The Kenya director of the World Food Programme (WFP) said: "People are already going hungry, malnutrition is preying on more and more young children, cattle are dying". The WFP is supplying 2.6 million Kenyans with food aid and hopes to increase that number by 1.2 million. Pasture and water for livestock is quickly dwindling.

Many parts of Kenya have experienced three or even four consecutive seasons of failed rains. The Government expects the main maize harvest to fall nearly one-third below the five-year average.

Acute malnutrition rates among children under the age of five are over 20% in some areas. "WFP is aiming to help almost 1 in every 10 Kenyans to cope with this serious crisis but we can't do it without money."

The agency also hopes the influx of funds will allow it to expand its school feeding programme by 100,000 to reach almost 1.2 million children, currently the Kenyan government is providing meals to 500,000 young people.

WFP said it wants to provide food aid to 108 million people in 74 countries this year, but is experiencing funding shortfalls, including over $160 million for Somalia and nearly $100 million for Ethiopia, with an unprecedented $3 billion total budget shortfall this year, while $6.7 billion is needed.

Mr Gates himself is stepping up investment in carbon-free energy and green technology.

"If just 1 per cent of the $100 billion goal [for carbon reduction] came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases. In the long run, not spending on health is a bad deal for the environment because improvements in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn reduces the strain on the environment."

Gates, in an interview with the Financial Times, said that, by tackling child mortality, his existing programmes were helping reduce the birth rate and cut demographic pressure, while work on improved agricultural crops that were drought resistant was helping to deal with the consequences of global warming.

Gates felt that energy consumption would not be sufficient to tackle climate change; the best solution for global warming was for-profit investment in new carbon-free energy technologies.

In a study by Elizabeth Miller, MD, of the University of California Davis, and colleagues of 1,278 women ages 16 to 29 treated at five family clinics across northern California, about 20% of women said that their partner tried to coerce them into having a child. The results were reported in the online journal 'Contraception'.

More than half of the women surveyed reported physical or sexual partner violence and a third of those also reported pregnancy coercion or birth control sabotage.

Both pregnancy coercion and birth control sabotage were separately associated with unintended pregnancy, and the two together nearly doubled a woman's odds of unintended pregnancy.

Men wanted their partners to have children for various reasons: to leave a legacy, a desire for attachment, having absolute control over her body, or to make them dependent on their partner. There have been cases where a young mother who has a child with another partner will be forced by her new boyfriend to have another baby with him.

Key strategies include advising women about "invisible" forms of birth control such as injectable and intrauterine contraceptives, as well as easy access to emergency contraception. "If we can identify that reproductive control is going on," Miller said, "we can offer the woman methods for birth control that the partner can't mess with."

Physicians and counsellors should talk about women's empowerment with regard to reproduction during reproductive health visits. We need to have a discussion around whether the girl is feeling ready for sex, rather than just talk about birth control.

The Center for Biological Diversity is distributing free endangered species-themed condoms all over the U.S. to raise awareness about overpopulation's serious impacts on our planet. We hope to spark new conversations about the need to bring Homo sapiens back into balance with the rest of life on Earth.

With 1200 volunteers, including college students, grandmothers, teachers, and clergymen condoms will be handed out at universities, music festivals, spiritual singles groups, and even a science and math teachers' conference.

All the non-Muslim nations that border on the Muslim world will be delighted, since that interface is where many of the armed conflicts are taking place, or have taken place in recent decades. Elsewhere on the website is data that shows armed conflict increases markedly with total fertility rate.

Follow the link to reach this data.

Research has already shown that family planning saves lives and improves maternal and child health, even for a relatively modest investment. It is one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the developing world.

A 37-year-old woman and her children living in the FPMCH program area are healthier and better off than a similar family in the comparison area:

Recently president Obama has decided to escalate the war despite the lack of information about the reality on the ground there. Major General Michael Flynn said that our intelligence officers and analysts cannot answer, quote, "fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade." Many say their jobs feel more like "fortune telling."

Greg Mortenson probably knows more about Afghanistan than any other American. He co-authored the book THREE CUPS OF TEA, has become required reading for our senior military commanders and Special Forces in Afghanistan and Mortenson has been enlisted as an unofficial advisor. The book originally had the title "One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism One School at a Time."

Mortenson started a project that led to the construction of 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson met some former Taliban who, as children, grew up being indoctrinated and were taught to hate. They grew up in very ignorant cultures where they didn't learn about the outside world. His schools hire former Taliban to teach because they got out of the Taliban because their mothers said, "What you're doing is not a good thing. It's not in the name of Islam." These men are willing to go out into the most volatile area and promote education.

The Taliban were originally more ideological, but with less Saudi funding, have turned to crime. People are starting to turn against the Taliban in the last two years. The Taliban is not able to deliver healthcare, education, roads, and the things that most people want, and peace.

When Mortenson was kidnapped by the Taliban in 1996 he won them over when they learned that he was trying to build schools, and they released him and gave him about $300 to build schools.

Mortenson focuses on educating young girls. When the girls become women, they are the ones who promote the value of education in the community. Number one, the infant mortality's reduced. Number two, the population is reduced. The third thing is the quality of health improves.

When girls learn how to read and write, they often teach their mother to do the same. Meat and vegetables are often wrapped in newspaper from which the mother will ask her daughter to read the news and the mother can now learn about what's going on in the outside world. When women are educated, they're not as likely to condone or encourage their son to get into violence or into terrorism. When someone goes on jihad, they usually get permission from their mother.

One example is a young lady who is the first educated female out of 4,000 people in her valley, even though the boys threw stones at her and her high school teachers refused to teach her. She went on for two years of maternal healthcare training. Before she returned to her village, five to 20 women died in childbirth every year, but after her return, as a midwife, not one single woman has died in childbirth. That's just one example. These are just the first fruits of all the seeds that we planted two decades ago but it's been very inspiring to see that happen.

