For more, the headline link will take you to Google Books Online - taken from a chapter of "A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge", by Laurie Ann Mazur.

Many costs are hidden. For example, global production of steel requires 420 million tonnes of coke (from coal) annually, as well as other hydrocarbons adding up to an equivalent of another 100 million tonnes. Steel is vitally necessary to maintain an industrial society: there are no "green" materials for the construction of skyscrapers, large bridges, automobiles, machinery, or tools.

As each of the three members of the triad threatens to break down, we are looking at a society that is far more primitive than the one to which we have been accustomed.

The mountain-shaped Hubbert's curve represents the ascent and descent of oil production. The descent of the curve will be rather steep: as oil declines, more energy and money must be devoted to getting the less-accessible and lower-quality oil out of the ground; as more energy and money are devoted to oil production, the production of metals and electricity becomes more difficult.

It has been said that, when oil production costs about 4.5% of the economy, the latter begins a downward spiral .

When individual countries such as the USA begin to run out of domestic oil, depletion can be mitigated by the importation of oil from other countries, but when the entire planet begins to run out of oil, however, there will be nowhere to turn - we cannot get oil from outer space .

OIL: In 2005, citizens of the earth consumed about 500 exajoules (EJ) of energy, most of which was supplied by fossil fuels. 500 exajoules is the equivalent of a billion barrels of oil. It is even more important to look at consumption per capita, which reached a "rough plateau" in 1979. Worldwide consumption of electricity rose by 70% from 1990 to 2008, a per capita increase of 41% [population rose a couple of billion in that time].

There may come a point at which there is insufficient energy to prevent widespread brownouts and rolling blackouts.

Fossil fuels provide fuel, lubricants, asphalt, paint, plastics, fertilizer, and many other products. In 1850, before commercial production began, there were about 2 trillion barrels of oil in the ground. By about the year 2010, half of that oil had been consumed, so about 1 trillion barrels remain. At the moment about 30 billion barrels of oil are consumed annually, and that is probably close to the maximum that will ever be possible. By the year 2030, it is said that oil production will be down to about half of that amount. [We must consider the factor of oil-industry inflexibility to contract and to maintain extraction if collapse has already hit the economy.]

When we will reach "peak oil," when the world's annual oil production reaches its maximum and will starts to decline, cannot be determined exactly, because oil-producing countries give rather inexact figures on their remaining supplies. Experts an this matter are Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Colin J. Campbell, Jean Laherrère, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Matthew R. Simmons, and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil.

But if you look at per capita peak oil, 1979 was the peak, when there were 5.5 barrels of oil per person annually, as opposed to 4.5 in 2007.

OTHER FOSSIL FUELS: Coal will be available for a while after oil is gone, although previous reports of its abundance in the US were highly exaggerated . Coal is highly polluting and cannot be used as a fuel for most forms of transportation. Natural gas is not easily transported, and it is not suitable for most equipment.

SOLAR ENERGY: Looking at solar energy, the world's deserts receive 300,000 EJ anually, which at a typical 11% electrical-conversion rate would result in 33,000 EJ .Trying to meet the 2005 demand of 500 EJ, using solar power, we would need an array (or an equivalent number of smaller ones) with a size of 500/33,000 x 36 million km2, which is about 550,000 km2 -- a machine the size of France. The production and maintenance of this array would require vast quantities of hydrocarbons, metals, and other materials -- a self-defeating process. Solar power will therefore do little to solve the world's energy problems.

MINERALS: Figures from the US Geological Survey indicate that within the US most types of minerals and other nonrenewable resources are well past their peak dates of production . Besides oil, these include bauxite (peaking in 1943), copper (1998), iron ore (1951), magnesium (1966), phosphate rock (1980), potash (1967), rare earth metals (1984), tin (1945), titanium (1964), and zinc (1969). The depletion of these resources continues swiftly in spite of recycling.

In the past it was iron ores such as natural hematite (Fe2O3) that were being mined. For thousands of years, also, tools were produced by melting down bog iron, mainly goethite, FeO(OH). These types of iron ores are becoming scarce. Modern mining relies heavily on taconite, the mining of which relies heavily on oil-powered machinery to extract.

GRAIN: Annual world production of grain per capita peaked in 1984 at 342 kg. Carryover stocks have been filling the gap, now leaving less than 2 months' supply as a buffer. Rising temperatures and falling water tables are causing havoc in grain harvests everywhere, but the biggest dent is caused by the bio-fuel industry, which is growing at over 20% per year. In 2007, 88 million tons of US corn, a quarter of the entire US harvest, was turned into automotive fuel.

WATER: The production rate of fresh water is declining everywhere. The UN says: "by 2025, about 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under conditions of water stress ― the threshold for meeting the water requirements for agriculture, industry, domestic purposes, energy and the environment. . . ."

ARABLE LAND: The production of so-called field or grain corn (maize) without irrigation or mechanized agriculture is about a third of the yield that a farmer would get with modern machinery and chemical fertilizer.

Corn, a high-yielding crop that needs little in the way of equipment is used as a handy baseline for other studies of population and food supply. A hard-working adult (i.e. farmer) burns about 2 million kilocalories per year. The food energy from a hectare of corn is about 7 million kilocalories. Under primitive conditions, then, 1 hectare of corn would support only 3 or 4 people, assuming they are vegetarian. We also need to allow for fallow land, cover crops, and green manure, for inevitable inequities in distribution, and for other uses of the land. On a global scale a far more realistic ratio would be 2 people to each hectare of arable land.

There are 15,749,300 km2 of arable land in the world - about 11% of the world's total land area. With a world population of 6,900,000,000, there are 438 people per km2 of arable land, or 4 people per hectare.

