World Overpopulation Awareness

Fifteen years ago the world's population was 6 billion. Today it is closing in on 7.2 billion and is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050.

While global population growth must be part of the conversation about sustaining the planet, it is seldom discussed. To help bring population to a higher priority, the Nature Conservancy hosted a panel discussion in April entitled "7 Billion and Counting: Population and the Planet." Roger-Mark De Souza, director of population, environmental security and resilience at the Wilson Center and Alan Weisman, author of "Countdown" and "The World Without Us," Caroline Crosbie, senior vice president of Pathfinder International, and Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy were the four panel members. They spent 90 minutes discussing the impacts of human population growth.

Weisman was the most pessimistic; Kareiva the most optimistic. But there's little disagreement globally that humankind's rapidly growing numbers are stressing the planet's finite natural resources.

Water: Over 90% of all fresh water used worldwide is for agriculture. Fewer than 15% of the world's rivers now run freely to the ocean. By overpumping aquifers and misusing rivers, humans are using water faster than it can be naturally replenished. By 2025, according to the Wilson Center, nearly 2 billion people will be living in countries with scarce water supplies, and two out of three people will be living in conditions of water stress. Within a decade 3.5 billion people will face water shortage issues, says the Waterkeeper Alliance.

Land: Almost 25 acres of forest, on average, were lost every minute from 2000 to 2010, according to the Wilson Center. Most of it was cleared by humans for agriculture and timber. The energy demands of some 2 billion people who depend on wood for cooking and heating is devastating rainforests, according FAO. Rhode Island has lost 80% of its farmland since 1945, and less than 7% of the state's farmland remain in production. In Massachusetts from 1999 to 2005, land was developed at a rate of 22 acres a day. About 14% of the region's vital Narragansett Bay watershed - in Massachusetts and Rhode Island - is under streets, roofs, driveways and parking lots. Impervious cover by municipalities in this 1,754-square-mile area ranges from 3 percent to 40 percent.

Humans have been dousing much of the world's land with synthetic toxins every day since the 1940s. From 1947 to 2007, the amount of pesticides produced in the United States went from 124 million pounds to 1.1 billion pounds. "We're chemically force-feeding the land and all this poison is no good for the soil or water," Weisman said."

Food: 40% of the planet's land is used to produce food. Nearly one in eight people is food insecure and food production will need to increase 70% by 2050 to be able to feed another 2-3 billion more people, according to FAO. Only about 1% of all farm products sold in the Rhode Island are from that state. These percentages are quite similar in both Massachusetts and Connecticut. Worldwide, we are relying more on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetic engineering to feed us. In the US over than half of all farmland is used to grow GMO crops, such as soybeans and corn. This growing practice, largely controlled by multinational corporations worth billions, has both supporters and detractors. GMO opponents say that in the past three decades only a few commercial successes have been produced by the corporations that manufacture GMO food. Since most of these crops are immune to herbicides, they claim hundreds of millions of pounds more of weed-killer are now being used. They say building up and supporting local food systems is the best way to sustainably increase the world's food supply. Others, like Weisman, believe we already produce enough food to feed the planet; we just need to be more equitable with the bounty.

Mass extinction: Every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, three species become extinct, and humans' growing presence is a huge factor in these disappearances. Centuries of alterations have transformed diverse habitat into less-resilient monocultures. In fact, according to research, human population density is an excellent indicator of biodiversity loss. About half of the human population lives on less than 3% of the planet's habitable land. Humans are geoengineering the planet to sustain our expanding and unsustainable numbers.

200 years ago, Thomas Malthus published "An Essay on the Principle of Population," noting that human population tends to grow geometrically, while the resources available to support it tend to grow arithmetically. Consequently, human population would inevitably outgrow the supply of food, he wrote. Improvements in agriculture and the Industrial Revolution postponed the disaster Malthus thought was imminent, but two centuries later many don't believe we can again geoengineer our way out of the numerous impacts a growing population creates.

Discussing the issue is often frowned upon, and many of the conversations that are held inevitably veer toward population control and China's since-lax one-child policy. Family planning and empowering women by improving their access to education and health care are effective and relatively inexpensive ways to address this challenging issue, according to De Souza. "We need to think about the impact we are having on the planet," he said. "We need to talk to communities at the local level about public health and population. We need to talk about and understand reproductive health."

Caroline Crosbie reported: "The U.S. government is becoming more conservative when it comes to family planning." ... "The rest of the world is becoming more progressive. Government commitment is needed, like in Thailand and Bangladesh." Or in Iran, where a voluntary family-planning program helped drop the highest rate of population growth in the country's history to replacement level a year faster than China's compulsory one-child policy.

Individual countries are learning that smaller families makes more sense economically and environmentally, Brown University's Foster said. The global fertility rate is falling, except in some places such as sub-Sahara Africa, he noted. In remote villages on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania women give birth, on average, to more than seven children. In Niger, with the world's highest fertility rate, each woman bears an average of nearly eight children. And 15 million girls from 10 to 14 in developing countries (one in nine) were still forced into marriage in the past decade. Some 220 million women in developing countries wish to delay or stop having children, but aren't using any method of contraception, according to Pathfinder International. Family planning must play a critical role in addressing these issues, but the idea, especially in the United States, is seemingly held hostage by the fiercely divisive topic of abortion.

De Souza noted that there is a positive when it comes to the issue of family planning. "Younger generations understand population concerns better than past generations," he said. "They understand reproductive health.

Carbon concerns: U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have stopped declining, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Carbon emissions increased by 2.4 percent in 2013 compared to 2012, and for the first two months of this year, they increased by 7.5 percent compared to the same period in 2013. Slowing population growth by 2050 could produce a 16% to 29% reduction in carbon emissions, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Our carbon emissions have also led to ocean acidification. The world's oceans are a third more acidic than they were in 1800, and by the end of this century they likely will be 150% more acidic than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution, according to an article written by Daniel Smith in the May 2014 edition of Harper's Magazine. About 1 of every 3 tons of carbon dioxide spewed into the air is absorbed by the sea - this 2.5 billion tons of annual carbon dioxide dissolves and forms carbonic acid.

