Ella, Morning After Pill Approved by FDA in Tablet Form

August 14, 2010 USA Newsweek

Ella is a new morning after - or emergency contraception - pill that has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It prevents prevents pregnancy if taken within five days after unprotected sexual intercourse.

The pill, comprised of ulipristal acetate, can be obtained by prescription only.

The FDA stressed that people should not use Ella as a contraceptive.

Ella inhibits or delays ovulation. It has been sold in Europe since May 2009 under the name EllaOne.

Women don't use emergency contraception enough to make an impact on pregnancy or abortion rates, Dr. James Trussell of the Office of Population Research said.

Ella package side effects: headache, abdominal pain, nausea, dysmenorrhea, fatigue, dizziness

Sen. Boxer Focuses on Abortion Rights in Calif. Race.

August 2, 2010 San Jose Mercury News

Although the economy and jobs have been the "foremost" issues in California's Senate race, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) is "intent on highlighting the distinction" between her views on abortion rights and those of her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina, the AP/San Jose Mercury News reports.

A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows 39% of likely voters support Boxer -- who supports abortion rights in early stages of pregnancy -- while 34% favor Fiorina, who opposes abortion except in cases or rape, incest or to save a woman's life.

Boxer has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, NARAL Pro-Choice California, EMILY's List and the National Organization for Women. Fiorina has received endorsements from the antiabortion-rights groups California Pro-Life Council, the Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life.

Boxer says she knows that abortion is an issue that "can help drive voters her way." A director of the poll said that the issue could work in Boxer's favor if she can portray Fiorina's views as a threat to the status quo. 53% of Fiorina's supporters consider themselves "pro-choice," according to a recent poll.

Senate Committee Approves Permanent Ban on Global Gag Rule.

July 29, 2010 Population Connection

Late July, the Senate Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment which permanently repeals the notorious Global Gag Rule, preventing a future President from unilaterally reinstating the policy. President Obama repealed the Gag Rule in the first week of his presidency, but the fact that the policy could be reinstated with the next Presidency has a chilling effect on US family planning efforts overseas. The amendment passed by a vote of 19-11.

The Committee also approved $700 million for international family planning, including $55 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The amount is $50 million over the current funding level, but less than the $716 million requested by President Obama, and less than the $735 million approved by a House subcommittee.

The amendment has not yet come before the full Senate.

Strange but True: How Soap Operas Might Save Us From Overpopulation.

August 2010 AlterNet

Daniela Perdomo interviews Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center (PMC).

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.

Senate Committee Approves Permanent Ban on Global Gag Rule.

July 29, 2010 Population Connection

Late July, the Senate Appropriations Committee adopted an amendment which permanently repeals the notorious Global Gag Rule, preventing a future President from unilaterally reinstating the policy. President Obama repealed the Gag Rule in the first week of his presidency, but the fact that the policy could be reinstated with the next Presidency has a chilling effect on US family planning efforts overseas. The amendment passed by a vote of 19-11.

The Committee also approved $700 million for international family planning, including $55 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The amount is $50 million over the current funding level, but less than the $716 million requested by President Obama, and less than the $735 million approved by a House subcommittee.

The amendment has not yet come before the full Senate.

Strange but True: How Soap Operas Might Save Us From Overpopulation.

August 2010 AlterNet

Daniela Perdomo interviews Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center (PMC).

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.

Strange but True: How Soap Operas Might Save Us From Overpopulation.

August 2010 AlterNet

Daniela Perdomo interviews Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center (PMC).

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.

Strange but True: How Soap Operas Might Save Us From Overpopulation.

August 2010 AlterNet

Daniela Perdomo interviews Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center (PMC).

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.

Strange but True: How Soap Operas Might Save Us From Overpopulation.

August 2010 AlterNet

Daniela Perdomo interviews Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center (PMC).

Human capacity was exceeded in the 1980s, bringing the planet into crisis. Global warming, food and water crises, even international conflict, can be traced to overpopulation. Natural resources are being consumed at a rate much higher than they can be replenished. Now at over 6.8 billion people in the world, we're expected to number 9 billion by 2050.

Bill Ryerson is using media to change behaviors that contribute to global overpopulation by using melodramatic soap operas on radio and television throughout the developing world (and soon, the U.S.) to teach listeners and viewers important lessons about family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and environmental preservation, and women's and children's rights.

Africa has the least media coverage, particularly with television. In Ethiopia over half have radios and listen to them on a regular basis. So it's a majority of the world's population that has access to broadcasting. Latin America and in Asia, television reaches almost everybody. 90% of the Vietnam population watches TV. In Pakistan maybe two-thirds of the population watches TV on a regular basis.

