in the state legislature. rw

US New Jersey: Sprawl: Water Regulation to Face Legal Battle

Gov. James E. McGreevey announced a curb on development around 15 bodies of water, including nine reservoirs, but it will have to survive a court of law. Builders are challenging. Both sides agree that the stakes of the expected court battle are enormous. If builders lose, McGreevey could give teeth to the "smart-growth" map he unveiled in January. The new rule designated nine reservoirs and six streams as Category One (C1)water bodies and nothing can be discharged into them that worsens the water quality. This would make subdivisions, more difficult to build. The state will propose C1 status for 40 more bodies of water. If C1 becomes widespread it can wipe out all available land for development. Builders have been successful in court battles at thwarting the water quality regulations, including strict septic tank and wetlands rules. Land-use planning has been the province of the Department of Community Affairs which expects a challenge from builders. Builders could also challenge each designation. Barring some procedural mistake by the DEP, builders would have to show that the rule is "arbitrary and capricious" to have it overturned. rw

U.S.: Tougher Rules Unveiled for Diesel Emissions

Diesel-powered off-road machines will be subject to stricter EPA emissions standards, cutting emissions by 95%. The tougher rules are expected to prevent 9,600 premature deaths per year and save billions of dollars in medical expenses and lost productivity. Refineries will have to cut the sulfur content to 500 ppm in 2007 and 15 ppm in 2010. Once the fuel standards are in place, the EPA will phase in tougher soot and nitrogen oxide standards for diesel engine manufacturers between 2008 and 2014. rw

North America: Jobs Move Offshore as Firms Continue to Economize

In India, the amount of software and back-office services performed for companies outside India is expected to reach $54 billion by 2008. The Indian market for the same services is expected to reach just $15 billion. The software and technology services are a high foreign-exchange earner. That represents many new jobs in India and fewer in the United States. Offshore outsourcing save companies 25% to 50% A recent report by Foote Partners LLC in New Canaan said up to 45% of information-technology workers in the United States and Canada will be replaced by contractors, consultants, offshore technicians and part-time workers by 2005. rw

Denver Limits Lawn Watering for 1.2 Million Customers

Denver has restricted outdoor watering. The rules allow residents to water two hours twice a week. The Water Board has imposed surcharges on residents who use excess water. Commercial users and city parks must reduce water consumption to 70% of 2001 usage. Golf courses must cut consumption in half. Denver's reservoirs were at 44% capacity Wednesday. Levels could increase to 79% percent by July 1 with runoff from the snowpack, if spring precipitation is average. The estimate is 66% if this spring is dry. rw

US Michigan: Growth: 400,000 New Homes Needed by 2030

The population of southeast Michigan will reach 5.5 million by 2030, a growth rate of 1/2% per year, says the Southeast Michigan Council of Government (SEMCOG). This will demand 400,000 additional residences in the seven county area in the next 30 years. This will strain the resources of available housing. Buildable land is 38% of total acreage. The demand is getting attention in Lansing. There is too much infrastructure for housing of one unit or fewer per acre, water, sewer and electricity costs increase with large lot zoning. Remodeling or rebuilding of older homes will be necessary to provide accessibility as the population ages. A regional government would alleviate difficulties in dealing with different set of requirements in different areas. The current population and the local government must plan for growth. rw

"In 1917 the total number of Americans passed 100 million, after three full centuries of steady growth. �I believe that many of our present social problems may be related to the fact that we have had only fifty years in which to accommodate the second hundred million Americans . . ."

Our country and state have a special obligation to work toward the stabilization of our own population so as to credibly lead other parts of the world toward population stabilization.

U.S.: Immigrants in the United States � 2002: A Snapshot of America�s Foreign-Born Population

A record number of legal and illegal immigrants arrived in the U.S. this year. 33.1 million legal and illegal immigrants live in the U.S. 2 million more since the last census. This new report provides a detailed look at the nation�s immigrant (or foreign-born) population, including entrepreneurship, health insurance coverage, poverty, and welfare use for each state. rw

Wetlands Need Plenty of Help, Cash

Louisiana's coastline can only be restored to a maintainable level with $14 billion in federal aid. Wetlands devastation in the state can be traced back to decisions on control of the flooding of the Mississippi River and to aid oil and gas projects in the region said Karen Gautreaux, chair of the state's wetlands restoration panel and executive assistant to the Governor. The state benefited from those decisions, but cannot deal with the problems. The administration and Congress have to be made aware that Louisiana's coastal losses affect defense and the economy for the country. Backers hope to see federal funding get through Congress in 2004 with a commitment to spend that much over time. rw

Arizona Senate Passes Bill Requiring Medical Centers to Offer Emergency Contraception to Sexual Assault Survivors

US Pennsylvania: Snow Salt, Debris Could Harm Rivers

Snow salt, debris could harm rivers. Stone flies just beginning to emerge in Pennsylvania�s rivers could be threatened by the salts used to melt snow along the state�s roadways. These organisms are part of the food chain in the streams. They break down leaves, provide organic matter, and part of the food chain for a lot of our game fish. With little space to pile snow, Philadelphia decided to dump it into the rivers as a last resort. rw

US New York: Highlands Area Needs More Protection

The York-New Jersey Highlands is worthy of protection from overdevelopment, but less than half is protected. Its population increased by 11% from 1990 to 2000, and 100,000 acres face development. The government has not said how much should be taken out of private hands for preservation, and who should pay for it. The Highlands Coalition proposed saving 180,000 acres in New York and New Jersey at a cost of $750 million. At the same time, Congress provided only $7 million to save 25,000 acres. Several Congressional representatives made it a requirement in budget appropriations that the secretaries of agriculture and the interior come up with recommendations about how to preserve the highlands. Those recommendations may be made public soon. There is an awareness of too much development, and there is now more talk in many quarters, about how to save the Highlands. rw