Expert estimations of the planet's carrying capacity range from 1.5 billion people to 10-plus billion. Both Weisman and Foster said the answer will ultimately depend on how humans decide to address greenhouse gas emissions. Weisman mentioned studies that say 2 billion people - the world's population in 1930, while Foster believes the Earth could support up to 10 billion, if society is willing to make some hard choices. "Are we willing to make some sacrifices?," he said. Are we willing to live in smaller houses? Are we willing to live in more dense communities? Are we willing to eat less meat? Are we willing to invest in public transportation? "If I ride my bike to work every day, the impact on the environment will be negligible," he said. "But if everyone in Rhode Island biked to work, the world most certainly would be a better place." Is there an economy that can prosper with a shrinking population? - and "we have to be willing to tax carbon in some way."

The Women's Equality Treaty (officially known as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or CEDAW) has been languishing in the Senate for over 30 years due to a well-funded and coordinated opposition that feels threatened by international law.

This law has been used by over 180 other countries to address female illiteracy, discrimination, female genital mutilation, sex trafficking and income inequality.

But opponents are portraying it as a threat to the "traditional family" and deliberately distorting the truth about it and several other treaties. They are threatening to run against Senators who support international cooperation, leading many to keep silent on their support for ratification.

Our Senate is better than this. Our citizens deserve better. It's time our Senators went on the record about the U.S. standing up for women's equality and ratifying CEDAW.

Opponents of international cooperation are threatening any Senator who supports working with other countries to solve global problems. Help us fight this "war on international law" and recommit American leadership to engaging and shaping global norms that reflect our shared values.

"Unmet need has been an important indicator for measuring the progress of family planning programs for more than 25 years," said John Bongaarts, vice president and Distinguished Scholar at the Population Council. "This issue features work from some of the leading minds in family planning. It explores trends, identifies issues, and proposes solutions to ensure that sexual and reproductive health programs and policies are structured to meet the changing needs of women and men over the course of their reproductive lives."

All of the articles in "Unmet Need for Family Planning" are available online, free of charge, here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sifp.2014.45.issue-2/issuetoc

Studies by the New York Independent System Operator (NY ISO), Synapse Energy Economics, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) suggest that increased renewable energy generation has the potential to save American ratepayers tens of billions of dollars a year over the current mix of electric power options.

The studies all show that renewable energy cuts costs system-wide by replacing power plants that are expensive to operate, mainly due to fossil fuel expenses.

However, lower wholesale power prices far outweigh the needed infrastructure investment and provide a net benefit of up to $9.4 billion a year in MISO―$241 per year per person―and $6.9 billion a year in PJM―or $113 per year per person.

The lower cost of operating renewable energy facilities and the system-wide cost savings outlined above have already eroded coal's role in new generation in the United States. In 2013, only 10 percent of new U.S. capacity was from coal. Investors and ratepayers are rightly skittish about betting on coal for new facilities.

The trend is clear: The United States is moving towards cleaner power generation, with renewable energy at the forefront.

The Helms Amendment bars the use of U.S. foreign aid for "abortion as a method of family planning." Although the law clearly indicates that funding is allowed under some circumstances, for decades our government has treated the amendment as a blanket ban. In fact, the law has been enforced so strictly that health care providers cannot use U.S. funds even to purchase equipment to treat women suffering the consequences of unsafe abortions. The end result is that women who have been raped and those whose lives are endangered by their pregnancies often find little help in clinics that receive U.S. funding. The Helms Amendment shows little concern for what women struggling with unwanted pregnancies in the developing world face.

In today's political climate we should not expect an outright repeal of the Helms Amendment, although it offers no benefit to foreign policy or global health. However, the Obama administration can clarify misinterpretations of the law without Congress having to change the law. Instead of a new law, he just needs to clarify what the current law actually says. President Obama has the authority to bring our overseas abortion policy in line with domestic abortion funding restrictions and with American public opinion.

For over 45 years the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been a major provider of contraceptive services to the world's poorest people. Helping poor women and families gain control over childbearing choices means fewer unintended, unwanted, and/or risky pregnancies. It also reduces the motive for wanting abortions, which poor people often resort to under unsafe conditions. Planned birth spacing contributes to healthier mothers, babies and families. Having affordable numbers of children improves prosperity for families, communities, and nations. For FY 2014, USAID has allocated $610 million to assist family planning and reproductive health programs, of which $35 million is designated for the UN Population Fund.

This modest funding level is enough to:

? Provide contraceptive services and supplies to 31 million women or couples;

? Avert 7 million unintended pregnancies and 3 million induced abortions;

? Avert 13,000 maternal deaths, meaning that 60,000 fewer children will lose their mothers.

These gains are seriously jeopardized when program funding gets targeted for budget cuts . For example, each $10 million decrease in USAID international family planning and reproductive health assistance:

? Reduces the number receiving contraceptive services and supplies by 520,000;

? Results in 110,000 more unintended pregnancies, including 50,000 more unplanned births;

? Results in 50,000 more mostly unsafe abortions and 200 maternal deaths affecting 900 children.

Although anything close to perpetual growth is unsustainable, our inability to discuss this problem logically could prove our undoing. A calculation by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham shows that after 3000 years of continuous 4.5% growth a single cubic meter would expand to consume 2.5 billion billion solar systems. Considering this example, he concludes that "salvation lies in collapse." To succeed for several generations in meeting our economic expansion goals could lead to our destruction. That is the bind we find ourselves in. Ignore, if you must, climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuous growth impossible.

A few days after scientists predicted the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet, the Ecuadorean government decided to allow oil drilling in Yasuni national park. Ecuador had offered to leave the oil in the ground if other governments would pay them half of its profit potential. Be this blackmail or fair trade, poor Ecuador has rich oil deposits, so why leave them untouched without compensation when everyone else is taking the money? Ecuador gave the contract to Petroamazonas, a company known for habitat destruction and spills. Petroamazonas may now enter one of the most biodiverse habitats on the planet, where a hectare of rainforest supports more species than exist in all of North America.

In a similar manner, the UK firm Soco hopes to drill in Virunga (Congo), Africa's oldest national park. Virunga is home to endangered mountain gorillas, the okapi, chimpanzees, and forest elephants. Wealthy districts are not exempt. In Britain, possibly 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil may exist in the south-east, so the government is changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent while paying off some local people. These new reserves will not for long satisfy our growing needs. Our plans for compound growth have no end in sight, so we will continue scouring of the planet until we have consumed all the extractable oil available. As the global economy expands, all resources will be extracted and dispersed, and some of the world's most biodiverse regions may resemble slag heaps.