With the Taliban, mullahs keep the people illiterate, and young boys learn how to read the Quran, but they don't learn how to understand Arabic. In Mortenson's schools, they learn to understand Arabic, so that when they read the Quran, they can see there is nothing that says that innocent children and women should be killed. The Quran says that suicide is the worst sin in Islam. The Quran implores all people to have a quest for knowledge. Islamic teachings say, "the ink of a scholar is greater than the blood of a martyr."

Sharia law actually doesn't say that women should be hurt and harmed and marginalized. It doesn't say they should commit suicide. There area very implicit laws in Sharia about the right of land ownership for women. There's implicit laws about treating children, women, with respect. But people are being kept in ignorance of this.

Mortenson's schools are now being built in Taliban areas. They can do this because they work so closely with the elders. Mortenson's people provide the teacher training, materials, and skill labor. But the community has to provide free land, free resources, and the manual labor, so that they become very invested in the school.

When the decision was made to deploy troops, there was no consultation with the with the elders. We've got to start to talk to them and then maybe we could get somewhere.

Afghans have fought for 2,000 years : the Ottomans, Genghis Khan, the Mongols, the Greeks, the Russians, the British, and now the Americans. They have won every battle. Commandant Conway said that no military has ever won a battle here, and, "We are not going to win a battle here either." Admiral Mullen and Petraeus and McChrystal will all tell you to your face there is no military solution in this country. And the solution has got to be a much broader solution.

While it costs a million dollars a year to keep one soldier In Afghanistan, with $1 million, Mortenson's people could build 30 or 40 schools.

Some have recommended pulling out the troops but doing more selected targeted bombings, but the elders say is, please, do not bomb and kill civilians. That is the number one way to antagonize people.

There is hope: The number of children in school has increased ten times in the last decade to 8.5 million children. There's a central banking system in Afghanistan since 2006, which has been huge. There's a road building program, about 80% of the roads have been built now from north to south and east to west. There are 80,000 troops in the Afghan Army trained now. In the district courts the number of women filing titles and deeds for land ownership is skyrocketing.

Mortenson listens to the women who tell him "We don't want our babies to die, and we want our children to go to school."

Seasonal melt has increased about 2.5 days per decade and lasts 3.7 days longer - an average of just under 20 days since 1979.

When the ice melts, darker ocean water absorbs more heat from the sun, and now there is more time for these dark waters to absorb more heat, adding further to ice loss. The delayed fall freeze also means thinner ice reforms every season, leading to increased ice loss in the coming thaw next season.

NASA research shows that average thickness of Arctic sea ice shrank 2.2 feet between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with the surface area covered by multi-year ice shrinking by more than 42%.

The frozen tundra is being replaced by trees and shrubs and the effect of the warmer weather extends all the way down to mid-latitude North America.

Climate change and its further impact on poorly-available Middle East water resources was also discussed, as were increased drought and desertification, scarcity of water resources, increased salinity of groundwater and the spread of pest epidemics and diseases caused by the phenomenon.

Jordanian residents rely on bi-weekly water deliveries to their homes, that fill up tanks located on roofs or in underground wells. Climate change has caused a 30% reduction in Jordan's surface water resources, as well as a decrease in the volume of rainfall and agricultural production, both of which the country and the Arab world heavily rely on.

The three-day meeting was organised by the Arab Administrative Development Organization, and included water experts from Iraq, Jordan, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Cooperation among all Middle East countries, Arab or not, would be beneficial to curbing major foreseeable problems. NATO, for example, is already working to be the bridge between Jordan and Israel.

The campaign is blessed by near-perfect timing, with Florida on the edge of a depression with plunging home prices, rampant foreclosures and abandoned houses rotting in the heat and dragging down neighborhoods. There are 300,000 empty houses in Florida.

What is more extreme than the build more-more-more mentality? "They had everything they wanted for the last five to six years. They crashed the economy. They have no solution other than bring the bubble back. Hometown Democracy is the only genuine reform on the table that can change the politics of growth once and for all," says Blackner.

Office vacancies are skyrocketing. The state's population is declining for the first time since World War II. Yet there are requests pending to build more than 600,000 more homes, along with millions more square feet of commercial space. There are plans to create massive new cities in the middle of nowhere.

Our development pandemic threatens the economy as much as the environment. Building more houses when the number of buyers has not increased deflates the value of houses that is going to linger for years and years.   Karen Gaia says: sounds like the population bubble has burst in Florida. Time for the "build it, they will come" mentality to be replaced.

1916 - Margaret Sanger organized the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

1925 - Sanger's second husband financed the first manufacturing of the diaphragm in the U.S.

1950 - The U.S. population was 150 million.

1954 - The Hugh Moore Fund first used the term "population bomb" on their published pamphlet. He was a philanthropist from Pennsylvania. His mantra was "Your cause is a lost cause unless you support family planning."

1960 - The "pill" was invented and became available to women for contraception.

1965 - Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, ending four decades of restricted immigration. This law, while removing limits based on country of origin, included provisions for family reunification, opening the door to "chain migration."

1965 - The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buxton and Griswold vs. Conn. legalized birth control for married couples offering "privacy of the bedroom."

1967 - U.S. population reached 200 million.

1968 - The Population Bomb, by Paul R. Ehrlich was published by the Sierra Club. This book laid the foundation for widespread concern about population growth among environmentalists and others that followed in the early years of the 1970's.

1968 - The organization Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was formed. There were dozens of local chapters throughout the country. ZPG later became Population Connection, with a focus on world population.

1970 - Earth Day was declared with population growth a major issue on the agenda. Dr. Mary Steichen Calderon, past medical director of the PPFA, established the Sex, Information and Education Council (SIECUS).

1972 - The Commission on Population and the American Future report, chaired by John D. Rockefeller III, stated "We have looked for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our economy does not depend upon it, nor does the vitality of business, nor the welfare of the average person." President Richard Nixon supported this and the National Security Study Memorandum 200 on population, both of which were defeated by Congress.