US Georgia: Schools Deluged by Residential Projects

Atlanta Georgia reports a tidal wave of residential development that leaves no provision for neighborhood schools. When developments are planned, schools for some reason are left out and create a tough situation for the school system. The most recent example is the 1,250-home residential and commercial development in Holly Springs. School officials point to a rise in surrounding property values making it hard to buy land for a neighborhood school. The developer agreed to donate $920,000 but it's only enough to purchase portable units for the estimated 970 students. An elementary school costs $12 million. Holly Springs city manager said another elementary school would exacerbate the congestion. School officials plan to purchase 21 portable units. The current schools have been ruled out because of crowding. A septic field prevents any additional portables at one school. Students could attend schools miles away from their homes. Other developments include more than 400 new homes in Woodstock and a 1,200-home development in south Cherokee. Woodstock middle and high schools are over capacity and could become candidates for double sessions. This is a race with the growth. Once the economy improves, it will get worse. rw

U.S.: Alien species: A Slow Motion Explosion

According to a report by the federal government, exotic weeds, pests and
diseases cause more damage in the U.S. than forest fires, tornadoes,
flooding, earthquakes and mudslides. 2,000 alien plant species have been
introduced. Non-native animal species cause an annual $123 billion worth of
damage to crops, range land and waterways. Weeds consume 4,600 acres of
wildlife habitat on public lands a day. The main mode of transport is by
ships: 40,000 gallons of foreign ballast water are dumped into U.S. harbors
each minute

US California: Growth Imperils State's Food Output

3% of California's land in cultivation are lost annually to erosion, salinization, homes and industry (amounting to a 50% loss in 20 years).

Water Pollution in the US

3 out of 4 people do not know that the leading cause of water pollution is water running off from farm land, parking lots, city streets and lawns.

US Massachusetts: On the Road to Cleaner Air: School Vehicles Retrofitted to Reduce Diesel Emissions

Boston public school buses are having their mufflers replaced with new filtration systems that eliminate up to 90% of diesel emissions, in response to a February 2002 study that looked at children's exposure to diesel exhaust from school buses. The EPA has launched a push for the use of pollution control and low-sulfur diesel fuel and has dedicated $1.4 million won in an April settlement with Waste Management of Massachusetts. 100 Boston school buses are being outfitted with particulate filters. 200 buses at the Readville yard are running on ultra-low sulfur fuel. Together this will eliminate 540 pounds of diesel particulate matter, 2,480 pounds of hydrocarbons, and 17,380 tons of carbon monoxide in Boston each year. The work is being targeted to the most polluted areas of Boston. Nationally, 600,000 school buses carry 24 million children to school daily. Children annually spend 3 billion hours on school buses, but the majority run on diesel fuel. Diesel exhaust contains 40 pollutants, including particles of carbon toxic gases. People with existing heart or lung disease, asthma, or other respiratory problems are most sensitive, but children are susceptible because they breathe 50% more air per pound of body weight than adults. Each retrofitting costs $9,000 and takes two days. rw

Children of the Corn: the Renewable Fuels Disaster; How government policy can push more than 100 million people below the extreme poverty line

The ethanol tax credit has expired, a reason to celebrate, one might think, considering that the tax credit gave $0.45 ethanol producers for every gallon they produced and cost taxpayers $6 billion in 2011. However, now we have the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which creates government-guaranteed demand that keeps corn prices high and generates massive farm profits. Removing the tax credit but keeping the RFS is like scraping a little frosting from the ethanol-boondoggle cake.

At least 37% of the 2011-12 corn crop must be converted to ethanol and blended with the gasoline that powers our cars, under RFS, causing corn demand to outstrip supply by more and more each year, such that even the slightest production disturbance will have devastating consequences for the world's poor.

It is time for the federal government to stop requiring cars to burn food. The RFS mandate requires a massive quantity of corn to be converted to ethanol each year regardless of available supply or what the market price would be without it.

Starting in 2005, ethanol mandates prompted the construction of ethanol plants across the country. By the end of 2005, 4.3 billion gallons of ethanol-producing capacity existed and one year later, capacity under construction had tripled and represented more production than existed at the time. A record number of corn acres were planted in 2007 but production has been unable to keep up with demand, driving prices up to almost triple the pre-mandate level. Ethanol consumes about 16% of the total U.S. supply of corn.

Returning 16% of the supply to the food system would reduce corn prices by about 32%. (See the entire article for details). A decline in corn prices would also stimulate declines in prices of other food commodities such as wheat, rice, and soybeans, which are substitutes for corn on both the supply and demand side. Michael Roberts of North Carolina State University and Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University estimate that reducing corn ethanol production to zero would lower the price of calories from corn, soybeans, wheat, or rice by 20%.

Corn price increases have relatively small effects on grocery prices in the United States, which are dominated by processing and marketing costs. However, consumers in the poorest parts of the world spend a high proportion of their budget on food commodities such as corn. World Bank researchers estimated that the ethanol-induced price spike between June and December 2010 forced 44 million people below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 per day and that price increases from 2005-08 forced 105 million people below the extreme poverty line.

The difference in corn price between the tax credit spurred corn production and the mandate spurred production would drop prices by only 3.4%. If the 2012 crop is even slightly smaller than expected, then prices will rise even further and plunge millions more people into extreme poverty. If they were unconstrained by mandates, ethanol producers would reduce their use of corn in response to high prices.

Legislation has been introduced that would allow the mandate to be reduced when corn stockpiles are low. This is not enough. Mandates should be remove completely, letting the ethanol industry stand on its own feet.

EPA Silently Continues Support for Corn Ethanol, Bumping Target for 2012

Under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the power to push alternative fuel targets, with a hard target of reaching 36 billion gallons of production by 2022.

The target for corn ethanol was increased 3.39%, cellulosic biofuel (derived from woody plant waste) 31.06%, biomass-based diesel (e.g. refined spent cooking oil) 25%, and advanced biofuel (sugarcane ethanol, algal oil, etc.) 48.15%. Total renewable fuel 8.96% (after adjustment for volume.

Click on the headline above for the article, a descriptive chart and infographic.

The corn ethanol increase was disappointing for those pushing for oil independence and lowered emissions. It's broadly known that corn ethanol both increases greenhouse gas emissions and increases food prices. The EPA appears to be in the minority of remaining federal supporters. Congress recently finalized the cut to corn ethanol's tax subsidy.