In other words, there are already too many people to be supported by non-mechanized agriculture. in terms of agriculture alone, we would be able to accommodate only about half the present number of people in the world.

The UK, as an example, has a population-to-arable ratio of slightly more than 10 people per hectare.

POPULATION: The world's population went from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to about 2.5 in 1950, to about 6.1 billion in 2000. It is now (2010) approaching 7 billion.

It is ironic that oil has been the main source of energy within industrial society, allowing a large population to be possible. It was industrialization, improved agriculture, improved medicine, the expansion of humanity into the Americas, and so on, that first created the modern rise in population, but it was oil in particular that made it possible for human population to grow as fast as it has been doing.

The general depletion of resources could cause such damage to the structure of society that government, education, and intricate division of labor no longer exist. In a milieu of social chaos, what are the chances that the oil industry will be using extremely advanced technology to extract the last drops of oil? Some have said that, after peak oil, the earth could support only 1 to 2 billion people, but, given social chaos, a figure of 1 to 3 billion may be wildly optimistic.

Urban areas will experience the worst of each form of depletion described above.   Karen Gaia says: Regarding solar energy. I have solar electric and hot water on my roof, and it supplies nearly all of my household electrical needs. It would be insufficient to power vehicles, I believe, but the author needs to take this, passive solar, wind power, and energy conservation, including heavily curtailing military use of fossil fuels, into account. We need to concentrate heavily on these things so that there will be enough fossil fuel to run farm machinery until technology catches up.

But after 50 years, millions of the country's poorest women aren't sharing in the empowerment. 59% of women who need subsidized family planning in the U.S. aren't receiving care, according to a 2006 report from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that works to advance reproductive health.

In 2006, before unemployment skyrocketed and the country sank into a recession, the national unemployment rate was 4.7%; today it is around 9.7%. In 2006, 17.5 million women of reproductive age needed assistance paying for contraception.

The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents about 90% of federally funded family-planning clinics, predicts today's numbers are going to be worse. More women are either turning to Medicaid, going to less effective methods, or engaging in risky behavior.

States are struggling to find room in their budgets for birth control.

State-based options range from private-public partnerships, with providers such as Planned Parenthood, to community health centers and private physicians. The most common source of funding for subsidized and no-cost birth control is Medicaid, according to Guttmacher.

California's Family PACT plan has been sucessfully providing free family-planning services to women who earn less than 200% of the national poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a single woman. But California has become one of the most financially unstable states. California health department's Office of Family Planning is currently serving about 1.8 million Californians.

"The cost of the program benefit is about $311 per year per client, but when we did our last survey in 2002, we were saving the state and federal government nearly a billion dollars every two years."

The savings are realized by preventing pregnancies in women who would need financial assistance with prenatal, birthing and postnatal care and, in some instances, treatment for pregnancy complications.

California's system is intended to reduce or eliminate as many barriers to accessing assistance as possible. Not only is its income threshold one of the highest in the country, women also are enrolled and eligible for services on the same day. They can go to walk-in clinics and walk out with their contraceptives.

But the Guttmacher Institute estimates that only 55% of the women who need services in California are receiving them.

In North Carolina, only 35% of the women who need help in obtaining birth control receive it.

"The challenge around rural areas is funding and confidentiality," according to Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina.

"You're likely to know someone who is working in your health department. For many people, the fear of being seen or known will prevent them from going to get services."

North Carolina, like California, is one of the 28 states that have waivers that allow them to use federal Medicaid funds to offset the cost of family planning. However, for the past 15 years the state has had an abstinence-only sex-education system. A comprehensive sex-education plan that will go into effect this fall.

Untangling family-planning preventive measures from discussions of abortion was a key step, Johnson said. If the two issues become linked and abortion fights grab headlines, family planning gets lost in the outcry.

"I think more and more Republicans are certainly coming around to saying that we can separate prevention and planning from abortion," said Kellie Ferguson, the executive director of the Republican Majority for Choice, an organization that supports reproductive rights.

"Whether you're pro- or anti-choice, we all want to see the rate and need for abortion to go down."

The Board encourages countries and partners to work together in the context of opportunities and changes to the Global Fund grant architecture to scale up investments in Maternal and Child Health in the context of Global Fund's core mandate.

The Global Fund will launch call for proposals on May 20, 2010 and look for opportunities to include MCH in their applications for HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and Health Systems Strengthening.

Prior Board strategies gave recipient countries the mandate to develop integrated interventions to address gaps in health delivery. The recent decision notes that some areas along the continuum of care in maternal and child health — including comprehensive family planning — need special attention in order to meet the 2015 MDG goals.

Access to voluntary family planning improves outcomes for maternal health, child health and HIV/AIDS. The integration of family planning and HIV/AIDS is a cost-effective way to prevent HIV infection. At the same cost, family planning services can avert nearly 30% more HIV-positive births than use of nevirapine, by HIV-positive pregnant women.

The Global Fund will finance family planning interventions and reproductive health supplies as critical components of HIV, TB, Malaria and HSS applications. Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia represent a few of the countries that are currently being financed by the Global Fund for these programs.

For countries wishing to take advantage of the Global Fund's willingness to fund integrated programming, Population Action International has developed A Practical Guide to Integrating Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS into Grant Proposals to the Global Fund.  rw

Publicly funded family planning centers have responded to this need, serving 7% more clients in 2008 than in 2001. More than seven million in 2008, helping to avert 1.5 million unintended pregnancies.

Without these publicly funded family planning services, the overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate would have been 47% higher and the abortion rate 50% higher.

Rising costs have made it difficult for publicly funded family planning centers to provide these services. The annual cost per client increased by 27% between 2004 and 2008. By assisting women to avoid unintended pregnancies, publicly funded family planning clinics save taxpayers $3.74 for every $1 spent providing contraceptive care. The services provided in 2008 generated savings of at least $5.1 billion in Medicaid expenditures.

