What follows is a link to the most recent article from one of our finest colleagues, Paul R. Ehrlich.

http://www.journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1647396&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1355770X07004019

Sincerely,

Steve

It sounds as though this person has been asked to teach a course on something on which they aren’t really up to speed. If I get the chance I could round up a few articles, but for the instructor to put individual articles into perspective would require a pretty good handle on the topic as a whole. Also, as in many other fields, to focus only on recent articles would be to miss the landmark articles which have shaped the discourse.

Though it’s a masters level course, I wonder if, in this case, it might make more sense just to focus on a small number of good, reasonably recent books. Perhaps something like… Limits to Growth – The Thirty Year Update, One with Nineveh, Ecological Economics (Daley and Farley), and, though it’s not recent, Catton’s Overshoot because it will provide students with such a good grasp on the nature of the problem.

The three of you are making what appear to me as singular contributions to the most significant work of our time. Thanks for all each of you are doing.

What follows is an email I received yesterday. I have not had a chance to respond to it and likely will not do so before next week. You and our community will appreciate the import of what follows:

begin —-

—–Original Message—–
From:_____________________
To: sesalmony [at] aol.com
Sent: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 6:32 pm
Subject: recommendations for grad level articles on population and sustainable development?

Dear Dr. Almony,

This spring I am co-teaching a master’s level course with ______________________. Our course is on Sustainable Development and
Environment, offered at _______________________________.
Unfortunately the syllabus we inherited is a bit out of date.

_________________________________ recommended that I contact you to see if you (or one of your
colleagues) might recommend recent journal articles or other sources on
population and sustainable development. Topics could include: population
growth and environmental degradation, Neo-Malthusian theories, alternative
explanations, etc.

I visited the Sustainability Southeast website that you are affiliated with,
but was not able to access the full articles listed there:
*Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability; Hopfenberg, R.;
Population & Environment; November, 2003.
*Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply; Hopfenberg, R. and
Pimentel, D.; Environment, Development and Sustainability; March, 2001.

Do you know how I can access these articles? And/or do you have additional
suggestions for articles or sources?

Some of the other articles that I am considering using are:
* Ehrlich, Paul R., Ehrlich, Anne H. and Daily, Gretchen C. “Food Security,
Population and Environment,” Population and Development Review. 19 (1):
1-32 (March 1993).
* Urdal, Henrik, 2005. “People vs. Malthus: Population Pressure,
Environmental Degradation, and Armed Conflict Revisited.” Journal of Peace
Research 42(4): 417–434. FIND PDF COPY!
* Cohen, Joel. “Human population grows up.” Scientific American 293(3):
48-55, September, 2005.

I’d appreciate any ideas that you have for articles or other sources. Thank
you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

____________________
____________________
____________________

end —-

I am putting forward this email here and now because I would like to ask the three of you and other friends to give me your recommendations, ones which I can pass along in the email I plan to send out next week to a colleagues (and students) who could be ready to struggle with the same issues discussed here. Please send recommendations to me at

Y’all are members of a small community that can already see the need for us to shift (and do so with all deliberate speed) from material “growth madness” to sustainable non-materialism; from globalized competition to localized cooperation. What is critical is our shared appreciation for the “fact” that time is not on the side of the future wellbeing of the human community; and consequently nothing appears more important, at least to me, than spreading the word as we have been doing in different ways.

This work of ours is so vital that I have come to believe that people simply have to be awakened now to humanity’s emergent and convergent global challenges, some of which are already visible and looming ominously on the far horizon.

In closing, I want to say again to Trinifar, “Please, do not be away for too long. ” Your clarity of vision, coherence of mind and willingness to speak out loudly and clearly are rare and much needed in a time when the brightest and best among us appear thunderstruck by threats that humanity could confront soon…..perhaps much sooner than the self-serving political leaders and economic powerbrokers among us are imagining.

Always, with thanks to this wonderful, small and, yes thankfully, dedicated community of truth-tellers,

Steve

Magne: “I can sense that we’re all going mute”

Oh, no, not for a minute. Maybe a bit of pause to search for a way to be heard through the din.

“We are, as a matter of fact, about to give up and give in here. “

Never.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/awry

I can see what is happening here, and I can sense it. Things have seriously gone awry here. Those two important events of early December 2007 — the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Bali, and the joint awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPPC, in Oslo, I can sense that we’re all going mute. Discussions just stopped here. We are, as a matter of fact, about to give up and give in here. There’s nothing I can do about this. Me, I’m just a zombie leading the zombie life of some kind of a political criminal in the Royal Kingdom of Norway. I don’t know about you guys. For all I know, you are almost ready to just wander off and head for the nearest forest, where everyone is equally free to take and eat every mushroom we can find.

So here’s the next question: “What shall we do with the drunken sailor? And what’s his identity anyway??!”

Please do not be gone too long from the online world. Your attributes of intellectual honesty, moral courage and willingness to openly share a perspective on the human predicament are very much needed in our world today. Too few people are willing to acknowledge what you are seeing and to be active in the ways you are. As I see it, the work at hand is vital.

One more thing. As you know, I am one of those people who believes that human beings are capable of taking the measure of all challenges and finding solutions to their problems which are consonant with universally shared values.

Even so, it still worries me to realize that with every passing day in which the human community chooses to follow leadership that adamantly and relentlessly advocates the “primrose path” marked by the feckless over-consumption of Earth’s limited resources; the reckless degradation of global ecosystems from massive industrialization; and skyrocketing global human population numbers, we bring closer the day when some ecologic catastrophe or economic disaster could be presented to us.

My hope is that conversations like this one will encourage others in many places to share their perspectives regarding what looks to me like a formidable, distinctly human-induced predicament, one that could potentiate a clear and present danger to humankind sooner rather than later.