Since the EPA now has the right to force importers and refiners to use a certain amount of corn ethanol, regardless of how expensive it is, the corn ethanol industry will likely push the issue by simply raising prices to recoup their lost subsidy.

The cellulosic ethanol figure was orders of magnitude smaller than the original EISA proposal - cellulosic ethanol startup companies like Coskata seemed promising, but difficulty in establishing a solid food-chain to deliver biomass stock and finding the funding to scale laboratory work to production-scale designs has led to the great cellulosic ethanol fizzle. However, there is still hope for this novel technology, which turns non-viable biomaterial (woody waste) into fuel. In 2012 the EPA is increasing the cellulosic ethanol target from the prior year - possibly a signal that the industry is making progress.

The U.S. Navy's deep investment in algal fuel cut costs from $424/gallon last year to $26.67 this year, which would account for the steep rise in advanced biofuel.

From the comments at the bottom of the article 'm15' said that, to provide enough corn ethanol to fulfill our needs for vehicle fuel would require more (1.7 to 6 times) than the total agricultural land area available in the US. Corn ethanol uses almost as much energy to produce the fuel as the fuel itself contains.

Corn ethanol uses an extensive amount of water and intensive tilling, which causes top soil loss. 1 inch of topsoil is lost every 5-10 years and takes 500 years to replace. We are sacrificing our future food growing farmland to make biofuels now.

U.S. Population Growth and the Environment

33.1 million immigrants live in the United States. This means 15.8 million more passenger cars and 825 million barrels of oil a year, equal to all of the recoverable oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in 4 years. The newcomers will consume 2.26 billion cubic feet of wood per year, over 75 million acres of forest. Immigration and births to immigrants will account for 67% of population growth between 2000 and 2050, and the population will grow by 125 million people over the next 50 years to over 570 million by 2050. If all immigration ended, the population would grow to over 326 million by 2050, and 377 million people by 2100. Even with no immigration, population growth does not stop in the next 100 years. The U.S. fertility rate of 2.1 is the highest in the industrialized world. In Canada the rate is now 1.5, because more women in Canada use the contraceptive pill than in the U.S. If the U.S. lowered the cost of the pill and improved access to contraception, U.S. fertility would decline. Women in Canada and the U.S. want the same number of children, and fertility rates were the same in 1975. If U.S. birth rates fell to Canadian levels, U.S. population growth would slow and eventually stop. U.S. residents are using less land per capita than 30 years ago as productivity and efficiency improve. We are growing more food per acre today and the "wildlife footprint" of the average American has got smaller. As productivity-per-acre has gone up, the U.S. has allowed marginal lands to return to forest or conservation. We are using less grazing land per capita than 20 years ago due to changes in the way we raise cattle. We are using less forest per capita than we did 20 years ago as modern mills waste less wood and forest managers acquire more expertise. U.S. oil consumption has declined from 31 barrels per person per year in 1978 to 25 barrels today. Population growth undermines conservation and land protection but progress is being made. We have more forest than 30 years ago, cleaner air and water, despite the addition of 100 million people. But every step we take in land conservation is eroded or negated by rapid domestic population growth. While we reduced per capita oil consumption by 25% between 1978 and 2000, the population grew by the same amount. While we see real gains in conservation we also see increased habitat loss. Increased forest fragmentation combined with intensive mowing of hayfields, has resulted in a decline in deep-forest nesting and grassland-nesting birds. Humans have benefited, birds have been the loser. How many Americans? Once you decide on a number or goal for the future, fertility and immigration are largely mathematical. rw

In a First, U.S. Puts Limits on California's Thirst - Commentary

California's, population grew by more than 4.2 million between 1990 and 2000, 60% from direct immigration. The addition of 2,405,430 immigrants between 1990 and 2000 represents 58.5% of the growth but misses illegal immigrants. The primary consumer of water in California is agriculture and industry. Much agricultural water is wasted. Farmers pay about $70 for every acre-foot of water. Higher prices encourage investments in irrigation systems and a change in crop selection. It will cost $300 per acre-foot in Utah to deliver water to farmers and will produce crops worth about $30, but cost farmers $8. Farmers use more water than they would if market forces were allowed to guide the use of water. On a national level, we are using LESS water today than we did 20 years ago. While the population of the U.S. increased more than 16% between 1980 and 1995, water consumption declined 10%. Even a slight increase in the price of water or energy results in pressure to conserve water. The primary consumers are irrigation and industry, both have curtailed their water usage. Increased consumption is evident in the public supply and livestock. Population growth across the nation needs to be brought under control. population growth in the American West is a problem -- a huge problem. Arizona's population growth rate compares to Pakistan, Tanzania, and Honduras while Colorado's is similar to that of Ghana, El Salvador, and the Philippines.

U.S. Women Waiting Longer to Have First Child

U.S. women on average wait until 25 to have their first child. The average age at first delivery in 1970 was 21.4 years, compared to 24.9 years in 2000. The rise is attributed to the increase in the number of women attending college and in the labor force. The number of women who finished college in 2000 is three times higher than in 1970 and the number of women working outside of the home increased nearly 40%. A decline in teen births, delays in marriage, the use of birth control and an increase in women in their 30s and 40s having children have affected the average age at first delivery. This varied regionally, women in Arkansas and Mississippi giving birth for the first time at 22, in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey at 27. Minority women should be provided them with the same opportunities that other groups enjoy if we want them to postpone childbearing.

rw

U.S.: No Child Left Behind

More than 11 million children in the U.S. live in poverty, more than a third under the age of six. The welfare rolls have declined more than 50%, child poverty to about 16%. But indications are that the gains overshadow the distress of hundreds of thousands of families who are worse off. For example the requirement that mothers of small children work, with no increase in the support for childcare. rw

Court Blocks Offshore Oil Leases in Calif.; U.S. Appeals Judges Uphold State's Right to Prevent Drilling in Federal Waters

A federal appeals court blocked an attempt to revive old oil leases off the California. The judges gave California broad power to prevent any new exploration or drilling in waters near the coastline. This has become a political issue in California, whose residents oppose more drilling. The leases were signed before the ban on oil drilling and are the last hope oil companies have to expand operations near Santa Barbara that has significant quantities of oil. Administration officials say they went to court because they do not believe California should have a role in deciding whether leases, which have expired several times, should be extended while political debate continues. The issue is that extending the life of these leases didn't have any effect on the coastline the oil industry, contends. Only a few new rigs would be necessary, operated to protect marine life and beaches. About two dozen oil rigs in place before the ban on drilling, operate off the California coast. For the past year, environmental groups have been waging a fierce campaign to nullify the old leases and guarantee that no more drilling occurs. An accident in 1969 spewed 3 million gallons of oil. rw

U.S.: Do We Need Growth?

