Philippines New President Duterte Supports Population Control

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Philippines Population Control Needed

GR:  Joe Bish of the Population Media Center points out that “the advocacy group Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development (PLCPD) have voiced support of improved implementation of the RH Law, while sensibly tacking away from a 3 child policy. It is likely that the RH Law, as written, contains a default 2-child or less policy anyway — we already know that when a country’s women have the means and agency to achieve reproductive self-determination most will choose to have 2 children or fewer. Recall Iran, Thailand and Japan, just to name a few.”

Like many other countries, the Philippines needs to control its population growth.  Though the country’s economic growth is strong, at least 25% of the population remains poor.  If the country’s current 1.6% growth rate holds, the population will double in 44 years.  Poverty expansion is very likely.

DuterteBusiness World Online:  “INCOMING president Rodrigo R. Duterte will aggressively implement the country’s family planning law to push his economic growth agenda, one of his aides said on Monday, in a move that could add to simmering tensions with the Catholic Church.

Congress passed a law in “December 2012, despite opposition from Church leaders, allowing public health centers to hand out contraceptives such as condoms and pills, and teach sex education in schools.

Mr. Duterte is pushing for “rapid and sustained implementation” of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012, said Ernesto dM. Pernia, whom Mr. Duterte has named as his economic planning secretary.

“If you enable families to limit and phase their children to what they can afford and what they can provide for, then that’s going to have an effect on poverty and inequality,” Mr. Pernia said in an interview with ANC.

Such a beautiful land, should not be spoiled by overpopulation and poverty.

Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report | Environment | The Guardian

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GR:  Efforts by governments to support development by hiding important information from consumers is rampant in the U. S.  I am not surprised that this is true in Austrailia as I assume that it is true worldwide.

Guardian:  “The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.

“The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it. The full scale of risk may only be recognised through disaster or damage, or when insurance premiums become unaffordable Climate Institute report“Even when public authorities, financial institutions and other stakeholders possess information about current and future risk levels, they are sometimes unwilling, and sometimes unable, to share it with all affected parties,” the report released on Monday says.”

Source: Homeowners kept in dark about climate change risk to houses, says report | Environment | The Guardian

How fracking can contribute to climate change | Environment | The Guardian

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One of the justifications for fracking is the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel between coal and a low-carbon future. However natural gas is mostly methane, which has strong global warming impacts in its own right. Natural gas therefore only provides climate benefits over coal if the leakage is no more than 2-3%.

We cannot measure leaks from every pipe joint. One alternative is to measure the sum of lots of leaks from a distance. Flights over US shale gas fields reveal large methane sources, but these areas also have cattle farms that produce methane and the two sources need to be separated.

Source: How fracking can contribute to climate change | Environment | The Guardian

Pharmaceutical pollution widespread in Southeast U.S. streams | Summit County Citizens Voice

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GR:  We have known about this for at least 20 years, but nothing has been done because of the high cost of filtering urban waste water.  Large corporations and stock holders avoid taxes, and what the rest of us pay is insufficient for more than a tot-lot or two and more roads to support further develpment and “progress.”

Bob Berwin:  “Traces of pain-relieving substances, diabetes drugs and allergy medicines are widespread in small streams across the Southeast, especially in urban zones like Raleigh, North Carolina, the U.S. Geological Survey found in a new study.

“The USGS in 2014 sampled 59 small streams in portions of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia for 108 different pharmaceutical compounds and detected one or more pharmaceuticals in all 59 streams. The average number of pharmaceuticals detected in the streams was six.

“The EPA is currently developing rules for regulating pharmaceutical pollution, but government watchdogs say the agency’s proposal is much to weak. Other studies have shown that the toxic cocktail of pharmaceutical remnants is already affecting basic stream health. From there, the chemicals are making their way up the food chain and have even turned up in remote Mexican cenotes.  Source: Pharmaceutical pollution widespread in Southeast U.S. streams | Summit County Citizens Voice

Fire in the Sky — More Than 330,000 Lightning Strikes Hit Europe in Just Eight Hours | robertscribbler

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“Whatever happened to normal weather? Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought, and biblical floods. But lately it seems the treadmill of disruptive weather has been set to fast-forward.” — Paul Douglas.

A cold, unstable air mass aloft. A record atmospheric moisture load due to human-caused climate change. Add in 80 degree or warmer surface temperatures and these three ingredients can spark some seriously epic thunderstorms. Such was the case across Europe today as towering thunderheads exploded into the skies, raining more than 330,000 bolts of lightning down upon the continent.