While man has occupied the earth for thousands of years, every prior economic expansion collapsed when the growth rate hit a limit. Coal pushed back the barriers and enabled what we now call sustained growth for more than two hundred years. We may credit capitalism for the cumulative wealth of the modern age, but without carbon-fuelled expansion (coal, oil and gas), our current GDP would not be possible. Our economic systems are "mere subplots." Now, with our accessible reserves growing scarce, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our current rates of consumption.

The super-rich now set the pace for global consumption, with giant yachts, personal jets, multiple large homes, they squander scarce resources on things they don't even need. Sensing that this is unsustainable, some now fantasize about colonizing space where an untapped store of new resources awaits us. For those who expect that technological breakthroughs will allow endless growth, the numbers show a different picture. Iron ore production has risen 180% in 10 years. The trade body Forest Industries tells us that, despite digital reading material, "global paper consumption is at a record high level and it will continue to grow." If, we can't cut paper consumption, what hope exists for other commodities?

Efficiency solves nothing so long as growth continues. Philosopher Michael Rowan explains that if we sustain the predicted global growth rate for 2014 (3.1%), even if we miraculously reduced the consumption of raw materials by 90%, we delay collapse by just 75 years. The more we rely on growth, the greater the destruction of the Earth's living systems. But economists rarely mention this. Warnings based on the outcomes of basic arithmetic are conveniently discarded, while the impossible proposition that founds our economy they consider so normal and unremarkable that it isn't worth mentioning. They would rather discuss recipes, renovations and resorts. We can measure the depth of this problem by our inability to even discuss it.

The Helms Amendment, which passed in 1973 - more than 40 years ago, prevents U.S. foreign assistance funds from being used to pay for abortion as "a method of family planning" or "to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions." in 1994 Congress passed legislation to clarify that women in countries receiving aid could be counseled on all pregnancy options, including abortion. However, the Helms Amendment still inhibits funding to family planning agencies.

According to Al Jazeera, in Ethiopia, "a woman living in an area where health facilities receive USAID support will be denied the abortion care that is legal in her own country, whereas a woman living in a different district funded by another donor will have access to safe care." More than 100 women die each day from complications of unsafe abortions. These deaths often occur in poor countries that receive aid from the U.S. for other medical treatments.

U.S. anti-abortion rules endanger women around the world. WHO studies show that where women can access safe abortions, fewer women have unsafe abortions, and a study in Nepal showed that legalizing abortion cut the maternal mortality rate in half.

Six weeks after posting its general initial budget, the Obama Administration released the details of its FY-2015 request for international family planning (FP) and reproductive health (RH) programs. Its call for $644.3 million is $34.3 million -- nearly 6% -- higher than the current appropriated level enacted in January. It allocates $538 million to the Global Health Programs account, $71 million to Economic Support Funds, and $35.3 million as the U.S. contribution to the UN's Population Fund. At a time of increasing budgetary pressures, these requested increases suggest strong administration support for FP/RH programs.

Nevertheless, this proposal remains lower than the $669.5 million the Senate Appropriations Committee approved in FY 2014―a level of funding endorsed by 124 House members and 24 Senators in letters to their respective Appropriations Committee colleagues earlier this month. It also falls far short of the $1 billion that is the U.S. fair share of total global expenditures required to address the unmet need of 222 million women in the developing world who want FP services where they are not yet available.

Of course, now that Congress has received the budget request, it still must decide over the next several months whether to grant the requested amounts or continue underfunding these urgent projects at current levels.

Women's rights activist Sandra Fluke took second place behind fellow Democrat Ben Allen in her primary race for the state Senate seat currently held by of Ted Lieu in Southern California. California's primary rules allow the top two vote-getters to move on to the Nov. 4 general election, even though both, in this case, are Democrats.

Fluke gained national fame in 2012 as a Georgetown University law student when Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut" and a "prostitute" on his radio show for her support of President Obama's health care law (Limbaugh later apologized). Republicans had blocked Fluke from testifying at a congressional hearing in support of contraceptive coverage by insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act. Fluke went on to become a featured speaker at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte and campaigned for Obama.

During the 1980s, Iran's clerics and political leaders joined forces to reduce birthrates. Billboards displayed smiling small families with the motto 'fewer kids, better life.' This resulted in the world's fastest decline in birthrates for any voluntary family planning program. Then, abruptly, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei changed course and called for larger families, a request that people have mostly ignored. Now the Ayatollah has mandated more forceful tactics that could restrict access to contraception and further unravel some of the few rights that women have recently gained.

In his 14-point decree, Khamenei claimed that increasing Iran's 76 million-strong population would strengthen national identity and counter undesirable aspects of western lifestyles. On his website, he said,"Given the importance of population size in sovereign might and economic progress" Iran needs "firm, quick and efficient steps" to reverse the recent trend. All three branches of government are required to obey this order, which calls for nearly doubling the population to 120 million.

The falling fertility rate is one of several issues that divides Iran's conservatives and reformists. Most Iranians dislike the policy shift. Reformist Iranians fear the fertility campaign could undermine the position of women in a country where, according to the Statistical Centre of Iran, 60% of university students, but only 12.4% of the workforce, is female. And, with his energies fully committed to removing the economic sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program, reform-minded President Hassan Rouhani remains mum on birth control.

Farzaneh Roudi of the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based think tank, said that Tehran could stimulate its economy by hiring more women, "many of whom do not work in the formal economy."

She added that the political push for a baby boom is unlikely to succeed. "It's hard for me to imagine that people will have more children because Khamenei wants them to."

Consider today's sociopolitical landscape and it's likely you'll note the environment and the economy don't exactly go hand in hand.

In reality, the two are inextricable and, increasingly, need to be treated as such, according to Jeff Rubin, the award-winning economist who, along with David Suzuki, wraps up a cross-Canada tour addressing the juncture of the two issues on October 18, 2012 in Alumni Hall.

Rubin, former chief economist and chief strategist for CIBC World Markets, is the author of The End of Growth, a national bestseller. He was among the first economists to predict rising oil prices more than a decade ago and is one of the most sought-after energy experts.

Suzuki, an environmental activist, academic and broadcaster, is perhaps best known for The Nature of Things on CBC television. He has written more than 40 books and is known as a leader in sustainable ecology.

The End of Growth Eco Tour came out of a meeting earlier this year in which the two realized their goals of addressing climate change and sustainability were the same, despite an approach from different disciplines.

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader William H. Frist, M.D. discusses the importance of expanding access to voluntary family planning to improve maternal and child health globally. Studies show that family planning could reduce maternal deaths by as much as 30 percent and child deaths by 25 percent.