Population Media Center uses the Sabido method, which used the Latin American version of soap operas, called telenovelas, or television novels. These are quite different from American soap operas because they are much shorter. They are the dominant prime-time format in Latin America and they are popular and engrossing. They are also melodramatic -- depicting the battle of good versus evil.

Miguel Sabido was a vice president of Mexico's largest commercial network, Televisa. He began looking at ways in which he could use the telenovela to provide audiences with information that would improve their lives. Using research and theory from psychologists, the creation of serialized melodramas that has proven over and over again to be highly influential in changing social norms on all kinds of issues.

Stanford psychologist Alfred Bandura is the world's authority on role modeling and how role models influence behavior and what makes a parent or a peer or a celebrity influence the people who are observing them. Using role models, the telenovela teaches self-efficacy, the confidence in the ability to accomplish some task.

Where girls are denied education and are married off at puberty to older men in polygamous relationships and are not given the right to determine how many children to have and so on, changing the attitudes and behavior of the men as well as the women can be done through this strategy.

Characters are created who start out in the middle of the road and sort through the conflicting advice they get from the positive and the negative characters and figure out who is right, and they evolve into positive role models for the audience. The negative characters always suffer the consequences of their behavior.

The Sabido method is now in 24 countries around the world. In Brazil, a program called "Páginas da Vida," "Pages of Life,"contained a teenage pregnancy and parenthood storyline. This program influenced thirty-six% of the women clients of the family planning clinics to come because of that program. These women did not want to fall into the trap and the poverty and all the health problems that this teenage mother had fallen into. So they learned from that and they went to family planning. As a result of this program here was a 153% increase in condom distribution.

In Tanzania a radio serial depicted an alcoholic truck driver with a girlfriend at every truck stop and a subservient wife waiting at home. His wife figured him out during the serial and told him she had heard about the AIDS epidemic and said that when he was home he was going to have to use condoms. She went on to become an entrepreneur and founded her own business, and she became a role model for female empowerment.

The truck driver became sick. 58% of the adult population heard this program, with more men in the audience than women, and they found out the truck driver had made a fatal mistake. Originally the men identified with the truck driver because he was having a good time, but then he started dying from AIDS. 82% of the audience in a survey after the two years said they had changed their behavior to avoid HIV infection. Most of them reduced the number of sexual partners. The second most common change was condom use.

Ryerson said: "This is the most cost-effective approach that I have found anywhere in the world." In the Tanzania project, the cost per person who adopted family planning was 32 cents. The cost per person to change behavior to avoid HIV infection was 8 cents. When you can save lives at 8 cents a person, it is worth doing something.

In Sudan, PMC developed a program where the major emphasis was on female genital mutilation. Before the program, 28% of the adult population thought FGM was a bad idea. After the broadcast, 65% of the population thought the practice should be abandoned.

The Global Footprint Network have determined is our ecological footprint is 40% over what is sustainable. We are taking resources out of the bank and not replacing them. Water is one of the key resources: India, China and the United States are the top grain-producing countries, all three using underground fresh water aquifers for irrigation, as well as using river water for irrigation.

India, for example, is pumping out the water at twice the rate of replacement by rain water, and the water table is sinking by 10 feet a year. Large areas of farmland in India are turning into desert. With the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas, the regular flow of the rivers in India and China are also threatened.

Cheap oil is a key element in fertilizers and pesticides and in planting, harvesting, transportation to market, refrigeration, packaging, distribution to supermarkets and taking it home and serving it, but oil reached an all-time peak two years ago. The price of grain and of both rice and wheat tripled and quadrupled on the world market, and there were food riots all over the developing world. When production of oil goes into decline in the face of expanding demand, the price of oil is going to go way up. The billion people living on a dollar or less a day may not be able to buy enough food to survive.

We have gotten all the easy oil there is to get. Now we are drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, high-risk operations trying to get the last bits of oil. The increase from one billion to almost seven billion people on the planet has occurred since the discovery of oil.

Terrorism is partly a population-related issue. In high-population growth countries people are spending all of their money on food, housing and clothing. They have nothing left over to save. That means there is no capital formation. That means businesses can't expand. Therefore, there is no growth in employment. So you have a rapid growth in the number of people trying to enter the labor force and no jobs.

In urban centers like Karachi and Islamabad hundreds and thousands of unemployed men walking around angry and very concerned as to how they are going to survive.They are great prospects for recruiting into terrorism because they have nothing to lose.

PMC is planning a project available online to serve the Hispanic population in the U.S. to address the issues of teenage pregnancy prevention and obesity prevention among Latino populations.