By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org It is estimated that globally, every two seconds, two people move into cities. Currently twenty-two percent, or 1.5 billion people, live in 600 cities around the world. Africa is home to the fastest growing countries in terms of population growth. It is projected that the continent will double from 1.1 billion
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org.  Man to burn next weekend! Are those global warming pushers behind this? No, it’s Burning Man, and it happens every year. What, you may ask, is Burning Man? As some of you probably know, it’s an annual week-long gathering of artists in the Black Rock desert of Nevada (dubbed Black Rock
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org. India is a fast-developing nation with a population of 1.2 billion people, and by 2030 will likely be the most-populous in the world. India’s disparities and inequalities are staggering, with 32.7% of the population living on $1.25 per day. As the country continues to grow, the impacts on its citizens and
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org It’s pretty obvious that summer 2012 has been one of the hottest summers in decades in the U.S., even after much of the country endured a scorching 2011. Last year Dallas,Texas had had 40 consecutive days over 100 degrees, and Oklahoma had 63 days with 100+ degree highs. This year has
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org This was my first time attending the annual Aspen Ideas Festival (AIF), and what a week it was! Suffice it to say, my head still hurts from all the information I took in from some of the country’s top thinkers and doers. From the polarization of U.S. politics to the Supreme
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Population Reference Bureau (PRB) just released its 2012 World Population Data Sheet, showing that the world’s poorest countries will have the greatest population growth, due to high birth rates and a large youth population. Just one week after the London Summit on Family Planning, which raised $2.6 billion from donors for
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in rain-soaked Rio on the third day of the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit and announced to conference delegates  that “women must be empowered to make decisions on whether and when to have children” if the world is to attain agreed-upon
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org Rio de Janeiro — Nearly half of the world´s population is under the age of 25, or more than 3 billion people.  In some areas of the world, young women (ages 15-19)  are twice as likely to lack access to contraceptives they desire as women over the age of twenty.  As policy-makers
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By Suzanne York, HowMany.org Rio de Janeiro — My first Rio+20 side event was titled “From Rio to Cairo to Rio…and Beyond”, but for me it was actually from San Francisco to Charlotte to Rio…and even beyond to Rio Centro, site of the UN Rio+20 conference, far from downtown..  So quite a trek just to get
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By Suzanne York, howmany.org, June 14, 2012 The past month or so has seen the release of several reports and studies focused on the state of the planet. The timing coincides with the run-up to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20 Earth Summit. Most of the publications are on the increasingly dire
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