Ask the California legislature to immediately pass SB 1135, a proposed law that would prohibit sterilization of prisoners for birth control or without their consent.

The State of California cares for its prisoners so badly that in 2005, a judge mandated federal oversight of their prison healthcare system after it was documented that one person dies in California prisons every day from extreme medical malpractice or neglect. But as horrific as these crimes of neglect are, it shocks the conscience anew to hear that the medical care that was provided to prisoners included forced sterilization as recently as 2010.

Eugenics is a word that sounds to too many of us like it belongs only in the history books, but the eugenics programs started in California in the 1920s were found still alive and kicking in its prisons until very recently. While mainstream, and mostly white, women's rights advocates celebrated and defended legal abortion, too little attention has been paid to genocidal medical violence practiced against members of society deemed 'unfit' parents due to poverty, mental health, or non-white ethnicity.

As Loretta Ross, an African American victim of forced sterilization at the age of 23, wrote recently, "After my sterilization, I felt empty, lost, and butchered. I was in shock and felt powerless." There is no justification for an atrocity like this and the State of California must immediately act to ensure that state power is never again abused to deprive people of their right to parent and make their own decisions about their family size.

Tell Governor Brown to ask the California legislature to act immediately to pass SB 1135 and safeguard against forced sterilization of vulnerable populations.

Around the world, women and girls are targeted for rape and sexual violence as a tactic of war, to tear apart and terrorize families and communities. But women and girls are taking a stand for what they need to recover and survive. We can take a stand. And the United States must take the lead. Stand with CHANGE, Global Fund for Women, and tens of thousands of women and girls. Send President Obama a strong message: act now for women and girls raped in conflict and crisis. Join us at GenderHealth.org http://www.genderhealth.org/

In the United States there 4 million live births each year, and half are estimated to be unplanned or unintended. Of the majority of unplanned births the largest majority come from women in their 20s.

With the questionable efficacy of condoms and the widespread misuse of birth control, an alternative has now been recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: Intrauterine devices (IUD). With less than one pregnancy per 100 women in a year, its the most effective birth control method available on the market, yet only 10% of women using birth control are using this form of birth control.

It has been estimated that of the 2 million births in America in 2011 came unexpectedly. According to Dr. Tina Raine-Bennett of the Women's Health Research Institute at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, "20-24-year-olds have highest number of unintended pregnancies across all demographic groups while over one-third of unintended pregnancies end in abortion."

Despite current birth control methods, in 2012 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists got behind the IUD recommending it as the preferred birth control option for all women, even those who haven't yet given birth. Although there are risks, that can be said for any drug or implant. Smaller issues that result from IUDs mirror those of other contraceptives, such as menstrual cramps, spotting, or infection. But more dangerous issues can, in rare cases, arise. One in about 1000 users may experience perforation (the IUD puncturing the uterus wall), while others may experience expulsion (the IUD falling out completely).

Overall there is hope for the device, and studies show women are generally more satisfied with IUDs compared to the pill.

For an ideal state to be achieved the total fertility rate used by demographers for the number of children a woman is likely to have needs to be above two: around 2.1 in wealthier countries and higher in poorer countries, due to the fact children are more likely to die before adulthood. However recently, the global fertility rate is beginning to decline. Even in Africa, the number of children per woman in 2010-15 is forecast to fall to 4.7, compared with 5.7 in 1990-95 Overall the average fertility around the world is estimated to be 2.5.

In a growing number of countries the fertility rate has fallen below replacement levels, and this is beginning to worry governments. Fewer babies mean fewer workers later on, and as people are beginning to live longer, they will have to support a growing number of pensioners.

In a growing number of countries the fertility rate has now fallen below replacement level. South Korea, at 1.3, has the lowest rate of any big country. Numbers are also slipping below replacement level in less wealthy South-East Asia. Quite soon half the world's people will live in countries where the population is no longer reproducing itself.

This worries governments, because fewer babies mean fewer workers later on, and as people are living longer, they will have to support a growing number of pensioners.

But is a fertility rate at replacement level the right target? In a recent study Erich Striessnig and Wolfgang Lutz, of the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, argue that in predicting dependency ratios (the number of children and pensioners compared with people of working age), education should also be taken into account. And that makes optimal rates much lower than previously thought.

Not everyone of working age contributes equally to supporting the dependent population. Better-educated people are more productive and healthier, retire later and live longer. Education levels in most places have been rising and are likely to continue to do so.

Overall the worries about falling populations can be better addressed through education rather than current alternatives such as baby bonuses or tax breaks. But population policies are not all about rational economics: the world pays more attention to populous countries with sizeable armies than small ones without them. And countries that feel under threat tend to look for safety in numbers. It is no accident that, almost alone among developed countries, Israel has a fertility rate well above replacement level, at 2.9

Nearly a half-century after the Supreme Court legalized birth control, conservatives are still fighting to restrict access to contraception.

Over 49 years ago the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut legalized the use of birth control devices for married couples, and within six years, singles gained the same right. Now that people have been using pills, IUDs, patches and injections legally for almost half a century, we might assume the right of people to buy these products. But in several U.S. places, that assumption is wrong. A number of high-profile Americans still think that you and I should have no right to prevent pregnancy by artificial means. What's more, some who think that way have influence over some of our laws and lives. For example, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia openly challenges Griswold. To him the decision implies that married couples have a right to privacy in the bedroom. Our constitution grants "no generalized right to privacy," Scalia told Fox News when asked about Griswold in a 2012 interview.

Getting birth control in a clinical setting has become more challenging due to a growing crusade to defund and close Planned Parenthood and other providers. Last April an entire Oklahoma town nearly lost all legal access to hormonal contraception (birth control) after the city medical center required physicians to stop offering it. Although that decision was overturned; based on personal religious or moral values, anyone having power in a hospital or clinic may use a "conscience clause" to challenge your access to birth control. These new bills say that neither doctors nor clinic managers have any obligation to provide birth control or help you find it.

Salinas (CA) County Commissioners rejected grant money for an IUD program, calling the use of IUDs "murder." Although IUDs have nothing to do with abortion, during the funding debate, Commissioner John Price said that using IUDs would be the same in God's eyes as aborting the kids. "The commission stated it may reconsider, but has yet to accept the grant - although preventing unwanted accidental pregnancies saves money by reducing abortion requests and birth-related health care costs and services.