1972 - The Limits to Growth, is published by the Club of Rome. The book modeled the consequences of a rapidly growing population and finite resource supplies. The book was updated in 1993 and in 2004 under the name Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. In 1996 one of the authors, Donella Meadows, founded the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vt.

1973 - The U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade affirmed a women's the right to abortion.

The speech will occur on January 8, 2010, having been postponed due to extreme weather conditions in Washington DC. Please follow the headline link or go to www.icpd2015.org for a live streamed broadcast at 3:00 pm. A transcript and video of of the speech will be posted on this site following the event.

The "Cairo Consensus" was reached in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt by 179 nations. It was agreed to achieve universal access to education, especially for girls; reductions in infant, child and maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive health.

The 1994 ICPD was followed by the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women which established the Beijing Platform for Action, and the 2000 Millennium Summit, that established the Millennium Development Goals. These three conferences and their reinforcing commitments are the cornerstones of population and development policies globally.

The programs resulting from these conferences have improved and saved millions of lives through effective and affordable reproductive health programs, and has resulted in the growth of economies and preservation of natural resources.

This forecast does not take into account any increase in agricultural production for biofuels, which, by 2030, will require 35 million hectares of land--an area about the size of France and Spain combined.

Barriers to increased food production are rising energy prices, growing depletion of underground aquifers, the continuing loss of farmland to urbanization, and increased drought and flooding resulting from climate change.

It is estimated that $83 billion dollars (in 2009 dollars) would be required to double food production in the developing world by 2050. That is 50% more than current investment levels, and that does not include funds that may be needed to build roads and large scale irrigation projects.

Since food production and distribution has been a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, an increase would mean that more severe measures would need to be taken to reduce these emissions.

The large increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizer for the production of crops like corn has dramatically increased the emissions of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, while the world's growing appetite for beef is contributing to a rise in methane emissions. The gasoline and diesel fuel that is consumed by tractors and trucks is also a large source of carbon emissions.

The number of people in the world who are chronically hungry reached one billion mark in 2009, with 642 million in Asia and the Pacific, 265 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 42 million in the Near East and North Africa. This means that one in seven are chronically hungry.

In addition to population growth, the sharp hike in grain prices that set off riots in many countries in 2008, and reduced remittances sent back home from immigrants left unemployed by the global recession are reasons given for the increase in global hunger. The FAO estimates that the current economic crisis has forced 105 million more people into hunger.

Donor countries are urged to increase agriculture's share of official development assistance from 5% to 17%.

All those Africans will face problems with urbanisation, economic growth, health and climate problems.

Some say the large numbers will impact availability of food, jobs, schools, housing and healthcare. But others say Africa has opportunity to reach the economic growth of billion-strong China and India, with its large bulge of youth who could become a workforce in the marketplace, if we "focus focus on education and training." In 2050 the continent is expected to have 349 million people aged 15-24, or 29% of the world's total. This could pay off as a "demographic dividend" of people of working age. Africa has the fastest economic growth this year outside China and India. Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born British entrepreneur said: "Africa is underpopulated. We have 20% of the world's landmass and 13% of its population."

African's rate of urbanisation is the fastest the world today. Most Africans born today will live in a "mega-city" and will see deaths from smoking or car crashes as well as the more familiar issues of malnutrition, malaria and AIDs, as well as an increase in droughts, floods and desertification caused by climate change. Also child mortality is still high.

In 27 years, Africa's population has doubled. Nigeria and Uganda are the two fastest growing. In 1950 there were two Europeans for every African, but by 2050 there will be two Africans for every European.

While the average woman worldwide has 2.6 children, in sub-Saharan Africa the figure is 5.3. The world's highest fertility rate is in Niger, where women have on average 7.4 children. Globally 62% of married women of childbearing age use contraception, but in Africa the figure is 28%.

Under-development, poverty and sometimes limited education or resources means that women's access to reproductive health services is limited.

Population growth could pile more pressure on scarce resources and hinder development. A report by the UNFPA says: "Twenty years of almost 3% annual population growth has outpaced economic gains, leaving Africans, on average, 22% poorer than they were in the mid-1970s." The International Food Policy Research Institute predicts that an additional 15 million children will be malnourished.   Karen Gaia says: the big difference between China and Africa is that China started curbing its population growth many years ago. Africa has barely started. India is way ahead of Africa in this area as well. Youth bulges can work but they cannot go on perpetually.

A child aged 14-16 could, subject to certain requirements, be regarded as capable of consenting to healthcare provided he or she had the capacity to understand the nature and consequences of the treatment.

The requirements include that the medical practitioner should encourage the child to inform his or her parents or guardians.

In the case of children aged 12-14, treatment should be available at their request, but it would be mandatory for the medical practitioner to notify the child's parents.

A 2007 study of elementary and middle school students, mandated by Congress, found that students who received abstinence instruction were just as likely to have sex in the following year as students who did not get such instruction. Most of the nation's recent progress in reducing the abortion rate has occurred in states that have shown a commitment to real sex education.

The new $114 million initiative will be administered by a newly created Office of Adolescent Health with a mandate to support "medically accurate and age appropriate programs" shown to reduce teenage pregnancy.

The spending bill also increases financing for family-planning services for low-income women and lifts a ban on the District of Columbia's use of its own tax dollars to pay for abortion services for poor women except in cases when a woman's life is at risk, or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

Unfortunately, the health care reform bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee includes an amendment that would revive a separate $50 million grant-making program for abstinence-only programs run by states. Hopefully this amendment will be stricken.

Emphasizing the importance of this type of integration are the facts that: 1) 200 million women in the world have an unmet need for contraception to prevent an unintended pregnancy, 2) more than 80% of new HIV infections are sexually transmitted, 3) despite a massive increase in resources devoted to fighting HIV/AIDS, only a negligible reduction in new HIV infections has been achieved.

Socially marginalized people and adolescents are impeded from accessing HIV prevention, care and treatment by the stigma against AIDS and discrimination. Illiterate, socially restricted women and girls have severely limited opportunities to learn how to protect themselves. Gender inequality and stigma against AIDS are the leading factors contributing to HIV risk, according to UNAIDs.