Source: Fire in the Sky — More Than 330,000 Lightning Strikes Hit Europe in Just Eight Hours | robertscribbler

Once-Wild West Disappearing Under Development | Californians For Population Stabilization

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Discussion of the principal cause of the loss of natural areas to development in the U.S.

…

“The natural landscape of the American West is gradually disappearing under a relentless march of new subdivisions, roads, oil and gas production, agricultural operations and other human development.”

Rogers is citing a new report at http://www.disappearingwest.org posted by Conservation Science Partners, a nongovernmental research group with offices in Truckee, California; Seattle, Washington; Flagstaff, Arizona; Fort Collins, Colorado and Bozeman, Montana. According to Disappearing West, an area of natural habitat the size of a football field is lost to concrete, asphalt, subdivisions, strip malls and drilling pads every two and a half minutes.

In the decade between 2001 and 2011, a combined area of 2.8 million acres (4,321 square miles) – 15 times the combined size of San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco – was developed in the 11 Western states. By far, California lost the most open space of all of them.

Yet there is a gaping hole large enough to drive a bulldozer through in both the Disappearing West website and Rogers’ article about it: the role of human population growth in driving all this development and loss of open space. Various wildlife population sizes are mentioned in the Disappearing West report, but there is not one mention of human population size and growth. Why this glaring omission?

Source: Once-Wild West Disappearing Under Development | Californians For Population Stabilization

Disappearing West

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Construction Eliminating Plants and Animals

Urban Sprawl--Los_Angeles

Every 2.5 minutes, the American West loses a football field worth of natural area to human development. This project maps a rapidly changing landscape, explores what is being lost, and profiles a new movement for conservation that is gaining ground.

Natural areas in the West are going fast. With each flight home, we get a bird’s eye view of sprawling new roads, oil wells, and pipelines. The Oregon woods we explored as kids are now stumps without songbirds. We see fewer stars through Santa Fe’s brightening lights.

Yet, from governors’ mansions to the halls of Congress, questions about land and wildlife conservation command relatively little attention today. The conventional wisdom seems to hold that the most consequential battles over America’s wild places are already settled. President Theodore Roosevelt, Sierra Club founder John Muir, and the environmental activists of the 1960s won protections for national parks, national forests, and wilderness areas. In the eyes of some politicians, the West’s open spaces are not only well protected, but too well protected. An anti-parks caucus in the U.S. Congress, for example, wants to block new national parks and sell off the West’s national forests to private owners.

Natural area loss, by state

State Total area modified by human development, in square miles Natural area lost, in square miles Percent change in area modified by human development
2001 2011 2001-2011 2001-2011
Wyoming 10,378 10,873 496 4.8%
Utah 8,248 8,624 376 4.6%
Oregon 12,431 12,843 412 3.3%
Washington 13,812 14,269 456 3.3%
Arizona 11,560 11,931 371 3.2%
Colorado 18,428 18,953 525 2.9%
California 29,856 30,641 785 2.6%
New Mexico 12,587 12,905 319 2.5%
Nevada 8,345 8,490 145 1.7%
Idaho 11,240 11,391 151 1.3%
Montana 23,485 23,770 285 1.2%
Source: Conservation Science Partners, “Description of the approach, data, and analytical methods used to estimate natural land loss in the western U.S.” (2016), unpublished technical report, available here. 
Source: Disappearing West

GR:  Go to the Source for more facts on the loss of natural areas to construction in the U.S.

Peace park proposed for Karen State, Myanmar- DVB Multimedia Group

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Proposed Nature Sanctuary/Park in Myanmar

KESAN hopes the introduction of the Salween Peace Park will also stop logging concessions in the area, which cause irreparable damage to wildlife and the environment.  Source: Peace park proposed for Karen State- DVB Multimedia Group

Salawin River

Salawin River

Click for Photo Source

 

The number one thing we can do to protect Earth’s oceans | Ensia

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Protecting Earth’s Oceans

By Liza Gross

When New England fishers complained of working harder and harder to catch fewer and fewer fish, Spencer Baird assembled a scientific team to investigate. Though a fishery failure would once have seemed inconceivable, Baird wrote in his report, “an alarming decrease of the shore-fisheries has been thoroughly established by my own investigations, as well as by evidence of those whose testimony was taken.”The report was Baird’s first as head of the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. The year was 1872.Baird recognized the ocean’s limits. A decade later, however, his British counterpart, Thomas Huxley, took a decidedly different view. Calling the sea fisheries “inexhaustible,” Huxley deemed regulations useless, since “nothing we do seriously affects the number of fish.”

Source: The number one thing we can do to protect Earth’s oceans | Ensia