Two influential groups, the American Life League (ALL) and Personhood USA (P-USA), are dedicated to fighting legal contraception. Calling sex without a desire to create life the "contraceptive mentality," ALL says that it threatens marriage, parenting, proper gender dynamics and our entire civilization's moral fiber. To portray it as a medical issue, they sponsored "The Pill Kills," a decade-old anti-Griswold campaign online and in front of reproductive health clinics across the country. ALL claims hormonal contraception instigates such physical complications as strokes, breast cancer, heart attacks and death, as if being pregnant and giving birth every year or two has no harmful effects.

P-USA sponsors changes to our laws. When a "personhood" amendment goes on a state ballot, its backers claim granting legal rights at the moment of fertilization has no impact on hormonal birth control. However, some Mississippi P-USA advocates admit to reporters that it will. They told Irin Carmon in 2011 that passing the amendment would ban hormonal contraption and IUDs. Although some P-USA supporters have said this goes too far, the movement none-the-less backs a referendum that will extend its war on contraception to North Dakota.

200 years ago there were around 1 billion people on Earth. 150 years later, in 1965, there were just under 3.5 billion. In the past fifty years that number has doubled to over 7 billion. This was only possible through exploiting the Earth's fossil energy, to temporarily escape the constraints that kept human population levels in check.

Now that one-time reserve of cheap and easy fossil fuels is running low and we're facing other environmental limits. And yet, we're on course to add another 2 billion humans in the next 25 years! Family planning is essential for reducing future demand on the planet's already strained resources. But it's also a powerful way to increase the quality of life and choices available for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Expanding access to information and contraceptives―and even more so, educating and supporting people to challenge regressive cultural norms that oppress women and limit opportunity―is one of the most important global investments we can make. It will improve lives today, and tomorrow.

Whether you've received Endangered Species Condoms, signed up for a chance to get them in the future, or just want to know more about how you can engage people in the conversation about human population growth and the wildlife extinction crisis, we've put together downloadable resources and helpful links to help you make the most of your outreach experience (follow the link in the headline).

Repeal the MFG rule. Stop punishing families.

California has a long history of supporting a woman's personal decisions regarding her reproductive choices. We trust women to make decisions about what's best for their families. But there is a state policy - the Maximum Family Grant rule (MFG) - that actually limits women's ability to make reproductive decisions.Tell California's lawmakers and Gov. Brown today: it's time to repeal the MFG rule.

The MFG rule is part of CalWORKs, California's program to help families in poverty. But this rule punishes poor women for their reproductive decisions by withholding aid for a newborn child. It also punishes poor children by denying them financial support and drives families deeper into poverty.

The MFG rule limits reproductive freedom by telling women how many children they should have. The government shouldn't be intruding in families' private lives like this.

For the past 20 years, this failed state policy has made life harder for families. It's time to stop punishing children and start supporting families who are trying hard to make ends meet. It is time to tell the government out of women's decisions about when to have children. It's time to repeal the MFG rule. Take action today.

A strong coalition led by State Senator Holly Mitchell has come together to repeal the MFG rule through a bill, SB 899, and the state budget

Ethiopia continues to face high levels of food insecurity. It is estimated that 6.2 million people required emergency food assistance from July 2009 until the end of the year, an increase of 1.3 million people over the January 2009 figure.

Additionally, in Ethiopia there are currently more than 10 million people who have been affected by drought. The deteriorating situation is compounded by high food prices, the cost of cereals has more than doubled in many markets since the beginning of the year, hampering the ability of many people to meet their most basic food needs and impoverishing them further (WFP, 2009).

While droughts and other disasters such as floods are significant triggers, land degradation, limited household assets, low levels of farm technology, lack of employment opportunities and population pressure all contribute. As a consequence, but also exacerbating the situation, levels of education are low and disease prevalence is high.

A survey of food security in the Tigrai area of Ethiopia showed that 31.2% had food security and 68.8% had no food security. This was put into an econometric model and analyzed. This analysis showed that that cultivated land, holding land size, total livestock holding, and total annual income were related to food security.

The study area is characterized by high population pressures, lack of alternative employment opportunities, serious land degradation, heavy dependence on agriculture based livelihood strategies, and inappropriate utilization of land based resources which cumulatively lead to diminution of agricultural land and thereby its production and productivity. In response to these, farmers in the area are forced to seek out alternative off-farm or non-farm income sources within and/or outside their villages.

A number of studies that made use of various methodologies were conducted to identify determinants of food security in different parts of Ethiopia. According to these studies, ownership of livestock, farmland size, family labor, farm implements, employment opportunities, market access, levels of technology application, and levels of education, health, weather conditions, crop diseases, rainfall, oxen, and family size are identified as major determinants of food security

Increasing production and improving productivity is possible through integrated watershed management, protection and restoration of ecosystems in agricultural landscapes, and strengthening land tenure security. The watershed development approach is the cornerstone of the sustainable land management and using chemical and biological technology on such limited land resources could improve food security status in the study area.

In a study published in the latest issue of Paleoceanography, the scientists estimate that ocean acidity increased by about 100% in a few thousand years or more, and stayed that way for the next 70,000 years. In this radically changed environment, some creatures died out while others adapted and evolved. The study is the first to use the chemical composition of fossils to reconstruct surface ocean acidity at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of intense warming on land and throughout the oceans due to high CO2.

The oceans have absorbed about a third of the carbon humans have pumped into the air since industrialization, helping to keep earth's thermostat lower than it would be otherwise. But that uptake of carbon has come at a price. Chemical reactions caused by that excess CO2 have made seawater grow more acidic, depleting it of the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and calcifying plankton need to build their shells and skeletons.

For more, follow the link at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602170341.htm

The International Energy Agency says $48 trillion in investments is required through 2035 to meet the world's growing energy needs. IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in a statement the reliability and sustainability of future energy supplies depends on a high level of investment. "But this won't materialize unless there are credible policy frameworks in place as well as stable access to long-term sources of finance," she said. "Neither of these conditions should be taken for granted."

The oil industry is actually cutting back on upstream investment. Global oil prices ($90-100 per barrel) -- which are at historically high levels -- are nevertheless too low to justify tackling ever-more challenging geology.

At least $120 per barrel is needed to fund exploration in the Arctic and in some ultra-deepwater plays. With ultra-low interest rates, thanks to the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing, finding investment capital should be about as easy as it is ever going to get.