Integrating services means fewer trips to a clinic, less expense, and fewer missed opportunities for health care when it is necessary for a woman to address two or more health issues at a time. When girls and women are able to spend their time earning income, studying, caring for their children and families, or participating in community life, the economic sector as well as households benefit.

Integration also avoids the stigma associated with HIV and STD clinics because the testing and counseling is part of routine care. But over a decade after integration of HIV and reproductive health services was proposed, widespread integration remain an unrealized goal.

Quality services for family planning or HIV allow sexually active individuals to make safe and responsible decisions about their intimate lives. Education is more comprehensive when HIV prevention is discussed in the context of maternal health and family planning services, and knowing about family planning and contraceptives when a woman seeks HIV services allows her to exercise her rights to plan and space her births, to conceive more safely if she chooses to become pregnant, and to negotiate safer sex with a partner.

Tens of millions of women want to delay their next pregnancy for at least two years or stop having children altogether, but are not using a modern method of contraception. Women with an unmet need for contraception also need information on how to avoid contracting HIV. Women represent nearly half of the 33 million people living with HIV, and several studies suggest that a majority of them also have an unmet need for family planning.

Please follow the headline link for the complete article, which provides much more interesting information.

Birthrates are high in rural India; many people live in homes without electricity. The Health and Family Welfare Minister has urged the country to redouble its efforts to bring electricity to the rural population so these people can plug in TV sets and watch late-night soap operas rather than have sex.

"When there is no electricity there is nothing else to do but produce babies." "80 percent of population growth can be reduced through TV."

According to the Times, "The minister called on India's television channels to provide high-quality programs, arguing that enticing content would offer alternative late-night entertainment."   Bill Reyerson said: The idea of the television programming is educating people by the information contained in TV shows and observing role models for use of family planning and smaller family size, not to replace sex as the Minister suggests.

The U.S. has by far the largest population of all industrialized nations, the only sizable one with significant population growth, and; it uses more energy than any other country and is the largest carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gas emitter amongst industrialized nations worldwide [editor's note: China excluded?]. In addition, the country's population is growing rapidly. This makes the U.S. pivotal in the national and global population climate change debate.

While the U.S. represents about 1/20 of the global population, it consumes about 1/4 of the world's energy, and generates 5 times the world average of CO2 emissions. With about 3 million people added each year, there's real potential to reach 1 billion high-energy-consuming Americans by 2100.

Because Americans are high resource consumers in a country with a large, rapidly growing population base, the U.S. has a much bigger "per-person" impact on global climate change than any other nation.

How can we meet the energy demands of this large and rapidly growing population that consumes elevated levels of resources and energy - while at the same time reducing the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change?

Population factors can exacerbate climate change's effects by placing more pressures on the natural resource base at specific sites, for example, when there is high population density and continued rapid growth in coastal, urban, suburban, or ecologically vulnerable areas of the U.S.

In contrast to the almost 20 tons of CO2 per person that US Americans consume per year, Europeans consume 8 tons, and developing countries only 2 tons. The U.S. population is expected to double by 2076, and U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose about 15% from 1990 to 2006.

We live in a 'global commons', where the planet's air and emissions typically move halfway around the world a week later, so America's large footprint places it front and center in relation to the world's climatic changes.

The growth of metro and suburban areas, as well as land use changes are also playing an important part in climate change.

The 11 warmest years on record, worldwide, have all occurred in the past 13 years, and in the U.S., 2006 was the warmest year on record, temperatures are over two degrees Fahrenheit higher than a century ago, rainstorms, heat waves, and hurricanes are occuring with increased frequency, and growing seasons are shifting. In addition, rare vector-borne diseases the like malaria and dengue fever are on the rise, and the nation's freshwater resources are more prone to drought and the consequences of less mountain snow pack.

Yet,it is the U.S.in the hot seat of "population-climate change" impacts worldwide. What matters are these factors:

1. Population size and growth rate.

The U.S. is the third most populous country in the world after China (1.3 billion) and India (1.1 billion). The U.S. population has more than doubled since 1950, and will double again in 70 years, likely to reach the billion mark this century.

2. Population density: where the U.S. population lives (Metropolitan areas, Coast, South and West regions).

Over half (53%) of all U.S. residents now live within 50 miles of the coast - on just 17% of the nation's total land area - where they are most vulnerable to sea level rise and the severe weather events (such as hurricanes and flooding) associated with climate change. 59% of the U.S. population lives in the South and the West, which are "population-climate change hotspots" because of their combination of population numbers and growth, and ecological vulnerabilities (as associated with the coastal areas of the South and freshwater resources in the West).

3. Per capita resource use: how the U.S. population lives (Land use, Vehicles, Households)

Land in the U.S. is converted for development at about twice the rate of population growth, and each American effectively occupies 20% more developed land (for housing, schools, shopping, roads, and other uses) than he/she did 20 years ago. Growth outside cities in the suburban and surrounding "exurban" areas far outpaces growth within cities. This spread-out land development results in a marked increase in vehicle use and road systems, and leads to rapid loss of forest and agricultural land which would otherwise act as "carbon sinks". There has also been a major increase in the number of households (with fewer people per house and the number of second homes on the rise); house size (square footage), and amount of land around each.

4. Population composition (Age, Baby Boomers, Income)

The nation's "Baby Boomers", the largest ever of this particular U.S. demographic (26% of the total U.S. population) are wealthier, spend more money, drive more vehicles and miles, have more homes per capita including second homes, and use more energy per capita than any generation before them.

U.S. per capita income is nearly $40,000 in contrast to $26,000 for other developed nations, and $4,000 for less developed nations.

Thank you for contacting me regarding your concern for the high cost of birth control. I appreciate hearing from you regarding this important issue.