Public funding sources—such as the federal Title X program and state revenues—fail to keep pace with the need.  rw

Of the 155,000 Germans who chose to leave their homeland, most favored the US and Switzerland.

And where is the Green Party on what I call the Population Implosion?

Figures show that the country is no longer attractive, particularly to migrants. There are now 10,000 more people leaving Germany for Turkey than coming the other way.

Bottom line: Germany is not sustainable from a demographic perspective. This is particularly true for the senior population that are looking to retirement, and services that come with getting older.  rw   Karen Gaia says: The question is: Would more people make Germany more sustainable or less sustainable, given the world's limited supply of natural resources? Would Turks come to Germany if migration was not met with prejudice? German seniors benefited from fewer children by the savings of not raising those children and the savings of sparing limited resources. Have German seniors squandered these savings so that they now have little left for their retirement? Sometimes limited resources forces us to make a choice - raising fertility rates to replacement level or having a country full of seniors who no longer produce. But more people is usually not the answer. Neither is economic growth.

There is a saying in Africa that to find out you are pregnant is to have one foot in the grave. It must sound strange since becoming a mother is so celebrated here. But in the developing world, more women die from pregnancy and childbirth than any other cause.

Every minute, a woman dies in childbirth, mostly from preventable causes. Ninety-nine percent of those deaths occur in the developing world. Virtually every woman who dies giving birth lives in a poor country. For every woman who dies in childbirth, twenty more will suffer debilitating and often lifelong injuries such as fistula, literally a hole between the mother's vagina and her bladder or rectum that is caused by obstructed labor and avoided in the developed world through medical intervention. This often leaves women rejected by their communities and unable to support themselves.  rw

UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) summarizes three key areas for action:

. Give women and men access to reproductive health information and services to avoid unintended pregnancies;

. Ensure that all pregnant women have access to skilled care at birth; and

. Ensure that all women with complications in pregnancy have timely access to quality emergency obstetric care.

Meeting unmet needs for contraception alone could reduce up to a third of maternal deaths globally.

Meeting the education and reproductive health needs of adolescents, especially girls, is an important intervention to reduce maternal mortality.

Girls receive education about their reproductive health, including how to prevent HIV. They also learn about setting goals, navigating interpersonal relationships, improving communication skills and understanding their legal rights.

Graduates have improved their reproductive health knowledge and feel empowered to make better decisions about their futures. And, because the program is developed with local community leaders, parents and teachers, it is rooted in local values and builds more local champions for the education and empowerment of girls.

Will our graduates still live in a world where one woman dies every minute in pregnancy and childbirth, as they do today? Or, will countries worldwide have met their target, having finally summoned the will to make motherhood safer?  rw

"Reproductive health is still an alien concept for us here," one of them said.

The voluntary peer educator group was established by an NGO focusing on mitigating reproductive health problems among the city's low income population. It has also established a health clinic on the market's fourth floor, that offers affordable and free reproductive health services.

Cervical cancer is currently at the top of the peer educators' list of reproductive health problems.  rw

An estimated 22% of Swazi women between 15 and 24 are infected with HIV; sexual violence could be an important route of HIV transmission.

The study categorised sexual violence into forced intercourse, coerced intercourse, and forced touching. Forced intercourse before the age of 18 was reported by 5% of girls, with coerced intercourse being reported by 9%. Almost 90% of girls reported the first experience of sexual violence between the ages of 13 and 17.  rw

Dr. Nasreen Jamal, with WHO said poverty and lack of awareness do lead to marriages of girls at very young age. "Its repercussions are often serious and multi-faceted," she said.

Giving birth at a young age can reduce a woman's long term social and economic independence, reduce her educational prospects and put her in danger her health and that of her newborn.  rw

The headmistress said there was a strange odour which engulfed the courtyard as girls began retching uncontrollably.

It was the third such attack against a girls' school in three weeks. Police officials blamed Taliban sympathisers but the insurgents denied any involvement.

The gas smelled like a chemical known locally as Mallatin, which farmers sometimes spread on fields to poison foraging birds.

Last November, men on motorbikes used water pistols to squirt acid in girls' faces as they walked to school on the outskirts of Kandahar. More than a dozen girls and several teachers at the Mirwais School for Girls had the acid thrown in their faces and one was so badly disfigured she had to go abroad for treatment. The attacks caused such distress and fear that many parents kept their girls at home for several weeks but most have since returned to school, vowing not to be intimidated.

The Taliban denied involvement in the acid attacks too but police claimed the men were paid by insurgents hired by rogue elements within the Pakistani intelligence agency. President Hamid Karzai denied there had been any Pakistani involvement.

Women's education was banned under the Taliban, and girls' schools are routinely torched or closed in areas where the insurgents hold sway. In the Mirwais area and other districts close to Kandahar posters had started appearing warning local people not to let their daughters go to school.

Large parts of Kapisa are now under the control of men loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord once bankrolled by the US who is now in talks with the Afghan government of President Karzai. Parwan province, where the two previous gas attacks took place, is widely considered to be one of the safest places in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have shown themselves capable of increasingly complex attacks and Nato accused them this week of using white phosphorus. But they are not thought to have used gas as a weapon in recent years.  rw

If unchecked, the harmful effects of the increasing human activity will cause sufficient resource depletion and damage to the global ecosystem to cause a dramatic and chaotic die-off of humans and many other species.

The harmful effects generated by each individual cannot be expected to be reduced enough to overcome the consumption increases of the projected 50% increase in population, and reduce our harmful down to sustainable levels.

The conclusion then is that the only solution is to reduce the number of human beings on the planet.

The concept of reducing the number of human beings through population control is repugnant to almost everyone.