No matter how smart the growth or how good the planning, a rapid increase in population can overwhelm a community's best efforts.. Smart Growth strategies - redevelopment, in-fill, public transit, mixed use development, and green space - are not sufficient. Oregon, for example, is forced to grow urban growth boundaries to accomodate population growth.

VANISHED OPEN SPACE = Population X per capita Developed Land. 63% of the 47% increase of the greater Washington (D.C.) area between 1982 and 1997 was due to population growth. Reducing per capita land use alone will not accomodate the increase of the 1.6 million people expected in the Washington area in the next 25 years.

TRAFFIC CONGESTION = Population X per capita VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled). The Washington area Metrorail sees 650,000 Metrorail trips per day while the number of vehicle trips per day is 15.6 million - which will grow by 5.5 million over the next twenty years. Congested lane miles are projected to increase from 7.1% in 1998 to 10-12% in 2025.

WATER DEMAND = Population X per capita Water Consumption. South Florida's Everglades is buckling under pressure from pollution and water diversions to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population. According to a spokesperson for Everglades National Park, the stressed out system "could ecologically fail within the next 20 years."

SEWAGE: Plant and animal-killing nitrogen discharged from municipal sewage treatment plants has declined with nitrogen reduction techonology (NRT), but population growth will soon reverse the NRT gains. In the Chesapeake Bay, "If no further actions are taken, we anticipate increased discharges after 2010 due to population growth."

While the national population grows rapidly, curbing sprawl in one region pushes sprawl into other regions. The Census Bureau says we may reach 571 million by 2100. A stable U.S. population can be achieved through a modest reduction in U.S. fertility - by attaining fertility rates of other industrialized countries. (I.e. Norway-1.85 Spain-1.15). Even keeping current immigration levels!

ECONOMIC GROWTH . Comparing 13 faster growing areas to 13 slower growing areas showed a big difference in the rate of job growth, but a negligible difference in the unemployment rate. The more jobs lured into an urban area, the more people will move in to fill them, increasing congestion, and decreasing quality of life for those that live there. Population growth increases total economic growth but not per capita economic growth. In a study of 15 western European countries with relatively low population growth, compared to the U.S., with high population growth, the per capita Gross Domestic Product was not shown to significantly correlate to population growth.

Restraining the Growth Machine. Metropolitan area population growth can be slowed by ending subsidies that promote local population growth. Unfortunately the land speculators, developers, and real estate brokers profit from local growth are rich and powerful.

� .Restrain new business recruitment � .Make development pay its way � .Elect public officials whose campaign funding is not dominated by Growth Machine money

Slowing National Population Growth: � .Decrease the number of dropouts � .Reduce poverty � .Family planning services for low-income women � .Educating and influencing attitudes of teens and young women

U.S.: Education: Move to Bigger Class Sizes to Get a Second Look

Having classroom sizes of up to 50 students, the Los Angeles Board of Education agreed to study class sizes and will focus on reducing them to 37 students. In March they voted to increase classes by two students as part of a $450-million budget cut. But many claim this harms the quality of education. Forty-two% of the district's middle and high school classes now have 30 students or more. Parents, teachers and students support smaller classes, but Supt. Roy Romer said this was the only way the district could afford a 3% pay increase for teachers. The larger classes created badly needed seats in the middle and high schools. Smaller classes depend upon the ability to hire more teachers and build schools. Until new schools are completed in 2005, many will be overcrowded. rw

U.S.: When Will the School Enrollment Bubble Burst?

New Jersey's public school enrollment is soaring and with no increase in state aid, property tax bills are putting the problems in sharp relief. The state estimated the number of public school students at 1,367,431, a jump of more than 30,000 from the 2001-2 school year and up more than 300,000 from 1989. In July 1998, the Department of Education predicted enrollment would peak in the 2003-4 school years with 1,196,939 students and that by 2007, that number would drop to about 1.1 million. Those projections are not holding. It's going up 20,000 to 30,000 students a year. The biggest factor is immigration. Between 1990 and 2000, the state saw a net gain of 400,000 immigrants. Some districts have seen their numbers rise because of housing developments, a turnover of homes to families with children, and movement out of New York and Philadelphia. Most growth in the suburbs comes from people selling their homes to families with school-age children. High school enrollment should peak in 2007 or 2008 and then begin to level off or slightly decline. In 2001, $970 million in school bond issues was approved by voters for school projects. It leaves the burden to the local community. In Greenwich Township voters approved an addition on a school under construction. The district is attracting parents who work in the pharmaceutical and software industries as well as those commuting to Manhattan. It's a horrendous, overwhelming situation for the local taxpayer. Many districts have had to reduce the number of teachers, resulting in larger classes. When a district has a good reputation, people want to be there. There is also a need to upgrade facilities to keep up with technology. Districts going through enrollment increases find that the biggest battle is over money for buildings and teachers. We promise a free public education to all who show up at our door, but we've been given too short a time to be responsive. rw

Andean Villagers Seek American Justice; Mercury Contamination Near Peru Mine Leads to Legal Showdown in Denver Court