You will be pleased to know we are in complete agreement. I am a proud co-sponsor of the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act (H.R. 4054) which would allow drug companies to again offer college clinics and safety net healthcare providers a significantly discounted rate on birth control purchases. As you know, this reduced price allowed providers to offer low cost birth control to their patients who often cannot afford to pay full price for contraceptives.

H.R. 4054 corrects a provision in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 that went into effect this year that mistakenly prevented drug companies from continuing to offer discounted birth control.

As a result, many college clinics can no longer afford to provide birth control to their students. For student health centers and other clinics that still offer birth control, the prices have increased astronomically from an average of $5 to nearly $50 per month. I am very concerned the increased costs have made it more difficult for many women to obtain safe and effective birth control.

I firmly believe that students should NOT (edited) have to pay such a steep price for a bureaucratic oversight. Women who can't afford birth control should not be made to suffer the consequences of an unintended pregnancy. I hope this bill moves quickly through the legislative process so we restore access to safe, effective and affordable birth control for women across the country.

The Pope has no objection to keeping people alive as long as possible and with our medical advances this has caused the average life expectancy to double in the past century. This is the basic cause of the population explosion. If everyone died at 40 (on average) like they did in 1900 instead of living to be 80 (on average) there would be no population explosion. The Pope is opposed to reducing the birth rate with contraception-----condoms, IUD's, Plan B, the pill, emergency contraception, vasectomies, tubal ligation, diaphram etc.------WHY??

Europe has a birth rate equal to the death rate. Even Italy which is 97% Catholic has a birth rate so low they are not even replacing themselves and the government will give women a bonus to have a second child. My goal is to have all females do what the Italian women are doing to achieve such a low birth rate-------abstinence only?------believe that & I have a bridge to sell you.

It took Homo sapiens 2 million of years of evolution to reach our first billion in about 1800 but only about a century to add the second billion in 1925 (my birth year). We have now "exploded" to almost 7 billion. The Catholic Church does not object to prolonging life but officially objects to contraception. An example of this is the group of about 15 that pray across the street from Planned Parenthood in Santa Maria on abortion days----they are opposed to not only abortion (I am too) but are opposed to contraception & vasectomies as well.

Contraception was against the law prior to the activism of Margaret Sanger starting in 1927. She was arrested innumerable times and was constantly harassed. She did the ground work that established Planned Parenthood Federation with clinics throughout America. This gave women control over their reproduction resulting in equal status to the male. The average age of first intercourse in America is about 17 (or lower). How old were you?

The goal of Planned Parenthood (and mine) is for every baby to be born wanted, planned and loved. It is tragic that over half of all pregnancies in the US are unintended (accidents). My favorite bumper-sticker is: MAKE LOVE NOT BABIES.

85,000 prostitutes work in India's Southeast State of Karnataka. 2.5 million Indians, and 15% of prostitutes in Southern India are infected with HIV.

Typically a sexual act earns $2 U.S., bringing in around $300 a month for a prostitute. Compare this to garment workers only earn abou $60 U.S. a month.

The Trust pays some sex workers $30 U.S. a month to run safe sex workshops for other prostitutes; it also provides them with regular medical check-ups, and distributes 50,000 free condoms a month to the prostitutes. Many of their clients are construction workers and truckers who are at high-risk of infection.

As a result of the program, condom use among these women is on the rise and the number of sexually transmitted infections has gone down.

Some sex workers know they have HIV, yet keep it secret; some may have each spread the virus to hundreds of people.

10% of clients refuse to use condoms.   Karen Gaia says: Why are population- concerned interested in HIV? It is important to study sexual behavior to understand the problem. Also, condoms prevent pregnancies, although they are not 100% perfect.

Afghan law sets 16 as the minimum age of marriage for a girl and 18 for a boy, but many are married at a younger age and without the genuine consent of those concerned.

60-80% of all marriages are forced and/or under-age marriages.

Daughters are married at an early age because "everybody and all parents do the same," and that "it is not good to keep a daughter at home for long; it's better she goes to her husband's home as soon as possible." Parents are usually unaware of the serious health and psychological risks of early marriage. Also there it is thought that marrying off a daughter as early as possible is in line with Islam.

Some suggest the government should train imams and other religious leaders to ensure marriage laws are upheld when they formalize marriages.

According to UNFPA, Afghanistan has a fertility rate of 6.51%, the second highest in the world. Female life expectancy in Afghanistan is 44 - one of the lowest in the world. The maternal death rate is 800 deaths per 100,000 women, but much higher among mothers aged 15-19 than for women older than 19, according to UNICEF. Young mothers often lack awareness of the risks of pregnancy and child delivery. "Child mothers and their children are usually weak and vulnerable to diseases."

Only 14% of births in Afghanistan are attended by skilled health workers, according to UNFPA.

abortions; and this amounted to inhumane treatment. One woman was trying to regain custody of her four children when she became pregnant. Another was at risk of an extra-uterine pregnancy, and the third was recovering from cancer and feared a relapse.

The women's lawyers say that the impossibility for them to have an abortion in Ireland made the procedure unnecessarily expensive, complicated and traumatic, and that the experience stigmatised and humiliated them. The lawyers claimed that Irish abortion law breaches several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the rights to life, privacy and family life, and further represents discrimination against women.

The Irish government Attorney-General said that the claim that their health was threatened as "a significant attack" on the Irish health service and the treatment, advice and support it offered, including aftercare and post-abortion counselling. Irish laws, he said, were based on "profound moral values deeply embedded in Irish society."

Every year thousands of Irish women travel abroad to have their pregnancies terminated. Last year 4,600 did so. One study concluded that almost one in 10 Irish pregnancies ends in an English abortion clinic.

In some countries, such as Britain, termination is readily available while in others the law allows it in cases such as rape or serious risk to the woman's life or health.

Ireland is an overwhelmingly catholic country, and the right of life for the unborn child has been protected by law for 150 years. Over the years church

authority has been in decline, largely because of the child abuse scandals. Much of society has become more secular and cosmopolitan, bringing on a general public acceptance of issues such as divorce, homosexuality, contraception and co-habitation rather than marriage. But abortion has always been a controversial issue.