Very best of luck with each and every thing you choose to do,

Steve

- —

Yesterday I was blogging on Trinifar’s site, and incidentally, as you wrote this, I waded into the spiritual side of human life. I was musing about humanity’s connection to nature, as a species of mammals, and not only creatures of society and culture. As I found myself wading waist-high into these extremely troubled waters, I found that I had to ask Trinifar to erase my comments. As it is, you see, the issue of “humanity: the instinct-ridden mammal whose connection to nature is, in essence, to be likened with that of other mammal species” — is a very frightening issue. Basically, my problem is, quite frankly, that from personal experience I know way too much about this. It is a fact and an issue that I tend not to either write or speak openly about, but it is constantly on my mind. It’s just the way it is, and I can’t help it.

Not that it helps me at all, but as I’m educated as a social anthropologist, it is very easy for me to see that the philosophies of red indians and the philosophies and thought systems of many other aboriginal peoples from around the world often have a clearer understanding of humanity’s place in the big picture, which has nothing to do with local councils and the administration of nation states, but which has everything to do with the species’ intricate connection to nature; not only in the spiritual sense, but also in the physical. I think the best thing I can do, is present myself a proponent for deeply holistic modes of thinking. At worst, I can call myself a religious person and an animist. —

As a modern and well read social scientist, I am now about to commit social suicide, I know. As the spiritual aspect of human life and proposed interconnectedness with nature, simply isn’t an issue to be meddled with. Well, not from within the educational system, the university sector, and any other systems of knowledge production. What I am saying has esoteric value, at best, and this is a form of value that has nothing to do with fact heavy scientific discourse, university papers and reports made the political administration to take into account and discuss rationally.

A social scientist who admits to being a religious person had better call himself a Christian, a Jew, or a Muslim. If he is Indian or Japanese, he can feel free to calling himself Hindu or Shinto. Is it possible for a social scientist to present humself as a Buddhist? Of course it is, but it should not be an important aspect affecting his production of scientific papers.

Animism and natural religions is definitely out of place. I wonder why this is so? As usual, I think it has a lot to do with fear. Natural religions are the big unknown, and they are invariably associated with primitive, tribal people, previously known as savages and barbarians. Their philosophies, systems of thought and knowledge production, cosmologies and spirit beliefs are exclusively to be seen as examples of cultural processes which has little or nothing to do with the real world, but can, be regarded as prehistoric or prescientific.

As a matter of fact, if I wish to be taken seriously now, I had better start researching the religious ideas of the red indians. Because, in the strangest way of all, it’s true to say that most white people have just a little sympathy to afford to the almost exterminated native American (red indian) way of thinking.

About your hopes that a peaceful, non-violent revolution can possibly take place. There are a few more examples of this than you think. It is fair to say that the Eastern European revolution of the late 1980s and early 1990s — the political shift from communism to attempted democracy — took place in a relatively peaceful, non-violent manner. Only in Romania — which, under the leadership of Nikolai Ceaucescu, was probably the craziest of all communist regimes of the era — did the revolution take place in a violent fashion.

I would also like to mention the 1974 revolution in Portugal, where a right-wing, fascist political regime was ousted in a non-violent fashion. What happened was, of course, that the armed forces joined the people in their social up-rising aimed at political change.

Let me also mention the revolution of South Africa which, after a century of apartheid, installed Nelson Mandela and the ANC as the new political leadership of the country. Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was probably an instrument which could only be put in place in Africa: a continent on which long-standing enemies have always shook hands and become “friends” as soon as wars come to an end and conflicts are resolved.

As I prepare to take some time off from the on-line world, your thoughts resonate in a special way.

…our leadership will not speak openly and intelligibly about anything which serves to raise questions regarding the long-term viability of the huge scale and anticipated growth of an endlessly expanding global economy for fear of losing their positions as leaders.

I just wrote a comment on Magne’s new blog Mulig which reflects on this. In short: You’re right, and we need to find a way to take back political power, that is, to move the locus of political power from large corporations and business groups back to its proper place, the citizenry. Only then can we expect to grow a new crop of responsible leaders.

At times this task seems impossible. People seem enthralled with consuming, and vast sums are spent on advertizing to enourage and feed the addiction. How does a different kind of voice get heard?

Recently I’ve been reading about past revolutions. The only kind I’m prepared to join are the nonviolent ones and there have been precious few of those. Still, the civil rights movement changed America and Gandhi helped lead India to become an independent, democratic nation.

There is something I would like you to consider and, if it pleases you, to comment upon.

My impression is that the ‘talking heads’ in the mass media make many reports about “the world”; but these reports are as mainly organized around the artificially designed, manmade, global political economy. Afterall, “money, money, money, money makes the world go around.” Now, of course, there is nothing the matter with organizing things in this way; however, people do need to be reminded from time to time that this way of viewing “the world” fails to recognize the Earth and human beings as integral parts of that world.

The mass media appears to segregate the Earth as well as human beings from economic globalization. By so doing, we are allowed ‘to forget’ what most of us know: that human beings and the gigantic global political economy are a part of, and utterly dependent upon, the Earth. There can be no human species and no human economy without the natural resources and ecosystem services only Earth can provide, I suppose.

Sometimes, it appears to me as if the human community is once again discovering that too many of us are being mesmerized by a spectacularly successful, modern-day Tower of Babel, one that takes its colossal shape from economic globalization. That is to say, human thinking, judging and willing have become so grievously captivated by our idolatry of the global economy that our leadership will not speak openly and intelligibly about anything which serves to raise questions regarding the long-term viability of the huge scale and anticipated growth of an endlessly expanding global economy for fear of losing their positions as leaders.

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001