Four and a half years after the mercury spill contaminated Choropampa and two neighboring towns, Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp., and lawyers for 1,100 Peruvian peasants appear headed for a legal showdown that could involve millions of dollars. If the plaintifs win, it would be the first time a U.S. firm has been held accountable in a U.S. court for environmental contamination committed outside the country. The lawsuit accuses Newmont of "fraudulently concealing the true hazard to human health and safety of the spilled mercury." Newmont blames the Peruvian trucking contractor. After a three-year fight Newmont agreed to settlement talks before two retired Colorado judges after a state appellate court ruled that the lawsuit could proceed. But mediation talks in Denver Jan. 19-20 failed to produce a settlement. The plaintiffs announced that they will go ahead before Denver District Judge Robert Hyatt. Newmont spokesman said the mining company hopes to avoid a trial, even though the plaintiffs have disparate views over a financial settlement. An environmental law professor said Newmont's attempt to negotiate a settlement doesn't mean the company fears losing in court, but reflects a strategy of appearing socially responsible. Indonesian police detained six Newmont officials over allegations of pollution from a mine in Sulawesi province where villagers charged that they had suffered illnesses and their economic livelihoods, which depend on catching fish, had been damaged by mine waste. Meanwhile, the Peru mercury spill has become a rallying cry for protests against mining firms over alleged environmental damage and political corruption. Mining accounts for half of Peru's annual exports and makes the largest contribution to the national economy. Yanacocha mine's environmental director told a visiting group that protective seals are now required on all mercury containers and trucking firms cannot transport such material in uncovered vehicles. After protests Newmont backed off from a planned expansion of Yanacocha near the northern city of Cajamarca where residents have protested against Yanacocha officials who they say endangered them by offering as much as $30 a kilo (2.2 pounds) to recover the mercury after the spill. Local residents were later hired without protective gear. But a company report said the decision was intended to get residents to hand over mercury in their possession. The company also said it asked local authorities to send an ambulance with a loud speaker to warn of the toxic nature of the chemical the day after the accident. Newmont spokesman said even though no cases injuries related to the spill have been diagnosed, Yanacocha mine has spent $10 million to treat villagers, clean up the spill and monitor the environment, and cash settlements of up to $6,000 each to more than 700 residents who are not part of the lawsuit. For the hundreds who tested positive for mercury exposure, Yanacocha agreed to provide medical insurance until the end of 2005. But the end of the medical coverage worries those who still suffer from blindness, neurological damage, memory loss and muscular pain.

California's Central Valley

The 400-mile-long Central Valley in California is a fertile pocket of land between the coastal mountains and the Sierra Nevada that supplies one-quarter of the food America eats. Families looking for lower-cost housing are moving there and fields are making way for subdivisions. As the population of the valley's cities grows and agriculture shrinks, the valley's new urban centers are pushing for a share in the economic success of the coast. Farmers have been exempted from clean air and clean water standards but now, the state is going to bring them into compliance. Farmers spray a third of all pesticides sold in the nation. If they have to cut back, the prices of crops grown in the valley will be more expensive. When Central Valley big farms "go organic," it cuts down California water pollution, and provides a testbed for large-scale organic farming. Estimates claim that 50% to 90% of the valley's farm laborers are illegal immigrants whose lack of mobility impedes their assimilation. Workers are subject to sub-minimum wages and dangerous working conditions. Immigrants are forcing the state to come to terms with diversity. rw

US Colorado: A Clear-cut Drought Solution? Logging Urged to Boost Runoff, but Eco-Groups Object

Colorado's population is growing fast and water conservation is a major issue. [Colorado's population growth rate is 2.3% a year -- equal to that of Ghana and El Salvador, and faster than that of the Philippines.] The latest proposal is for swathes of forests to be cut to boost water flow, although no one is talking about slowing population growth. It is claimed that enough water to supply a million families could be created by thinning trees on federal and state land. This has been studied but never as broadly as advocated. Managing forests to mitigate wildfire and increase water yields is said to hold promise. Environmentalists says it will increase flooding and degrade streams. Removing trees allows more snow to fall to the ground, where it runs off into streams and rivers during the spring. Some researchers complain that Colorado has too many trees that intercept snow which would otherwise melt every spring. But those studies show that removing tree cover produces extra water when it's not needed. "The link between logging for fire mitigation and logging for water is a false one," said environmental hydrologist Dan Luecke of Boulder. Most of the research on this has been done in Fraser, where water yield from the 714-acre Fool Creek watershed has been monitored for 60 years. Foresters removed 40 percent of the watershed's trees 1956, with a 40% increase in water flow. After four decades, half of the increase can still be measured. Flows increased most during wet years, and almost none during droughts which means the surplus water has to be stored, and the high-flow resulted in scouring of the stream channel. The only large-scale demonstration was on the Coon Creek watershed in southern Wyoming. Twenty-four% of the watershed was removed in the 1990s, producing a 17% increase in flow. It was calculated that 185,000 acre-feet of water a year could be created by cutting half the 1.1 million acres of forest in the North Platte watershed over 120 years. Clear-cutting would reduce the habitat of the threatened lynx and other species. Many scientists doubt that logging for water would be as successful in other parts of Colorado. In the 1970s, Richard Gaudagno discovered that deep snow collected in the spruce-fir stands, while the open ski runs were scoured almost bare by the winds - the opposite of what was found in the Fraser study. Removing trees causes erosion, which clogs streams with sediment and stifles habitat for fish and aquatic insects. Many environmentalists think economics will be the idea's undoing as it is too expensive to build roads and log on steep slopes. There has been no planning for the state's water future, and the population is growing fast. The supply is finite and will have to be used more efficiently. rw

Solar Energy: Alternative to Combat Energy Insecurity in India

With an increasing population, India's energy demands is mounting. The household sector is the largest consumer, accounting for 40%-50%. In rural areas, the domestic sector accounts for 80%. With the current rate of consumption, India would require 450 million tones of coal, 94 million tones of oil and 220 million units of electricity by 2006. Most of these are non-renewable resources. India realized that the key to sustainable consumption is to divert the energy load onto the renewable sources. More than 3165 MW of power based on renewable sources have been installed, including the world's largest deployment of solar PV (Photovoltaic) aggregating 50 MW. India ranks 3rd in annual production capacity of solar PV. With 3.23 million biogas plants, India ranks 2nd after China. There is a potential of about 3500 MW of biogas-based power from 453 sugar mills. With wind power India ranks 5th in the world with 18710 MW.