The U.S. shale oil production was forecast by the IEA in 2012 to overtake Saudia Arabia oil production by 2020 and become a net oil exporter by 2030, but a new IEA report says US tight oil production will start to decline around 2020. We think the IEA is probably still erring on the side of optimism: our own reading of the data suggests the decline will start sooner and will probably be steep.

OPEC is doing poorly these days. Iraq, Syria, and Libya are in turmoil. Iran is languishing under US trade sanctions. Saudis have seen declines in old oilfields and they've run out of new fields to develop.

The IEA expects world petroleum prices to gradually increase in world petroleum prices to $128 per barrel by 2035. This means an upstream investment over the forecast period by $2 trillion above the IEA's previous investment forecast.

15% of the needed $48 trillion is expected to go to renewable energy. The rest is just for patching up our current oil-coal-gas energy system so that it doesn't run into the ditch for lack of fuel. But if climate change were to be seriously addressed, $7.2 trillion spread out over twenty years simply doesn't cut it. Investments will have to ramp up to $1.5 to $2.5 trillion per year.

In effect, the IEA is telling us that we don't have what it takes to sustain our current energy regime, and we're not likely to invest enough to switch to a different one.

The 10 Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that have the highest incidence of individuals reporting difficulty in buying food in the past 12 months are generally the OECD's poorest members. Turkey, for instance, has the second lowest GDP in the OECD per capita in 2012 dollars, and, in 2013, had the highest percentage of individuals, with or without children, struggling to buy food.

Individuals with young children were particularly vulnerable, with more than one in five such individuals struggling to buy food.

Asia and the former Soviet Union saw declines or no changes in the percentages of people reporting difficulty buying food between 2007 and 2013, while in the OECD -- which consists of countries mostly concentrated in Western Europe and North America, the percentages rose. However, OECD countries generally report the lowest percentages of individuals struggling to buy food in the past 12 month worldwide. The Middle East and North Africa, plagued by recent unrest, saw the highest increase in the percentage of people with children struggling to buy food.

Overall growth in gross domestic product (GDP) for the OECD declined by nearly 4% in 2009 and fell below 2% for the past two years. For the first quarter of this year, growth disappointed again, registering at 0.4% for all OECD nations. Some OECD member countries such as Greece and Portugal have seen consecutive years of negative growth.

In the U.S. around a fifth of individuals report having difficulty buying food in the past 12 months. The U.S. is the world's largest economy and has a per-capita GDP of nearly $52,000, well above the OECD average of just over $36,000. The U.S. performs worse than many other OECD countries in terms of its residents being able to afford food.

Hungary and Turkey saw the largest increase in OECD in food buying difficulties

As the global wild fish catch peaked in the 1990s, aquaculture has grown rapidly to meet world fish demand, more than doubling production between 2000 and 2012. New research shows that aquaculture production will need to more than double again between now and 2050 to meet the demands of a growing population.

Can aquaculture grow sustainably? WRI partnered with WorldFish, the World Bank, INRA, and Kasetsart University to explore this question.

Farmed fish convert feed to edible food as efficiently as poultry, on average, making them an attractive option for expanding the global animal protein supply. Improvements in breeding technology, disease control, feeds and nutrition, and low-impact production systems can complement traditional knowledge to improve efficiency.

However, aquaculture isn't without its environmental impacts. As aquaculture grew in the 1990s, several concerns emerged such as the clearing of mangroves to make way for shrimp farms in Asia and Latin America, increased use of fishmeal and fish oil made from wild marine fish, and the generation of water pollution and shrimp and fish diseases. The aquaculture industry has greatly improved performance over the past 20 years, producing more farmed fish per unit of land and water, lowering the share of fishmeal and fish oil in many aquaculture feeds, and largely stopping mangrove conversion.

Having many producers in the same area can lead to cumulative environmental impacts -- such as water pollution or fish diseases -- even if everyone is following the law. Spatial planning and zoning can ensure that aquaculture operations stay within the surrounding ecosystem's carrying capacity and can also lessen conflicts over resource use.

Eat fish that are low on the food chain. tilapia, catfish, carp, and bivalve mollusks.

Doubling aquaculture production without further increasing the industry's efficiency could lead to a doubling of environmental impacts. And unless the aquaculture industry is able to boost productivity, the limited availability of land, water, and feed may constrain its growth.

Marine fish provide 15% of all animal protein consumed by humans. Under this intense pressure global fisheries are collapsing.

A 2009 assessment found that 80% of fish stocks are either fully exploited, overexploited, or have collapsed. 90% of the world's large predatory fish are in decline. Of the 21 marine species known to have been driven extinct in the past 300 years, 16 disappeared since 1972 .

A catch reduction of 20 - 50% is needed to make global fisheries sustainable, but the demand for fish is expected to increase by 35 million tons by 2030 due to increased consumption and a "rapidly increasing human population."

In addition to overfishing impacts from commercial fishing, coral reefs -- anchors of biodiversity that support thousands of fish species and as many as a million species overall -- are often damaged or destroyed by trawlers and dredging.

The global fish crisis has become so severe, scientists and wildlife managers are breaking the human population taboo, calling not only for reduced consumption and better regulation, but for alleviation of poverty and "stabilization of the world's human population" .

Absent adequate crude oil and oil-based fertilizers, this population boom cannot continue, and billions of additional humans will require vastly greater quantities of resources, many of which are non-renewable and therefore unsustainable.

The global population skyrocketed with the discovery of crude oil and then quadrupled in the 20th Century. This was made possible by vaccinations, improvements in medicine and sanitation, and increased food production. Although the UN projects a steadily declining population growth in the future, the global population is still expected to reach somewhere between 8.3 and 10.9 billion by 2050.

The world will require 50% more energy, food and water by 2030 says the UK government's chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, and the world will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed and expected 3.8 billion additional people. according to a 2009 FAO report.

Unless the current situation improves, stocks of all species currently fished for food are predicted to collapse by 2048, according to WWF. . Our water aquifers are emptying at an alarming rate. For example, the Ogallala Aquifier, which covers 30% of the United States' irrigation needs, could be mostly depleted by 2060 if current trends continue.

18 countries representing half the world's people are now overpumping their underground water tables to the point where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year, analyst Lester Brown warns us.

Yet in the U.S. nearly half of all the water used is for raising animals for food.

It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat, compared to 25 gallons for one pound of wheat.

Due to erosion, arable land is being lost at the alarming rate of over 38,610 square miles (24.7 million acres) per year.

The report lists five risk factors for societal collapse: population, climate, water, agriculture and energy. The convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' during the lifetimes of many of us presently living.