To change the constitution means having measures supporting abortion approved in a referendum. None of the various referendum campaigns was fought on the basis of legalising abortion, instead centering on amendments which made often confusing adjustments to legal wording. A referendum in 2002, aimed at tightening the law, was rejected by a margin of 50.42% to 49.58%.

With the strong economic downturn and the church abuse scandal, most politicians would probably shy away from the abortion issue.

Since 1990 these emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have increased at an average annual rate of 0.7%.

2009 CO2 emissions are expected to have fallen 5.9% as the recession cut demand for coal and motor fuel.

The United States is the top greenhouse gas polluter after China, but has emitted more of the gases since the Industrial Revolution than any other country.

In the middle of the 17th century there was also a sharp decline in sea ice, but it lasted only a very brief period. The greatest cover of sea ice was in a period around 1700-1800, which is also called the 'Little Ice Age'.

In the first 10 years of the 20th century, the ice shrank by 300.000 km2.

More and more milk comes from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where large herds live in feedlots.

The average cow produces six to seven gallons of milk and 18 gallons of manure daily. With New Mexico's 300,000 milk cows, the manure is enough to fill up nine Olympic-size pools each day.

But none of these factory farms have a sewage treatment plant. What happens is the muck is hosed off the concrete floor of a milking barn, and it flows into a plastic- or clay-lined lagoon where the liquid evaporates. Then waste from the feedlot is collected and used as fertilizer for grain crops.

However the New Mexico Environment Department reports that two-thirds of the state's 150 dairies are contaminating groundwater with excess nitrogen from cattle excrement. Either the lagoons are leaking, or manure is being applied too heavily on farmland.

Adding to the problem is the tendency of large dairies to cluster together. On one stretch of road between Interstate 10 between Las Cruces, N.M., and El Paso, Texas, more than 30,000 cows live on 11 farms, which have been repeatedly cited for violating the Clean Water Act because manure-laced stormwater was washing into tributaries of the Rio Grande.

There is a big problem for the residents there: the odor, the flies, and contaminated well water.

Commodity agriculture, including dairies, is toward fewer and larger farms, which concentrates more manure in smaller geographic areas.

A dairy industry spokesman suggests that critics suggests that "They may have a septic tank that's leaking. That is the No. 1 reason why domestic wells in New Mexico are contaminated." Dairymen "want to make sure that their families that live on these dairies can drink that water, can bathe in that water and their animals are healthy as well."

The dairy industry is big in New Mexico, a poor state with little private industry.   Karen Gaia says: these farms are profitable because a) there is a large population of people drinking milk, b) farms are run in the most efficient manner, which means operating a CAFO. Ideally CAFOs are located in isolated areas, but the size of these are shrinking as population grows.

With no census since 1979, Afghanistan's population size is in doubt. The U.S. Census Bureau puts it at a little below 16 million.

Females are underreported relative to males in the younger age groups (below age 15). It is thought that some girls are reported as boys since some stigma is attached to families who have only girl children and some families may not wish to report the presence of girls.

The UN estimates the current total fertility rate (TFR) at 6.6 children per woman and the U.S. Census Bureau estimates 5.7. These TFRs represent quite a decline from the past. According to the U.N., if the TFR remains at 6.6, by 2050 the country's population would reach 111 million and be growing at 3.6% per year, a rate that would double a population in 19 years.

In 2003, the government began a program, the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS), which includes reproductive health services, essential for couples that wish to limit their family size. Consequently contraceptive use rates have increased.

According to a survey, in 2000, 5.3% of married woman used some form of family planning, and 3.6% used a modern method. By 2006, the reported use of modern contraception had risen to 15.5%. Pills (8.1%), injectables (5.4%), and condoms (2.2%) are the three most commonly used methods - methods which require a continuing supply.

For women who were less than two hours from a health clinic (about 60%), modern usage was 19.4%, but it drops to 9.1% for two hours or more hours. Most travel (75%) was on foot.

Lack of antenatal care for pregnant women and low levels of child immunization have been major contributors to Afghanistan high rates (one of the world's highest) of infant, child, and maternal mortality. However, there has been an increase in the number of Afghan women who received antenatal care from a skilled attendant, rising from 5% in 2003 to 32% in 2006, likely due to the BPHS program which provided a health facility within two hours of travel to 61%.

The program seems to be lacking, however, in institutional birth deliveries, preventative doses of tetanus toxoid, and childhood immunizations.

The initiative was proposed by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), which says its research reflects the conclusions of the recently published UN Population Fund Report.

It is hoped the initiative will bring the population issue to the fore of the global environmental debate in time for next week's climate summit in Copenhagen.

OPT has launched the "PopOffsets" project with a website, www.popoffsets.com, which enables people to offset their carbon footprint by making on-line donations to meet the huge need for family planning around the world.

Meeting the unmet demand for family planning could be the most cost effective means of achieving CO2 reductions.

OPT estimates every £4 spent on family planning saves one tonne of CO2. A similar reduction would require an £8 investment in tree planting, £15 in wind power, £31 in solar energy and £56 in hybrid vehicle technology.

OPT Director Roger Martin said: "It has been acknowledged for many years the current level of human population growth is unsustainable and places acute pressure on global resources. Human activity is exacerbating global warming, and higher population levels inevitably mean higher emissions and more climate change victims."

OPT is opposed to any initiatives that advocate any form of coercion.

The killing of the amendment means a petition asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to keep restrictive anti-choice language out of the Senate health care reform bill was successful.

The restrictive Stupak language would make it virtually impossible to purchase insurance that covers abortion services, is still in the House version of the bill.

We must to fight to ensure that the final version of the bill retains the Senate's language.