Solar energy is especially valuable as there is sunshine available for most parts of the year and most of the time. The amount of solar energy impacting India is about 32.8 million MW every second on the Indian land mass. Solar energy is inexhaustible, widely distributed, environment friendly and cost free in raw form. Offsetting these benefits are its low intensity and its unpredictability. Solar energy can supply from 40% to 75% of a building's energy needs.

Harnessing the sun is a clean way to provide hot water or space heating. Another way is through photovoltaic cells.

The Indian government has taken the initiative in promoting the use solar energy. Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) provides revolving fund offering credit for the purchase of PV systems, which service lower volume customers. Soft loans are provided at low interest rates for solar water heaters for the period of 6 years. To provide low-cost energy to every rural household has been the top priority of the successive Indian governments. Only the political and practical will is necessary for the encouragement of solar energy in India. rw

New Report Warns U.S., Canada Face Tough Environmental Choices

The USA and Canada's improvement to their environment has come at the expense of global effects. Each citizen consumes nine times more gasoline than any other person in the world. With 5% of the world's population, both countries account for 25.8% of emissions of carbon dioxide. The two countries have reduced by 71% the chemicals discharged into the Great Lakes. About 13% of their land area is set aside as protected areas. Over 70% of Canada's wetlands are protected. Sulphur dioxide emissions in the USA have declined 31% from 2000. Both countries reduced CFC consumption to nearly zero. However Canada and the U.S. face challenges before North America is on a sustainable development path. Soil and wetland losses outpace the gains, the region's aquifers are being depleted. Both countries need changes toward more fuel-efficient technologies, and to curb urban sprawl.

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Hubris on the Yangtze

The new Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River is an environmental and human-rights disaster of monumental proportions, critics say. Up to 1.9 million people will be forced to leave their homes. It was built with more than six times as much concrete as the Panama Canal and already has cracks, some up to 8 feet in length. Experts in China have urged their country's government to rethink its plans. rw

U.S.: Air Pollution Fatalities Now Exceed Traffic Fatalities by 3 to 1

U.S. air pollution deaths equal those from breast and prostate cancer. Air pollutants include carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates primarily from fossil fuels. When people inhale particulates and ozone at concentrations found in urban areas, their arteries become constricted, reducing blood flow to the heart. No "safe" level of pollution exists. Exposure to current levels of ozone and particulates affect death rates, hospitalizations and medical visits and take a toll on the economy. The costs of air pollution argue for raising taxes on fuels to encourage efficient use, a shift to clean energy sources, and the adoption of pollution controls. The solutions to urban air pollution are not difficult. Individuals can reduce car usage and use more fuel-efficient cars. Planning can redirect funding to mass transit options. Countries can shift electricity generation to wind and solar power and redefine safety to include decreasing air pollution. rw

U.S.: Coal Ash: a Big Unknown - Some Fear Toxic Threat in Power Plant Waste

Coal-fired power plants produce more than 100 million tons of ash annually, 70% ends up in landfills. Environmental leaders question the extent to which toxic heavy metals in coal ash threaten groundwater. The regulations are inconsistent. Tests in Pines Indiana have shown that wells contain high boron levels that can damage the stomach, liver, kidneys and brain. Industry leaders say the fear of heavy metals is out of proportion. Critics suggest that coal ash must be treated with caution. The EPA said there were 11 cases of pollution from coal waste in the U.S., none in Kentucky or Indiana. Each state sets its own rules for disposal. Indiana granted "beneficial reuses" of ash exemption from environmental laws. In Kentucky, power plants must report how much ash goes to beneficial uses and identify them, but these regulations are loose and ash was dumped on rural land. It has been recommended that power plants declare their construction fill plans. The EPA wants the ash tested for toxicity, and its placement designed to minimize contact with water. The EPA came close to classifying ash for landfills as hazardous but the decision was reversed after industry lobbying. EPA officials intend to propose a national rule on ash disposal in 2004. Indiana approved the state's groundwater protection standards. The DNR will seek a per-ton charge to raise money for future environmental cleanups if they're needed. The standards also may force restrictions on ash ponds. The coal industry will likely fight any tax on ash disposal. rw

California Smart Growth Bill

AB 857, a bill that promotes infill development, more compact suburban growth, and protection of the most valuable natural and agricultural resources, is on the governor's desk. The bill would also encourage efficient development patterns in areas to the extent infill development is not possible and would ensure state consistency with priorities and a conflict (between state agenceies) resolution process. The building industry opposes the bill. The bill is needed to handle the projected 12 million increase in population in California for the next 20 years. Statutorily required land use priorities have not been update in 24 years, during which time California's population growth has grown 11 million. Citizens are already choking on air pollution, fed up with traffic and distressed about declining quality of life.

U.S.: Sprawl Adds to Drought

A report says that sprawl is worsening water supply problems. Development in Atlanta produces around 133 billion gallons of polluted runoff that would otherwise be filtered through the soil to recharge aquifers, streams and lakes. The report claims to show the magnitude of the problem and urges the Geological Survey to embark on a thorough study. Drought experts said that development exacerbated water shortages, but the extent was impossible to quantify. 40% of the country is suffering drought, especially the East Coast and Southwest. In arid regions, where much water comes from snowmelt, covering the ground with roads and buildings, decreases the reabsorption of rainwater which is important because ground water can seep into depleted bodies of water. The report said the problem can be mitigated if new road building is curtailed and open spaces--such as farms and forests--are preserved. They also urge the adoption of techniques to facilitate the absorption of storm water. The construction industry called the report a blatant effort by environmental groups to increase regulations on development as modern developments use sophisticated strategies to avoid the perils of runoff. rw