But it's not how many people the Earth can contain; it's how many people the Earth can sustain.

Many people on this planet will increase their average consumption during the coming years. Those in India and China along with the other developing countries - Brazil, Korea, South Africa, etc. If the people of the U.S. decide to reduce their consumption to that of the people of Bangladesh, with a 50% increase in world population, overall harmful impacts would still go up by 12.5%!

Some European countries have projected population decreases. But Europe represents only 12% of the world's total population. Europe will actually continue to grow until 2030! There continues to be a population explosion.

The United States population will actually end up somewhere north of 450 million by the year 2050.

Overpopulation creates global problems. Every person eats, produces waste, uses energy to some degree.

The argument for immigration could be meaningful if, for every person added to the U.S. population, a Latin American nation reduced its population correspondingly. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Central America and Mexico are growing at a comparable rate to that of the United States - even after the net effect of immigration.

The world-wide population growth continues at an excessive rate. The increasing wealth of nations is accompanied by a fall in fertility, so that in many developed nations, fertility rates have dropped below the replacement value.

But, based on new cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of the relationship between the total fertility rate and the human development index, above a certain degree of economic development, fertility once again begins to rise. In contrast to the current popular and scientific debates, it seems likely that countries at the most advanced development stages will face a relatively stable population size, if not an increase in total population.

The U. N. makes no claim as to which projection is the most likely to occur. The high variant results in a population over 10 billion in 2050. Many people who have looked at this carefully feel that the actual world population in 2050 will most likely be over 10 billion, and more importantly, that worldwide total fertility rates will remain above replacement levels resulting in an ever increasing population for the remainder of the century.

It is very likely that worldwide total fertility rates will not drop below replacement levels anytime in the foreseeable future. Population will likely reach 10 billion or more by mid-century, and it will continue to increase for decades after.

Demand for electricity will increase somewhere between three to five times current levels by 2050 due to increasing demand from developing countries, the dramatically growing global population, and substitution of electric power (think automobiles) for dwindling fossil fuels.

It is hard to imagine any equation where renewable energy will provide such a great percentage of this massive increase. We now have only 7% of our electricity demands met by the combination of wind, solar and geothermal energy.

According to a recent National Geographic article world food production will need to double by 2030. If you consider the negatively trending vectors of water availability, top-soil depletion, fertilizer/fuel depletion, and climate change, it is very hard to see how this can be done.

American politics is totally focused on immediate problems - a food crisis that will occur in the 2030's is too far down the road to pay any attention to now.

Unfortunately, by the time this problem becomes so obvious that even government starts acting - it will be way, way too late.

The brutal reality is this - politicians simply do not have the will to come to our rescue.

The increased demand created by the projected 50% increase in worldwide population, cannot change our behaviors by an amount significant enough to forestall the looming catastrophe that is caused by our overconsumption -It can't be done. Just do the math.

Therefore, the only solution to bringing the cumulative harmful effects of human activity on this planet into balance with our global ecosystem (and thereby avoiding the die-off) is to reduce the number of human beings on the planet.

The concept of some kind of coerced population reduction is repugnant to almost everyone. Emotions run high, and logic is ignored.

But the conclusion is true - whether we like it or not.

Unfortunately, population-reduction activists are equated to murderers. But no serious scientist, population activist, or environmentalist proposes killing people. The lack of intelligent commentary on the part of The Wall Street Journal in this specific editorial is shameful.

If we had far fewer people we will then have a far better educated populace. It is education that leads to innovation, not sheer numbers of people. Under the current circumstances, the millions that will be added to Sierra Leone in the next several decades are unlikely to create the next breakthrough in alternative energy. But if Sierra Leone's population could be stabilized, then they would be likely to experience higher levels of education, and more likely to contribute innovations.

The Chinese have created a model for a policy that could solve all of the looming worldwide catastrophes.

And if their policy is imperfect, we can work to perfect it. We could certainly use their experiences to create significant improvements that would eliminate most of the consequences that disturb us.

The Chinese one-child policy is, in fact, a draconian success story.  rw   Karen Gaia says: to ignore the successes of voluntary family planning is sheer ignorance. No one should push population control until the large unmet need is met, sufficient education has been provided, child marriage is ended, and women are treated more like equals.

1. Some say that it's inevitable that we grow to a vast population, but if we chose, we can stop at 23 million the figure the Australian Academy of Science has said should be our safe maximum.
2. Some worry that the refugee intake would suffer; however, refugees are a tiny fraction of our annual migrant intake.
3. We can plan for convenient transport systems and every imaginable public facility. When was the last time we so much as managed to build the train line before installing the suburb. we're not keeping up with population growth even now.
4. More people means higher house prices so we'll all be richer. There's likely a connection between more people and more environmental damage.

   More people means higher house prices and makes a few of us absurdly rich and turns the rest into mortgage slaves

5. We can't do anything about Australia's population problem till we've solved the world's. Australia must take care of its own problems, just like every other country should.
6. Australia is a vast continent.Australia is a small country with big distances.
7. We're going to have a labor ahortage. Over 100,000 young Australians dropped out of the work force last year, unable to compete with imported workers.
8. If we stop growth, we will be faced with an ageing population. Australia's population is unusually young by first world standards. It is those too young to work, not those too old, who make the greater demands on the public purse.

A bigger factor though is that more people in a more populated world are now living in areas along fault lines. There are 130 cities with populations greater than 1 million, and more than half of those cities are on fault lines.

Haiti, with an estimated population of 9 million, has a fertility rate of 3.81, too high to be sustainable. It's estimated there are about 100,000 Haitians living in the United States illegally and another 30,000 who were awaiting deportation at the time of the quake.  rw

What the "Pill Kills" site doesn't make clear is that the American Life League opposes all contraception of any kind. If the group cared about the environment, it would acknowledge that unplanned births lead to more environmental degradation than the Pill.