"Save the world" means preventing human civilization from collapsing in a chaotic, violent way that would entail enormous amounts of suffering and death. And also preserving the natural world, so as to minimize species extinctions and the loss of wild habitat. Both are inter-related: If civilization collapses chaotically, billions of people will do an enormous amount of damage to remaining ecosystems in their desperate attempts at survival; and if nature goes first, that means civilization will go too, because we rely on ecosystem services for everything we do.

Some world-savers are only (or primarily) concerned about human welfare. Some say the world needs "saving" because it is wicked. Others think the biggest threats to our survival are from other people. Then there are those who look at survival in and an environmental way: the disappearance of polar bears or honey bees, or the logging of rainforests, and so on.

If all of us world-savers can't get on the same page we might cancel each another out. And if we can't agree on what the problem is, how do we know there is a problem in the first place?

The author sees the problem this way: We have recently gained access to concentrated but depleting non-renewable energy sources that have enabled us to grow our population and appetites for commodities of various sorts to utterly unsustainable levels; and in the process of burning carbon-based fuels we have set in motion a process of climate change that is rapidly spiraling out of control.

And to solve the problem means changing people's lifestyles and expectations, sharing nature's dwindling bounty of non-renewable resources, and finding ways to reduce population proactively without interfering too much with human rights.

Recently a consensus among environmentalists has developed that is focused on the problem of climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions. But there are still differences of opinion regarding tactics: some support carbon taxes, others support caps, some back the notion of a carbon market, others say a carbon market would lead to a carbon bubble and an eventual collapse in value.

But amid all of this effort to reduce carbon emissions, some things are being overlooked: Reducing carbon emissions essentially means using less coal, oil, and gas; this means the world will have less energy to go around; with less energy available it may not be possible to continue growing the global economy in customary ways. Because strong, effective climate policies will have a significant economic cost, people are reluctant to talk about it.

But we should be giving this matter a lot of attention no matter how inconvenient it is: we need a different kind of economy, one that can still function with a stable or declining throughput of materials and energy. But we're not even going to start trying to design one until more people start telling the truth about where we're headed.

In trying to save the world, should we tell the truth fearlessly, or try to frame one's message so as to make it generally acceptable? Most people don't want to be too alarmed, and they don't want to hear about problems to which there are no ready solutions.

If you tell the truth to a fault, you don't get invited to policy seminars, and politicians avoid you like the plague. If you sugar coat the message, you have to live with the knowledge that the vast majority of people on our planet have almost no awareness of what is about to happen to them.

The current economic crisis is a very big problem for the world-saving industry. Just about all of our money comes from philanthropic foundations, and most of those foundations have a lot less money to dole out than they did a year ago.

The average family will find it difficult to get excited about an environmental issue when its economic survival is at question; indeed, people's very ability to look ahead and focus on large, complex issues begins to falter.

This financial crisis underscores the unpleasant truth that business-as-usual simply can't continue. It's no longer a matter of telling folks to stop consuming so much; they're now finding they literally can't afford to buy cars or travel. Should we environmental world-savers change our message accordingly?

Explaining that emissions are now declining because people can't afford to travel or buy cars is a hard pill to swallow. But in the end, in order to survive, we will need more truth-telling about the linkages between energy and the economy.

"Too many women are denied even the opportunity to know about how to plan and space their families," she said. "And the derivative inequities that result from all of that are evident in the fact that women and girls are still the majority of the world's poor, unschooled, unhealthy, and underfed. This is and has been for many years a matter of personal and professional importance to me, and I want to assure you that reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women's rights and empowerment will be a key to the foreign policy of this administration."

Chris Smith, Rep, New Jersey, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has fought throughout his career reproductive rights worldwide. He has urged foreign politicians not to liberalize their abortion laws and led the way to freeze the American contribution to the United Nations Population Fund.

When Smith asked Clinton, "Is the Obama administration seeking in any way to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries?" ... "Does the United States' definition of the term 'reproductive health' or 'reproductive services' or 'reproductive rights' include abortion?" ...

Clinton answered: "When I think about the suffering that I have seen, of women around the world -- I've been in hospitals in Brazil, where half the women were enthusiastically and joyfully greeting new babies, and the other half were fighting for their lives against botched abortions. ... We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health, and reproductive health includes access to abortion, that I believe should be safe, legal, and rare."

Clinton said in a 1995 speech at the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing, "Women's rights are human rights, once and for all." The New York Times said it "may have been her finest moment in public life."

Even though politically contentious, reproductive rights may be the area where rapid progress is easiest. One of Obama's first acts was to repeal the so-called "global gag rule," which had denied American funding to organizations working abroad that perform abortions, counsel women that abortion is an option, or advocate for abortion-law liberalization. Obama also restored American funding to the United Nations Population Fund.

To create change for women's rights, Clinton has to change the way State Department employees think about their job. Ultimately, she must to begin to change cultures, both in Washington and around the world.

The state Water Resources Department typically ends up supplying more water than first projected for an upcoming year, but this 5% initial allocation is the smallest since the agency began delivering water in 1967.

University of California at Davis say that drastic cutbacks in water supplies have idled some 23,000 farm workers and 300,000 acres of cropland in California.

City have raised water rates and imposed rationing.

The state 2009 initial water allocation was 15% of the amount users are entitled to receive under their contracts. That figure was later raised to 40%, under the 68% averaged over the past decade.

Along with the water shortage problems, the chronic budget problems and jobless levels above the national average have raised an alarm up and down a state.

The state Legislature and the Governor have put together a landmark package to conserve water and for new water infrastructure projects.

Much of the water comes from rainfall and snow-melt runoff from the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But the prolonged drought, the worst in state history, has depleted the Sierra snowpack and reservoir levels. Complicating matters are federal restrictions on delta pumping levels in order to protect endangered fish species.

The Mellman Group for the Moving Forward initiative of the Women Donors Network and the Communications Consortium Media Center conducted a poll of 1,000 likely voters, showing:

86% believe that insurance companies should be required to cover maternity care, while just 10% oppose such requirements.

82% support this proposal regardless of party affiliation, region, age, gender and religious attendance.