U.S.: Oceans' Woes Growing Deeper

Since the last presidential commission's report in early 1969, pressures have increased on coastal areas that are home to half the nation's population. The new commission, half way through a three year plan says that about 40,000 acres of coastal wetlands that provide habitats for three-fourths of U.S. commercial fish catches are disappearing each year. 40% of U.S. fish stocks are depleted or overfished. Ballast water from ships is spreading invasive alien species. There is a need to consolidate federal and state policies. Fishers and corporations, face a patchwork of authorities and regulations. More than 140 federal laws are administered by 20 agencies, there has to be a national ocean-policy-coordinating body. Ocean pollution is increasing and coastal management is overwhelmed. Fish stocks continue to be depleted, and the advice of scientists ignored at the expense of fisheries. Not enough study has been given to the interaction between oceans and climate change. The independently financed Pew Oceans Commission, has been looking at a need to consider marine ecosystems and ocean life as a whole, rather than focusing just on fish. rw

California USA: New Water Law Makes Work for the Maytag Man

Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill requiring water efficiency in clothes washers. Water conservation in California and the West is serious. Neighboring states want a bigger share of the Colorado River water that California has taken for over a decade. That transfer could alter the variety of fruits and vegetables on US dinner tables. The state has overbuilt for the available water. Those in water-rich northern counties gripe at the cost of new washers, but officials say the cost will be made up in five years through lower water bills. They remind residents that savings are possible, as shown in the 1990s, when a drought led to conservation steps and Californians cut water by 20%,equivalent of not having to build another reservoir. Supporters say the washers' savings could supply 6,000 households for a year. The bill was pushed forward because of federal energy standards to save electricity and the time was ripe for designs to save water, too. The savings of energy and water would be about $48 per machine per year. rw

Differing Demography of United States, Western Europe

The United States is becoming younger, while Europe's population is aging. Between 1960 and 1985, the U.S. rate dropped to 1.8 births per woman. In the 1990s the rate rose to just below 2.1 births per woman - possibly because of "higher-than-average fertility" among immigrants and the U.S. "economic boom,". Europe's women average fewer than 1.4 births in their lifetime. rw

U.S.: California: White House Accepts Water Ruling: More Could Flow to Central Valley Farmers, Less to Fish and Wildlife

The Bush administration has made a series of decisions that threaten the environment - more logging in national forests to wildfire hazard, pushed for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, supported weakening standards on arsenic in drinking water and resisted imposing a federal ban on oil drilling off the California coast. Now the administration supports a ruling by a federal court judge which may provide more water to Central Valley agriculture at the expense fish and wildlife in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento River and San Joaquin River Delta system. The 1992 Central Valley Water Project Improvement Act, which provides 800,000 acre-feet of water annually for bay/Delta fisheries, was challenged by the Westlands Water District, a 600,000-acre irrigation district in the western San Joaquin Valley, which said the rules for environmental water releases was unfair.

US Colorado: Boulder Overpopulation Reduces Citizen Opportunities For Democracy

Recently the Boulder City Council acted to reduce speaking times from 3 minutes to 2 minutes for citizens wishing to address the Council at public meetings. This is a symptom of a deep illness, where overpopulation is the illness and the large number of people seeking to speak is the symptom. The Council's action is like prescribing aspirin for cancer.

In 1950 Boulder had about 20,000 people and 9 members on the Council. In 2011 Boulder has five times as many people and there are still just 9 members on the Council. It is likely that today there are about 5 times as many people wanting to speak to Council on any given issue as there were 60 years ago. Thus, we have only one fifth of the democracy that we had 60 years ago.

Today's crowded Council agendas and reduced speaking time per citizen are the direct consequence of actions of past Councils promoting population growth in Boulder, but news stories have failed to suggest this.

Despite the fact that the Council has made sincere and earnest efforts to advance the cause of sustainability in Boulder, the new constructions of homes, apartments, condos and other buildings, all approved by the Council, resulted in increasing Boulder's population. In fact they have moved Boulder farther away from sustainability and will further reduce democracy in Boulder.

The Council should be mindful of the First Law of Sustainability: "You cannot sustain population growth; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources." This Law cannot be repealed.

California Congresswoman Lois Capps on Birth Control

Letter to constituant from Congresswoman Lois Capps:

Thank you for contacting me regarding your concern for the high cost of birth control. I appreciate hearing from you regarding this important issue.

You will be pleased to know we are in complete agreement. I am a proud co-sponsor of the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act (H.R. 4054) which would allow drug companies to again offer college clinics and safety net healthcare providers a significantly discounted rate on birth control purchases. As you know, this reduced price allowed providers to offer low cost birth control to their patients who often cannot afford to pay full price for contraceptives.

H.R. 4054 corrects a provision in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 that went into effect this year that mistakenly prevented drug companies from continuing to offer discounted birth control.

As a result, many college clinics can no longer afford to provide birth control to their students. For student health centers and other clinics that still offer birth control, the prices have increased astronomically from an average of $5 to nearly $50 per month. I am very concerned the increased costs have made it more difficult for many women to obtain safe and effective birth control.

I firmly believe that students should NOT (edited) have to pay such a steep price for a bureaucratic oversight. Women who can't afford birth control should not be made to suffer the consequences of an unintended pregnancy. I hope this bill moves quickly through the legislative process so we restore access to safe, effective and affordable birth control for women across the country.

California's Status as Wildlife State Threatened by Growing Population

California boasts more species than found nowhere else. This biodiversity is stressed by the state's enormous population and further threatened by continuing population growth.

California's biological diversity arises from the varied landscapes and climates found on the geologically active western edge of the North American continent. California is also the state with the most imperiled wildlife.

When overpopulation and biodiversity collide, biodiversity invariably suffers. More than 800 species in the state are now at risk. The major stresses impacting California's wildlife and habitats, include water management, invasive species, overgrazing, recreational pressures and climate change. Increasing housing, services, transportation, and other infrastructure place ever-greater demands on the state's land, water, and other natural resources.

California's population will swell to 60 million by 2050.

The spread of Homo sapiens is riding roughshod over hundreds of other life forms that have made California their home for eons.

On the Central Coast, urbanized acreage expanded about 20%. Crowded and costly coastal areas have forced development inland, in areas once dominated by agriculture and large ranches.

You don't have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.

Successive bipartisan commissions all recommended that the US needs to stabilize its population and control immigration or forfeit its environment, including landscape and wildlife.