The world must immediately focus its efforts on conservation and efficiency, with a particular emphasis on renewability. And, of course, there's also family planning.

The time is now. This won't wait.

China is expected to buy a staggering 22 million tons in the 2013-14 trade year, according to the latest USDA projections. Only eight years ago China had a grain surplus and was exporting 10 million tons.

With population growth slowing, the rise in grain use in China largely the result of the country's huge population moving up the food chain and consuming more grain-based meat, milk, and eggs.

In 2013, the world consumed an estimated 107 million tons of pork―half of which was eaten in China. China's 1.4 billion people now consume six times as much pork as the United States does.

China's grain yield is already among the highest in the world, so the potential for China to increase production within its own borders is limited. In addition, aquifers in China are being depleted - by over 10 feet per year in some areas. Meanwhile, water supplies are being diverted to nonfarm uses and cropland is being lost to urban and industrial construction.

About 2 billion people in other countries are also moving up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock products.

The world is transitioning from an era of abundance to one dominated by scarcity. China's turn to the outside world for massive quantities of grain is forcing us to recognize that we are in trouble on the food front.

Can we reverse the trends that are tightening food supplies, or is the world moving toward a future of rising food prices and political unrest?

China is going to great lengths to satisfy its growing hunger for energy to fuel its expanding car fleet and electrify its swelling cities.

Recently the Chinese government reached a 30-year natural gas deal with Russia, even as China was locked in a tense standoff with Vietnam over a Chinese oil rig drilling in the contested South China Sea.

China now burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined, having surpassed the United States' emissions a decade ago.

Most shale gas in China lies significantly deeper underground than in the United States and is in poorly understood, geologically complex formations. The domestic oil industry is already struggling with safety and environmental concerns, and faces a challenge in drilling extremely deep wells in western Chinese terrain with pockets of compressed natural gas and toxic gases.

in Iraq, where China is the biggest oil customer and Chinese oil companies are major investors in some of the biggest oil fields, the Chinese have been scrupulous about staying out of Iraq's strained sectarian affairs.

In Latin America China is largely forging ties with oil-financed governments that promote a socialist ideology and seek to distance themselves from the United States, namely Ecuador and Venezuela.

China still has an enduring interest in Africa, including oil-rich Angola and Nigeria.

Forest loss in the tropics is increasing by about two thousand square kilometers each year. Tropical forests are those most valuable to the poor, store the most carbon, and are home to more biodiversity than almost any other type of forest on Earth.

The new data shows that while Brazil still suffers very high rates of forest clearing, the country has roughly halved its annual rates of forest loss. The strategies Brazil used to reduce its deforestation can inform how policymakers respond to the troubling rates of forest decline in other countries:

Brazil has invested in a top-class system for monitoring what is happening to its forests, and shares this information in near-real time with enforcement agencies and the public. Better, consistent, and transparent data can lead to improved forest management.

The country has made serious efforts to align financial incentives with better forest stewardship, such as making municipalities' access to agricultural credit dependent upon reducing local rates of forest loss.

Brazil has systematically recognized customary land rights and indigenous people's claims to forest land (though some significant conflicts and outstanding claims continue). More than 20% of the Amazon region is now managed by indigenous peoples. Some conflicts and claims remain, but progress has been remarkable. Evidence is growing showing that rates of forest loss decline when local communities and traditional peoples are given the power to manage natural resources.

Indonesia in particular might learn from Brazil's experience. The new research shows that rates of forest loss in Indonesia have steadily increased. Even though Indonesia is only one-quarter the size of Brazil, the two countries are now losing almost the same amount of forest each year. Indonesia, like most countries, lacks readily available, up-to-date information about the state of its forests. Plus, it has not aligned financial incentives with efforts to reduce forest loss. Recent progress has been made with Indonesia's forest moratorium, which prevents new licenses to clear primary forest, but it suffers enforcement challenges.

Malaysia has witnessed annual forest loss of 1.6 percent between 2000-2012, compared with Indonesia's 1.0 percent. While the absolute area lost in Indonesia is far higher, more attention should be given to the dynamics in Malaysia, which is experiencing rapid deforestation due to expansion of its forestry and palm oil industries.

A common theme in many of these regions is growing global demand for commodities such as soy, beef, palm oil, pulpwood, and biofuels. More granular analysis is needed to identify and quantify the precise drivers of forest loss.

Hospitals for the poor in Kenya have no beds to spare. Yet up to 40% of those beds result from desperate women having failed abortions under unsafe conditions. Some drink disinfectants or herbal concoctions or get injured in backstreet clinics where devices such as bicycle spokes, knitting needles, sticks and pens are used in place of surgical instruments.

Three years ago a new constitution made it legal to end a pregnancy when a woman's life or health is at risk. However, what most often places a woman's life at risk is a resort to unsafe procedures.

Money talks in Kenya's two-tier system. Rich and educated women routinely procure safe abortions in private hospitals, citing medical guidelines that allow termination in the interests a of woman's mental or physical health. But public hospitals turn women away because the penal code says that women who abort illegally can be jailed for seven years. Consequently, the government estimates that 800 unsafe abortions occur every day, leading to the deaths of thousands of women each year.

Monica Ogutu, of the Kisumu Medical and Education Trust, a charity that provides medical services and education in western Kenya, claimed in a recent paper that hospitals are inundated by abortion-related problems. Many of the women admitted fall between 17 and 25. She says the government should improve access to family planning and adopt policies that ensure women can procure safe abortions. "Men are a huge let-down." she says. Some actually tell their women statements such as: "Contraceptives are for sex workers. I do not want to see those tablets in my house" -- notwithstanding that the women don't want to conceive.

Kenya Medical Association secretary Lukoye Atwoli reported that pregnancy resulting from rape or incest was one of the main reasons Kenyan women became suicidal and depressed. High levels of sexual violence, poverty and limited access to family planning result in 43% of Kenyan pregnancies being unwanted.

A proposal to address how changing ocean chemistry can damage Maine's coast, shellfish industry and jobs won unanimous support from the Marine Resources Committee on Monday.

LD 1602, a measure sponsored by Rep. Mick Devin, D-Newcastle, would establish a commission to look at the effects of ocean acidification and its potential effects on commercial shellfish harvested along the Maine coast.

"I am happy to see recognition of ocean acidification as an issue that needs further study and potential action," said Rep. Walter Kumiega, D-Deer Isle, House chairman of the committee. "The committee's vote today will hopefully start a process that will protect Maine's valuable coastal resources from ocean acidification."