The League wants you to protest on June 5, to mourn the anniversary of the 1965 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the right of married couples to use birth control.  rw

Researchers found no evidence of a significant reduction in the rate of decline of biodiversity and noted that the pressures facing biodiversity continued to increase.

Among the drivers of threats to biodiversity are human demands for food, water, energy and materials. The threats include climate change, pollution, habitat loss, as well as over-exploitation of resources and species.

Since 1970, we have reduced animal populations by 30%, the area of mangroves and sea grasses by 20% and the coverage of living corals by 40%. These losses are unsustainable, since biodiversity makes a key contribution to human well-being and sustainable development.  rw

White House appointee named Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a report in 1965 warning that disintegration of the black family in America threatened Johnson's War on Poverty.

"(The black) family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. Now, three out of four black children are born outside marriage. As one prominent black author wrote in 2006: "Children living with single mothers are five times more likely to be poor than children in two-parent households. They are more likely to drop out of school and become teen parents. Evidence suggests that on average, children who live with their biological mother and father do better than those who live in stepfamilies or with cohabiting partners."

The government spends $300 billion annually to assist low-income single parents.

About half of unwed mothers are cohabiting with the father at the time of birth. Not only are most of these men employed when the child is born, more than half earn enough to keep a family out of poverty.

Now, 40% of all children and 72% of black children are born outside marriage. Only about one in seven out-of- wedlock births is to a girl younger than 18. The typical mother of a child born outside marriage is in her early 20s and without much income or education.

Some have avoided confronting the collapse of marriage for fear of stigmatizing fatherless children. After all, these kids are the innocent victims of the marital chaos.

Children have a natural "father hunger." When adults pretend nothing's wrong when Daddy is gone, it tells children their longing is the problem, compounding their hurt and confusion.

For the sake of children, especially, we should muster all our ingenuity and resources to restore a culture of marriage in America.

President Barack Obama clearly recognizes the significance of marriage for the welfare of children. He says that policies that strengthen marriage for those who choose it and discourage unintended births outside of marriage are sensible goals to pursue.

But the president's 2011 budget would eliminate the one program dedicated to encouraging healthy marriage. In its place would be a program promoting a notion of "fatherhood" that doesn't involve the father being married or in the home.  rw   Karen Gaia says: we must stress the importance of fatherhood and the involvement of the father. Married or not, women are less likely to go around looking for another father of their children, and getting involved with yet another man and having another child by him, if the original father would stick around and take responsibility in the raising of their children.

Dr Sandra E. Reznik, who teaches reproductive endocrinology and reproductive pharmacology at St. John's University in New York, wrote in Health Progress that - since it takes about a week from an egg's fertilization to its implantation, the scientific evidence that Plan B treatment is completely ineffective after five days is overwhelming: It works only by preventing fertilization, not by preventing implantation.

Otherwise, she said, the drug would also be found effective from five to 12 days after coitus, because that is the time frame between the last chance for a sperm to fertilize an egg and the time a fertilized egg would implant. The declining effectiveness of Plan B between 48 and 120 hours after coitus adds to the argument that preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted is not one of its effects, she said.

Catholic facilities currently may administer emergency contraception to a rape victim, but only to prevent ovulation or fertilization. However, if the procedure causes an already fertilized egg to be destroyed or prevents its implantation in the womb, that is no longer considered contraception but abortion.

The Catholic definition of abortion includes any destruction of a fertilized human egg, while the American Medical Association defines abortion as any destruction of an embryo following its implantation. The difference is about 7 days in the life of a human egg, and it is what fuels the debate over whether Plan B is only contraceptive or also a possible abortifacient.

This question led the Catholic bishops and four Catholic hospitals of Connecticut to oppose that state's 2007 legislation on emergency contraception unless it allowed hospitals to test for pregnancy and ovulation before administering the drug. In its final form, the law permitted hospitals to do a pregnancy test before administering Plan B, but not an ovulation test.

Theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill of Boston College said that if scientific data show conclusively that Plan B is only contraceptive, any pregnancy or ovulation test before its use as an emergency contraceptive after rape "seems to me an unjustified delay that increases the possibility that the raped woman will become pregnant."

If Plan B never causes abortions, then Catholic hospitals should have no moral problem providing it as an emergency contraceptive to a rape victim.

Plan B apparently "does not affect pregnancies that are already established, so what's really the point in doing a pregnancy test?" she asked. "It doesn't seem to have a scientific validity to it in the way that Plan B, by all accounts, operates."

To view the full report, follow the link in the headline above.

The idea of "Population control" referred to ideas and programs from the 1960's to the early 1990's that argued that national governments should address high fertility for various developmental, economic, and environmental reasons. However the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), led to a transformative change in the views, goals, and approaches to family planning, and all efforts since then have been focused on the individual needs of women, their reproductive desires and rights, and voluntary access to family planning for those who wish to space births or limit their number of children.

Approximately 200 million women worldwide want to space their births or not have more children, but are not using a modern method of contraception. This is called the “unmet need for family planning," and is primarily due to inadequately financed voluntary family planning and girls education.

The OPT financed a study that found that adequately financing voluntary family planning programs would benefit individual women and reduce future carbon emissions at least 1 billion tons of carbon annually by 2050.

Unintended pregnancies occur throughout the world in both developing and developed countries and where there is a recognized need by individual women, that is where effort should be focused.

Efforts to reduce emissions must start with developed or rich nations changing their energy and consumption patterns. But that is not enough. Adequately financing voluntary family planning programs is a contribution to these efforts.

