By Geoffrey Holland, guest writer. Nearly a century ago, an American humorist named Will Rogers said of the human condition, “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging.”  As we move through the early part of the 20th millennia, humanity is up to its ears in a hole
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By Suzanne York. As New Delhi chokes from off-the-charts air pollution levels, parts of Australia, Brazil and California burn, and countries in Europe flood, a timely warning on climate change from some 11,000 scientists was released. The scientists’ alarm was first sounded 40 years ago and in most years since then.  But too many people have
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By Suzanne York, Transition Earth. Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City this week.  She’s gotten a lot of press and focused much attention on climate issues.  Which is a good thing, given that the Northern Hemisphere, which holds 90 percent of the world’s population, had the
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By Dr. Milton Saier and Art Elphick, guest writers. Recent articles call for higher birthrates to spur economic growth. But upon observing the human impact on our resources and environment, many scientists consider even current economic and population growth rates unsustainable. Our world has just experienced prenominal growth. Since 1900, the population has grown by
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By Art Elphick, guest writer. There is no shortage of thought on the rate of global population growth.  What follows below is a brief analysis of whether United Nations projections are valid or of course, as well as questioning whether continued growth on a finite planet is truly feasible or beneficial. 1) Max Roser’s Assessment
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By Suzanne York. It’s official, more or less – we have entered the Anthropocene epoch, a time when humanity’s impact on the planet is so transformational that it’s pushed the world into a new geological period. “New Age of Man” An international working group, after seven years of deliberation, voted unanimously (with one abstention) at
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By Suzanne York It’s ironic that while much attention is focused on getting to a climate agreement in Paris that at the same time the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being negotiated.  On the one hand you have efforts to reduce global carbon emissions as a means to protect people and the environment.  On the other
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By Suzanne York. “Can the world get richer forever?” asks a recent article in the BBC News. If you ask a politician, mainstream economist or the 1%, the answer is likely to be “yes.”    As noted in the BBC piece, growth “is almost universally seen as a Good Thing.”  If you ask most environmentalists, scientists
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China’s population growth has been popping up in the news recently.  It seems the government’s concern about too much population growth has now swung in the other direction – today the issue is a shrinking labor pool. The Chinese labor force has already peaked and its population will shrink after 2030, though some experts  think
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By Suzanne York. What is the role of government when it comes to having babies?  Should the goal be to empower women or promote economic growth? The government of Ethiopia announced earlier this week that it will try to lower its total fertility rate to 2.6 by the year 2020 from the current rate of
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