Even with conservation planning, growth and development will eliminate important habitats.

If Californians allow the state's population to hit 60 million in 2050, a large number of endangered species will have vanished forever. rw

U.S.: Envisioning a Sustainable Chesapeake

It's been most inspiring to see discussions begin to address the future of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay.

They prompt us to ask: "What does a sustainable Chesapeake really mean?"

My vision is built upon a balanced, vibrant ecosystem teeming with fish, shellfish, underwater grasses and clear, healthy waters. But to be truly sustainable, the Chesapeake ecosystem needs to exist while also supporting the region's human population.

Creating a sustainable Chesapeake will not be easy. But as we look around the state, we're seeing more and more positive steps being taken.

Recently, the Maryland Commission on Climate Change made recommendations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving energy throughout the state. These actions will require that we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25% within the next 12 years.

An initiative was introduced that will seek to instill a sense of environmental stewardship among the 28,000 students graduating each year. It will also foster research and prepare the new "green" workforce.

By changing our own actions, each of us has the ability to reduce our impact on the bay and the planet.

As long as the region's population continues to grow, and we develop lands faster than needed to accommodate that growth, we make it more difficult to maintain the sustainability equation.

We have struggled more than 20 years to reduce the amount of pollution flowing into the bay and we are still far from where we need to be. Another 10, 20 or 30 years of pollution-fighting efforts will still not be enough. Bay restoration efforts will be needed in perpetuity.

We need to manage for sustainability by remaining aware of what will cross our path in the future. rw

US Florida;: An Economy Tied to Growth

How strong is Florida's economy?

Despite the decline in home values, the rise in gas prices, the weak dollar, visitors are coming to Southwest Florida. Construction boomed from 2003 to 2006, and home prices in Florida rose 60%. Now there's a glut of unoccupied dwellings.

It is anybody's guess when that industry will recover and help other sectors of an economy tied to population growth.

Tourism has long been a mainstay of the state's economy. Why are people coming? At the top of the list is the weak dollar, which tends to draw Canadians and Europeans.

Florida is transitioning from being a low-cost state to a higher-cost state, the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation Inc. said. The cost of living in Southwest Florida is comparable to the cost of living in Toronto. That explains why so many local residents are heading for points north.

Florida's population increased by about 320,000 residents in 2006, down from the pace of 2004 and 2005. Most of the decrease was in domestic migration. Florida continued to attract residents from the Northeast and the Midwest, but Florida became a net exporter of residents to other Southern states."

The state's population, increased by 2.1 million people between 2000 and 2006.

Factors causing some people to leave include high housing costs, rising property tax bills, difficulty obtaining insurance, the threat of hurricanes and recent job losses caused by the downturn in the construction industry.

Good progress has been made in the past three years to strengthen the state's economy. At stake are the State's most vital current and future interests and the livability and sustainability of its communities.

Floridians value the environment. The business community and politicians must do the same.

Florida must continue to develop a diversified economic base. Local business and political leaders should draw research and development companies or, in some other form, companies that can diversify the local and state economies. rw

Georgia Governor, Corps Differ Over Extent of Water Emergency

Georgia Gov. declared a water emergency in north Georgia on Saturday as its water resources dwindled to a dangerously low level. But an Army Corps of Engineers official denied there is a crisis.

The Gov asked for President Bush's help in easing regulations that require the state to send water to Alabama and Florida and to declare 85 counties as federal disaster areas.

He blasted rules governing the water supplies, noting that if the state got rains, it could not by law conserve those, but must release 3.2 billion gallons a day downstream.

The Army Corps of Engineers said if there were nine months without rain, water supplies still would be adequate. The corps, releases 5,000 feet of water per second from the dam between Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River.

The figure was based on a Florida hydroelectric power plant's needs, as well as concern for endangered species in the river. Georgia filed a motion to require the Army Corps of Engineers to restrict water flows from the lake and other Georgia reservoirs. The corps said it needs 120 days to review its water policies, according to Perdue.

Rainfall is far below normal for this time of year.

Lake Lanier levels have dropped to a historically low and is hurting businesses and scaring away tourists.

A new biological review of endangered species needs will end in November to see if water requirements can be reduced. Georgia, Alabama and Florida have been wrangling over how to allocate water from the Chattahoochee watershed as metro Atlanta's population has doubled since 1980. Georgia has imposed a ban on outdoor water use by homeowners in the region. rw

Development of 50-Year State Water Plan Discussed

The Oklahoma Legislature was motivated to update the state's 1995 water plan because of dwindling reservoirs and aquifers.

The goal is to provide a safe and dependable water supply for all Oklahomans, while improving the economy and protecting the environment.

The water plan is expected to consider population growth, future water needs, competing water interests, vulnerability to drought and flooding, environmental protection and economic development.

Surface water is considered to be publicly owned and subject to appropriation by the OWRB for "beneficial use."

Groundwater is considered private property that belongs to the overlying surface owner.

Since 1973, water wells have increased tenfold. Laws were written to encourage Oklahoma to use water to thrive and grow.

Public water supplies are the primary user of surface water or reservoirs, with irrigation for agricultural uses the biggest user of groundwater.

All of Oklahoma's aquifers dropped several feet from 2001 to 2006, as a result of drought.

The Arbuckle-Simpson and Blaine aquifers dropped more than 21 feet and almost 10 feet, respectively, during that period, but respond very quickly to drought or to rain. Oklahoma had a population of about 3.5 million in 2000. That's projected by to increase by 38% by 2060.

Current Oklahoma law allows the OWRB to issue groundwater use permits based on an assumed 20-year lifetime for the aquifer, which is unsustainable. It was recommended to transfer water from the Kiamichi River in southeastern Oklahoma.

Mayor Cindy Rosenthal said the state water plan has to emphasize conservation. Destructive competition will happen if there is not funding assistance.

Norman environmental specialist Debbie Smith said she would like the state to require communities that receive financial assistance to develop a water conservation plan. Everybody knows that water conservation is the cheapest way to get more water.

But if there is no sustainability, it's not going to work, There should be no ownership of water.

Americans as a whole do not have any idea of the value of water. rw