"What has definitely not worked is the imposition of western notions on the African people. The population-control efforts by the UN have not failed because of the opposition of the Catholic hierarchy up in Rome; rather, the Catholic Church has observed what's going on and repeatedly pointed out accurately that those programs are failing, and predicts they will continue to fail. In poor countries, the resentment of westerners causes non-cooperation."

Karen Gaia's response:

First of all, women don't want to have so many children. In many countries, childbirth is dangerous, particularly when it is an early marriage. With malnutrition, disease, and no spacing between children, childbirth IS dangerous. And who wants to bring another child into the world when the family already is going hungry?

Maybe the men want to have a lot of children, but they do so without regard for their wives or girlfriends.

Secondly, the U.N., and the USAID family planning programs have not failed. Rather, they have helped bring the world average fertility rate down from about 6 children per woman to about 2.5 - all because of modern contraception, which the USAID is mostly responsible for developing.

I went to Bangladesh to study that country's family planning program. Their birth rate is stuck at 3.0 - a far cry from the 6-7 about 30 years ago. They have trained women to be health care workers and these women give a pregnant woman a birthing kit - which saves lives even though it costs only $5 a kit, because it provides a much more sterile environment for birthing. Then they have the woman come back after the child is born and ask them if they want to space their children. They most certainly do. So the health care worker is ready with IUDs, contraceptive pills, and injections. They also have menstrual regulation (vacuuming out the contents of the uterus).

After I had my first child, the doctor asked my if I would like birth control, and I said yes - same technique, similar desires across cultures.

In addition, in Bangladesh, they have diarrhea and pneumonia clinics, both of which are major killers for infants, as well as vaccination programs. When infants are not dying so easily, then a woman is not compelled to have so many children.

But they are stuck on an average of three children and I think the reason is male preference. When a woman says the ideal number of children to have is 2, but she feels she needs to have a son, that is what you get - 3.

India is stuck on 3 children per family because the women do not trust contraception (mistrust due to the 1970s male sterilization programs foisted on them?) - they have sterilization instead. So they wait until they have a 'safe' number of children, because sterilization is usually permanent.

As far as I am concerned, the Catholic Church is male chauvinist and as long as they foster that culture, they are hampering the cause toward a sustainable population.

Women need to be educated (delays marriage), and respected enough that they can make money outside of the home, or have some sort of empowerment such that it doesn't matter if there are two girls and no son.

Women need to have control over their bodies and their lives, and it is a Catholic value imposed on other cultures that sex exists only to have children.

The Global MOMS Act calls for:

* Development of a strategy as part of the Global Health Initiative to reduce mortality and improve maternal and newborn health;

* Improved coordination among U.S. government agencies and existing programs that are currently working to reduce maternal and newborn mortality; and

* Authorization of assistance in proven interventions including family planning, access to skilled care at birth and training professionals in emergency obstetric care.

The Global MOMS Act is being introduced as a lead up to the Women Deliver 2010 conference that will be held in Washington, DC June 7-9, 2010.

This year's Women Deliver conference will be attended by nearly 3,000 leaders from 135 countries.

The Global MOMS Act is endorsed by CARE, Amnesty International, Pathfinder International, Guttmacher Institute, Management Sciences for Health, Ipas, Marie Stopes International - US, Americans for UNFPA, National Council of Women's Organizations, White Ribbon Alliance, PATH, PSI (Population Services International), Population Action International, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, International Women's Health Coalition, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and CHANGE.

The well is 5.5 miles deep from the ocean floor in 1 mile deep water in a canyon area associated with the Mobile River. The equipment broken during the catastrophe lies on the ocean floor spilling at least 5,000 barrels of very light weight crude oil a day, and likely to accelerate as the area around the well becomes more and more unstable.

The oil slick covers an area of about 5,000 square miles and is growing rapidly. The damage to the tourism industry in Alabama and Florida may exceed $25 billion a year for several years.

Mobile Bay is a fishery and will suffer loss of large marine fisheries and wildlife. Ships cannot be run in the oil slicked waters. 55% of USA international trade will be lost with the Mississippi River closed.

The loss of this rig alone could account lost production in the order of 5 to 10 million barrels per day over the next 6 years. Due to this disaster, the Obama Administration has just stopped all off shore drilling.

Continuing to solve energy needs with oil costs too much. Alternative Energy is cheap by comparison.

The Continental 750,000volt DC super conducting backbone would have cost us about $40 billion and that would produce the ability to produce with wind and solar power much more energy than this rig could ever hope to have supplied.

Solar Cells are coming on that may reach over 90% efficient, providing electrical generation at 1/5th of the cost of current technology. Magnetic powered devices also show promise.

The USA has already spent nearly $500 Billion into fusion research with no results while research into Alternative Energy was left unfunded.

Humanity must obtain its energy without destroying the earth. The consequences of failure are war and destruction on many levels.   Karen Gaia says: the more people there are, the higher the demand for available energy sources, and the more risky the attempts to obtain them.

The projection is based on births, deaths and domestic and foreign in- and out-migration. In 2000 the birth rate exceeded 2%. Even a 1% rate means about 400,000 more Californians every year.

In 2000, the state's population was 34.1 million; today it is at now 38.8 million, according to the state's demographers, while the U.S. Census Bureau estimates 1.5 million fewer. The 2010 census may settle the difference.

In the late 1960s the issue was at the forefront of public concern, but has since seen a decrease in responsible reporting the importance of addressing the dramatic growth we are faced with. We cannot tackle climate change, poverty, food and water shortages, and the energy crisis - without also addressing the population factor.

When the lead article, by Julia Whitty, says that "Two hundred million women have no access whatsoever to contraception," this is false and represents a common misunderstanding. Lack of access is only minor reason for non-use in most countries. The term "unmet need" does not mean unmet demand for contraception, but rather describes the estimated 215 million women who don't want to be pregnant and are not using contraception, and -- most of them don't want or intend to use family planning because: 1. they have heard it is dangerous, 2. their male partners are opposed, 3. their religion is opposed, or 4. they don't think it will work because they think God determines how many children they will have.