Larry Mayer, a professor of chemical oceanography at the University of Maine, previously said that the effects of ocean acidification not only hurt shellfish, but is harmful to other marine life.

"This goes all the way to the plankton level," Mayer said. "Ocean acidification is fiddling with one of the important turning knobs that affect marine ecosystems."

Bt corn was first planted by U.S. farmers in 1996 causing populations of rootworms and corn borersto plummet across the midwest. Yields rose and farmers reduced their use of conventional insecticides that cause more ecological damage than the Bt toxin.

In 2002 a scientific advisory panel convened by the EPA suggested that 50% of each corn farmer's fields be devoted to these non-Bt refuges. However these suggestion were not followed by seed companies and many farmers, and eventually the EPA itself.

As rootworms become more resistantfarmers will turn to insecticides, thus increasing their costs and losing the ecological benefits originally gained by using Bt corn.

The next pest-fighting trait "will fall under the same pressure," said Shields, "and the insect will win. Always bet on the insect if there is not a smart deployment of the trait."

The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday.

The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis.

"This is really happening," said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA's programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. "There's nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow."

It will take several centuries for the "collapse" to play out, but the process will likely be complete a thousand years from now. Sea level will eventually rise about 4 meters (~13 feet) from this event alone.

What a species we are! It is totally absurd to try, over and over again, to convince humans that what is really happening is really happening, and then fail to convince them almost every time.

And to be absolutely clear on this point, I am not talking about active climate "deniers" or the vast majority of humans whose ignorance is bliss. I am also talking about all those apparently well-meaning and intelligent people who think we can run industrial civilization on windmills and solar panels. I am including all the "good" people, the "green" people like Connie Hedegaard who tell us that Growth Is Good.

Global emissions of methane appear to be rising and scientists believe there's much more to come in the form of releases from many of the world's wetlands. Methane is emitted from agriculture and fossil fuel use, as well as natural sources such as microbes in saturated wetland soils. It is a powerful greenhouse gas, and in the short term it does much more damage than the far more abundant carbon dioxide.

The paper is based on an analysis of global methane emissions examining almost 20,000 field data measurements collected from 70 sites across Arctic, temperate and tropical regions.

The report suggested that much more will escape into the atmosphere as northern wetlands continue to thaw and tropical ones to warm. Under warmer and wetter conditions, much more methane is likely to be emitted. If wetland soils dry out from evaporation or human drainage, though, emissions will fall.

The team showed that small temperature changes can release much more methane from wetland soils to the atmosphere than scientists had believed. Whether climate change will increase methane emissions will depend on soil moisture.

A new scientific report on global warming released this week, the National Climate Assessment, named Miami as one of the cities most vulnerable to severe damage as a result of rising sea levels. Alton Road, a commercial thoroughfare in the heart of stylish South Beach, is getting early ripples of sea level rise caused by global warming. At the same time Florida's politicians are at odds over what to do about it and whether the problem is even real.

Sea levels have risen eight inches since 1870 and an additional rise of 1-4 feet is forecast by the end of the century. The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact expects waters around southeast Florida may surge up to two feet by 2060. The Florida Department of Transportation thinks that rising sea levels will increasingly flood and damage smaller local roads in the Miami area over the next 35 years.

Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, said "You have to lessen the amount of CO2. It's politically treacherous and costly. But at the end of the day, something like that is going to have to get passed. Otherwise the planet is going to continue to heat up."

But three prominent Florida Republicans ― Senator Marco Rubio, former Gov. Jeb Bush and the current governor, Rick Scott -- declined repeated requests to be interviewed on the subject.

Scientists have recently discovered in ocean waters off California, Oregon and Washington the first evidence that increasing acidity in the ocean is dissolving the shells of a key species of tiny sea snail at the bottom of the food chain known as a pteropod -- an important food source for salmon, herring, mackerel and other fish in the Pacific Ocean.

Humans and a wide variety of other sea creatures, from whales to dolphins to sea lions, eat these fish who eat the pteropods.

The acid that is killing the pteropods is corrosive carbonic acid, which comes from the one-third of carbon dioxide emitted by humans that is dissolved in the oceans.

Over the past 200 years, the ocean's acidity has risen by roughly 30%. At the present rate, it is expected to rise by 70% by 2050 from preindustrial levels.

"The pteropods are like the canary in the coal mine. If this is affecting them, it is affecting everything in the ocean at some level," said one of the nation's top marine biologists, Steve Palumbi, director of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove.

Unless we lessen our emissions, "by 2100 the oceans will be so harmed it's hard to imagine them coming back from that in anything less than thousands of years," Palumbi said.

"We are in a century of choice," he said. "We can choose the way we want it to go."

Yemen is one of the most water-starved countries in the world. Its rapid population growth rate of more than 3% a year means shortages will continue and intensify -- driving further conflicts across the country. Yemen's capital, Sanaa risks becoming the world's first capital to run out of water.

Some 14.7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, hundreds of thousands of them driven from their homes by successive waves of violence over the past decade. Yemen's malnutrition levels are the second-highest on the planet: more than 4.5 million people are severely food insecure, and around half of Yemen's children under five are stunted.

Yemen has undergone a significant political transition and recently concluded a national dialogue process that will pave the way for a new constitution, general elections and a federal system of government. However, stability in Yemen is not possible if more than half of the population do not know where their next meal is coming from, or cannot access safe water and sanitation.

Brazil has the world's biggest reserves of fresh water, but most of it sits in the sparsely populated Amazon. Brazilians in the drier, more populous south used to hose down pavements with gallons of potable water, but now use brooms to clean the pavement instead. Citizens are urged to take shorter showers and re-use coffee mugs.

S?o Paulo state, home to one-fifth of Brazil's population and one-third of its economic activity, is suffering the worst drought since records began in 1930. Pitiful rainfall and high rates of evaporation in scorching heat have caused the volume of water stored in reservoirs, which supplies 10m people, to dip below 12% of capacity. Last year at the end of the so-called wet season, it stood at 64%.

In preparation for the opening game of the football World Cup on June 12th the city is planning to pump half of the 400 billion litres of reserves beneath the pipes, at a cost of USD $36m. This water, never before used, is of questionable quality.

The problem exposed by the drought is that supply has not kept pace with the rising urban population. Facing a jumble of overlapping municipal, state and federal regulations, investment in storage, distribution and treatment has lagged behind.