By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org This Valentine’s Day goes beyond love, with a global call to action to bring attention to violence against women, and justice for women, who have endured horrific pain due to gender. One Billion Rising, for the second year in a row, has galvanized people around the world to raise awareness by
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org It is the largest coral reef ecosystem on earth and one of the seven wonders of the natural world, but that isn’t enough to stop an effort to continue down the road of dirty fossil fuel energy. Last week, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMA) in Australia approved a
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Corporations, law, and governments often operate as if nature is something only to be exploited for its abundant resources.  Little thought is given to what this might mean for the global ecosystem, let alone for future generations. In mid-January, the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature hosted a thought-provoking conference in
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org A United Nations report titled Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with Sustainable Supply highlights the pressing need to cope with changes in a growing and consuming world that is shifting quickly from the one we’ve known for decades. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the need to feed a
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The governor of California has declared that the state is experiencing a drought emergency and is urging water rationing.  Governor Jerry Brown called it “perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records (began) about 100 years ago.” This came shortly after the release of a MIT study this
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Overconsumption, as most people are aware of, is having a tremendous effect on the planet.  But fewer think of this in terms of diet, where intensive meat and dairy production is also a strain on the environment. A new report – Meat Atlas – has just been published by Friends of
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Full coverage for birth control, as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), kicked in as Americans rang in the new year.  Contraception is now available for free from health insurance plans under the ACA. A key provision of the ACA requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide medical
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org It’s time for a fresh start on the year.  Which makes it a good time to take a hard look at how the global economy is structured, and how that is working for people (the 99%, not the 1%) and the environment. There is an obsession with economic growth that flies
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org A new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that climate change is likely to put 40 percent more people worldwide at risk of absolute water scarcity, due to changes in rainfall and evaporation. Unsurprisingly, the study
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org At the recent International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP), a big gathering of leaders and activists on family planning and reproductive health, there was a big effort to promote the role of men.  While it may seem obvious, men are sometimes missing from family planning. Certainly education and empowerment of women
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