An increase in contraceptive use can only be accomplished using communications to overcome these informational barriers. Also, about 1.6 billion adults in the world do not practice family planning because of societal demands for large families. People must be provided with informed choice based on knowledge of the health and economic benefits of delayed and spaced childbearing.

Whitty also claims that those concerned about national population issues are nativist/racist. While there are some racists involved in population and immigration debates, their racist arguments are not condoned or supported by the mainstream population stabilization movement. Diversity has made and will continue to make the US strong and vibrant. However, we must also mind our domestic carrying capacity and limit our population size if we are to have a healthy and prosperous future with some semblance of biodiversity remaining.

For example, in Australia, where population is mainly driven by immigration, there are legitimate concerns about limitations of water and other resources making national sustainability impossible if population growth continues at 2.1% a year- doubling in just 33 years. The U.S. population, currently at 309 million, grows at about 1% per year, which would double in only 72 years. We are the third most populous nation on the planet.

There is a tendency to assume that anyone concerned about limiting immigration is racist without looking at their motivations. There are also those who say that anyone concerned with global population issues must be driven by racist concerns. But as a driving factor in determining whether human civilization is sustainable, the population issue is too important to be ignored, and the name calling against those working toward true sustainability on the planet needs to stop.

The Senate Budget Committee, on April 22, adopted a budget resolution for fiscal year 2011 that trims the President's budget request by 7%. If upheld by the House and Senate, it could translate into a comparable size reduction in the $715.7 million proposed by the President for international family planning assistance, which is contained in the international affairs budget.

Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Christopher Bond (R-MO), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are trying to build support in the Senate for fully funding the President's budget for international affairs, and asking their fellow Senators to join them in signing a letter to Appropriations Committee Chair Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-MS), urging them fully fund the President's $58.8 billion request in the all-important 302(b) appropriation allocations.

28 Senators have signed onto the bipartisan Kerry-Lugar-Durbin-Bond-Feinstein letter in support of fully funding the FY2011 International Affairs Budget - very encouraging, but several more co-signers are needed before the letter closes on Wednesday.

You can help by calling the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 if one or both of your Senators appears in this list:

Mark Begich (D-AK), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Roland Burris (D-IL), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Bob Corker (R-TN), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Al Franken (D-MN), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Ted Kaufman (D-DE), Herbert Kohl (D-WI), George LeMieux (R-FL), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jim Risch (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), George Voinovich (R-OH), Mark Warner (D-VA)

You could say something like: "I'm a constituent, and I am calling to ask Senator ________ to sign the Kerry -Lugar-Durbin-Bond-Feinstein letter on foreign assistance. It's important that we provide full funding for international family planning assistance."

It implies that the supply of the world's most essential energy source is going off a cliff in a year and a half. Production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today.

This graph tells us:

1. Conventional oil will be almost all gone in 20 years.

2. Production of petroleum from existing conventional sources has been dropping at a rate slightly over 4% per year for at least a year and will continue to do so for the indefinite future.

3. We are past the peak of production, with 750 billion barrels of conventional oil left.

4. Total petroleum production from all presently known sources, conventional and unconventional, will remain "flat" for the next two years and then will start dropping, at first slowly but by 4% per year after 2015.

5. Demand will begin to outstrip supply in 2012, and will already be 10 million barrels per day above supply in only five years. This is equivalent to half the United States' entire consumption. The world would have to find another Saudi Arabia and get it into full production in five years, an impossibility. See The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5154

6. The production from presently existing conventional sources will plummet by 63% in a 20-year period.

7. Meeting demand, assuming a conservative estimate of a 1% annual growth in demand, requires discovering, developing, and bringing to full production 60 mbpd of "unidentified projects" from 2012 to 2030, with approximately 25 mbpd needed by 2020. Only 6.5mbpd of such projects, including the Canadian tar sands, has been deemed possible by the independent Oxford Institute of Energy Studies. 60 mbpd is equivalent to 3/4 of today's total production. We have never in history done anything comparable to that.

The tar sands of Alberta, Canada seemed promising, but because a high percentage of the energy value of the tar sands has to be expended in their extraction, and, consequently, the likelihood of the tar sands making a significant contribution to the world's petroleum demand in the foreseeable future is low.

The curve is virtually identical to one produced by geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere and published in "The End of Cheap Oil," in Scientific American, March, 1998, twelve years ago. The warning signals have been been there for a long time, but the world turned a blind eye. The world was completely transformed by oil for the duration of the twentieth century, but if the graph is right, within 20 years it will be virtually gone but our dependence upon it will not. Colin Campbell said: "Discovery reached a peak in the 1960s - despite all the technology we hear so much about, and a worldwide search for the best prospects. It should surprise no one that the corresponding peak of production is now upon us."

We have virtually no time to plan for:

.replacing cars in our lives;

.the manufacture and installation millions of furnaces to replace home oil furnaces;

.producing the infrastructure necessary to carry out that task;

.retooling suburbia so it can function without gasoline;

.the replacement of the largest military establishment in history, almost completely dependent upon oil;

.the support of nine billion people without the "green revolution," a creation of the age of oil;

.the replacement of oil as an essential fuel in electricity production; preservation of millions of miles of roads without asphalt;

.the replacement of oil in its essential role in EVERY industry;

.the replacement of oil in its exclusive role of transporting people, agricultural produce, manufactured goods: i.e. ships transporting US grain to other countries, airlines linking the world's major cities, ships transporting Chinese manufactured goods to the billions now dependent on them;

.the survival of the billions of new people expected by 2050 in the aftermath of "peak everything".