52% support the "Capps compromise" which would prohibit federal dollars, including partial subsidies, from being used to pay for abortions, although abortions could be paid for using private funds generated by patients' premiums.

39% oppose this language. This language receives more support from anti-abortion voters (64%) than pro-abortion rights voters (47%).

58% of Catholic voters also support the language.

Voters "see individual decision-making as the overarching value on these issues and they want respect, prevention, planning and personal responsibility to be part of the conversation. This is true whether it is about family planning, maternity care or other reproductive health issues, including abortion," said Donna Hall, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Women Donors Network.

"Let's resolve the issue with the compromise developed by Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) and move forward with needed reforms," commented Wendy Wolf who leads the Moving Forward initiative for the Network.

A related poll released yesterday by Catholics for Choice (CFC) shows Catholics support both a public option in healthcare reform and a plan that would include funding for abortion.

A lot of geologists, a few billionaire investors, and various survivalists call this peak oil, with the middle to end of this decade as a likely turning point.

But the oil industry and the government agencies that work with it say that, to call it peak oil, is premature, that production will soon begin rising again, peaking at more than 110 million bbl. a day around 2030. There have been temporary drops in oil production before, usually during global economic slowdowns. But even 2030 is alarming, with most optimists agreeing on that figure.

Recently, however, chief executives of ConocoPhillips and French oil giant Total both declared that they can't see oil production ever topping 100 million bbl. a day. The International Energy Agency warned that "new capacity additions will not keep up with declines at current fields and the projected increase in demand."

This doesn't mean that oil production has peaked: some call it "peak lite," where the big issues are not so much geological as political, technical, financial and even human-resource-related (the world apparently suffers from a dearth of qualified petroleum engineers). In this scenario, production would not so much peak as plateau. But with demand rising sharply, especially from China and India, even a plateau could be precarious.

There are still massive reserves available in Canadian tar sands, Colorado shale, Venezuelan heavy oil and other unconventional deposits. But most of this oil is hard to extract and even harder to refine, thus it won't make up a significant share of global production anytime soon. Most experts agree that the pumping of conventional oil outside the OPEC has already peaked or will peak soon, even with discoveries like the recent 8 billion-bbl. find off the coast of Brazil.

OPEC currently accounts for 41% of world oil production. Optimists believe this share will rise dramatically in the coming decades.

Pessimists, like energy-industry investment banker Matt Simmons, in his 2005 book Twilight in the Desert, questioned whether Saudi Arabia, OPEC's top producer, really can pump much more oil than it does now. Saudi output has dropped from 9.6 million bbl. a day to 8.6 million since the book was published, despite rising prices.

Saudi officials say they could up production at any time, saying the high prices are the fault of participants in futures markets and the falling dollar, not low production.

If in the coming years OPEC's members cannot boost production, we should have a global summit and say, "Gentlemen, it's nobody's fault, but we've peaked," says Simmons. "We've got to embrace some conservation practices that are draconian, or we will be at war with each other."

The oil peakists figure that cheap oil is the essential fuel of modern capitalism, which will founder without it. Hopefully it is more true that innovation is the essential fuel of modern capitalism and that high oil prices will drive rapid advances in conservation and alternative energy.   Karen Gaia says: who is right - optimists or pessimists? We can pray that it is the optimists, but we should be prepared in case the pessimists are correct. In any case, curtailing use of oil is the right answer. If you don't think we have a choice, then think again, or a worse choice will be forced upon us.

The funds would be used to roll back user fees in Malawi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nepal and Burundi, would help cut maternal mortality for 10 million people, mostly women and children, where even a few cents for health services "became a death sentence for millions".

The funding commitment, which includes a pledge of US$3 billion from the online travel industry,. came from a taskforce on International Innovative Finance for Health Systems, co-chaired by Brown and World Bank President Robert Zoellick.

Many NGOs contended that user fees contribute a modest 5% to national health budgets, and resulted in high child and maternal mortality rates

500,000 women die annually because they do not have access to healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth, according to Oxfam. Save the Children-UK says that eliminating fees could save the lives of 285,000 children each year.

In Uganda, when they removed user fees, attendance at clinics increased by 160%. People were just waiting until they were told they wouldn't have to sell their property or use up their savings to go to the doctor," he said.

Advance planning and adequate financing are needed before user fees could be abolished.

In the largest meeting ever focused on best practices and lessons learned from international family planning programs, participants shared results demonstrating family planning's powerful contribution to breaking the cycle of poverty and improving family health worldwide.

For example, CEDPA staff presented a poster session on its work to advance family planning usage in the central Terai region of Nepal. The project, Expanding Voluntary Use of Contraception in the Central Terai Region of Nepal, trained volunteers to disseminate information, counsel families and provide commodities to some of the most marginalized populations in Nepal.

By looking at only population size as the demographic variable in climate models, the contribution of "population" to climate change has been underestimated. Understanding fertility, population growth, urbanization, migration from environmentally depleted areas, household size and composition, and growing population density in marginal and vulnerable areas, is also crucial for the world to adapt to and cope with the adverse impacts of current and projected climate change.

Climate change threatens to cause the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever seen, Sir Nicholas Stern warned in 2006. One percent of global GDP must be invested in order to mitigate climate change, and that failure to do so could risk a recession worth up to 20% of global GDP.

Climate change poses a grave challenge for the whole world and has wide ranging implications for human well-being as well as for security, including the risk of armed conflict over resources and large-scale migrations of population within nations and across national borders. 150 million environmental refugees will exist in 2050, says the International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), due mainly to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural disruption.

Population policies and programs that promote universal access to voluntary contraception, when linked with broader efforts to address a range of demographic factors and meet development and poverty reduction objectives, such as the MDGs, particularly investments in family planning and reproductive health, girls education, economic opportunities and empowering of women, and in youth. These would help least developed and developing countries to speed up their demographic transition, enabling them to achieve demographic windows of opportunity which may contribute to economic growth and a greater capacity to cope with climate change impacts.