Will Affluence Ruin the Environment?
If 2020 teaches us anything, it’s that the next crisis is likely right around the corner, and could be prevented, or at least contained, if we act swiftly. A pandemic that scientists long warned was likely to occur, occurred, and has already killed well over 240,000 people in the U.S. Dozens of large wildfires – the latest evidence of the climate emergency – are torching the American
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Will U.S. Population Fall in 2021?
Three key factors determine the fluctuations in a country’s population: births, deaths, and net immigration. The coronavirus pandemic is disrupting all three in ways that could portend dramatic departures from “normal” population growth scenarios.
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Climate Change, Migration and National Security
As climate change accelerates, as much as one-third of world population could live in places that most humans consider
too hot for habitation. Currently fewer than 25 million people, predominantly in Africa, live in these hot zones, defined as
places where mean annual temperature (MAT) is above 84 degrees Fahrenheit.1 By comparison, Miami’s MAT is a
comparatively “frigid” 74 F.
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CORONAVIRUS AND HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH
WHERE WE ARE, HOW WE GOT HERE, CAN WE RECOVER AND SAVE OUR NATION AND OUR PLANET? An NPG Forum Paper by Michael G. Hanauer
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Human Fertility and Climate Change
Click here for a downloadable, printable PDF version Human Fertility and Climate ChangeAn NPG Forum Paperby Edwin S. Rubenstein April 2020 Thomas Malthus warned that human population growth would outstrip the food supply. That fear largely dissipated when fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanized agriculture lowered the price, and increased the quantity, of foodstuffs. But today the very things that bailed us …
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RETHINKING U.S. REFUGEE POLICY
The Trump administration recently announced a number of changes in the nation’s refugee policy. They include a lower cap on refugee admissions, restricting the UN’s roll in selecting refugees, and allowing state and local governments to opt out of the program altogether.
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Humans are Making Oceans Warmer, Deeper, and Life Threatening
Without oceans, climate change would be much worse. The oceans directly absorb about a quarter of the CO2 humans spew into the atmosphere. They also take over 90% of the heat from global warming, acting as a buffer against even greater warming. But the oceans themselves are in trouble from climate change, as the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly shows.
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It’s Complicated: The Role of Land in Global Warming
There they go again: Another massive UN climate change report – 107 authors, from 53 countries, examining 7,000 research articles. Another exercise in denial. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on land, rolled out in Geneva in early August, takes on two questions: how land use contributes to climate change, and how climate change affects land.
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The UN Species Extinction Report: Is It Science, or Something Else?
One million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, endangering ecosystems that people all over
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Global Warming: Has Complacency (Finally) Yielded to Panic?
The summer of 2018 was a moment when the ecological future became our present reality. A heatwave baked the entire Northern Hemisphere, killing dozens from Quebec to Japan. In Europe, nuclear power plants shut down because river water that cools their reactors was too warm. The most destructive wildfires in California’s history turned more than a million acres to ash, while a study in the journal PLOS Medicine projected a five-fold rise i
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