And there will be no capital, because of failing banks and public and private debt, to address these issues.

Time is so short because, if we at any time use more oil than allowed by the graph, we will have even less later; because we are already committed to supporting 2.5 billion more people on what we have; because every day we continue upward in our oil consumption, even though we continue to have more people who need it and billions who deserve to rise from abject poverty, we are making the future supply shortage worse.

The United States Joint Forces Command reported the failure of the oil industry to invest in the refining capacity necessary to permit expanded production, and said "Even were a concerted effort begun today to repair that shortage, it would be ten years before production could catch up with expected demand."

The "Hubbert Peak" theory predicted the peak and subsequent demise of the US oil inudustry 15 years in advance and within 2 years of its occurance. The theory says that with normal production methods, a country reaches peak production in its oil fields when they are 50% depleted, with the production curve being bell-shaped. The peak can be postponed with innovative extraction techniques, but this only causes subsequent more rapid decline of the deposits and total extraction if anything decreasing. The world reached the midpoint of its reserves in the last decade, so the 2005 "peak" implied by the above graph is very close to what would be expected.

In 1956 Dr. Hubbert told us that the peak of world petroleum production would be approximately the year 2000; this apparently quite accurate prediction by Hubbert has largely been forgotten.

The rate of discovery of new conventional oil has been steadily dropping now for forty years despite ever-more searching with ever-more-sophisticated technology. The lag time between discovery and bringing to full production of a field is 30-40 years, so even if another oil field of Saudi Arabia size were discovered, it would barely affect the graph.

The US Joint Forces Command tells us: "The discovery rate for new oil and gas fields over the last two decades (with the possible exception of Brazil) provides little reason for optimism that future efforts will find major new fields."

OPEC members have business reasons to exaggerate their reserves, and companies on the public stock market want to satisfy their stockholders of their long-term viability, and all oil producers want to make their customers confident that they can rely on oil for the long haul. By concealing their future from homeowners, oil companies have made trillions for the real estate business and the banks at the expense of those who chose urban sprawl over dense "near-in" housing, and the companies themselves will make trillions in the near future selling to consumers trapped into oil addiction, who might have sought alternatives more vigorously had they known how close the crash was.

Matt Simmons, the banker who has spent his post-Harvard-Business School career advising oil companies has warned that "the failure of Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers to provide transparent production data has left the world in a lurch, unable to know whether it can maintain an adequate supply of oil in the face of burgeoning demand Such uncertainty has led to indecision about whether the world should invest the huge sums of money necessary to develop alternative transportation fuel sources."

Part of the problem is that the historically-reliable US Geological Survey (USGS) declared that world reserves of conventional oil were around three trillion barrels rather than two, providing the world with an extra thirty years' supply at present consumption rates. Former USGS employees disputed this estimate as relying "heavily on guesses to calculate new oil discoveries," and on doubling the usual 30% recovery rate from reserves "with no technology in mind capable of doing that." This led the Department of Energy during the Bush Administration to forecast a "production peak somewhere between 2021 and the start of the next century, with 2037 the most likely date."

In 2006 skeptics - Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) - published a "theory" in a non-peer-reviewed report, that "peak oil" was in its totality a false concept, and that the true behavior of an oil field or conglomeration thereof was a peak followed by an "undulating plateau" and then a gentle decline by around 2% per year. The theory relies on information undisclosed, but industry refuses to disclose.

The percentage-reduction goals set by the UN, the US Congress, the Obama Administration and the oil industry for global warming legislation miraculously, although arguably coincidentally, fit quite precisely the percentage reductions in oil consumption that will be physically forced upon us all if you believe the above graph: an 18% drop from 2005 by 2020, and an 85% drop from 2005 by 2050. It is hard to see how the negotiators could have come up with such correspondence if they had not all been aware of the impending crash of production and the expected decline rate.

It is hard to see how the industry and the Department of Energy could have failed to see this coming. Their failure to warn the public, given the consequences, verges on the criminal. Why did they not heed the warning of Matt Simmons, advisor on peak oil to the Bush administration, as to the importance of transparency. But they did not, and here we are.

It is a time for communities to prepare for community energy independence, because only that way will be safe. This means relying on the sun and wind and water that have always been with us. It means cooperation with each other to get through seriously difficult times. It means finding alternatives to oil throughout our lives as quickly as possible - the oil that runs our cars, the oil that heats our houses, the oil that runs generators for our electricity, the oil from which chemical fertilizers and insecticides and plastics and polyester are made, the oil that brings countless manufactured goods to us from overseas, the oil on which farmers depend for irrigation pumps, for transporting produce to market, for working the soil to bring us food. If you believe the graph, it will almost all be gone in 20 years.

Supporting documentation:

http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf

http://www.eia.doe.gov/conference/2009/session3/Sweetnam.pdf

Many policy makers believed that the only appropriate form of birth control was celibacy. Anthony Comstock, the powerful crusader for the Sexual Purity campaign sent 4,000 people to jail for helping women understand, and use, birth control. He seemed to take particular pleasure in the fact that 15 of them had committed suicide.

One of his targets was Margaret Sanger, a nurse who wrote a sex education column, "What Every Girl Should Know." When Comstock banned her column on venereal disease, the paper ran an empty space with the title: “What Every Girl Should Know: Nothing, by Order of the U.S. Post Office."

Sanger published an evaluation of all the available forms of birth control, for which she was charged for criminal obscenity. Later Sanger helped bring together the wealthy donors and brilliant researchers who would bring forth the first effective oral contraception.

It seems ironic that, when couples like Rob and Laura Petrie, or Lucy and Desi were portrayed on television in twin beds on the opposite side of the room, kids were getting a pretty thorough grounding in sex and the ways to prevent pregnancy; but now “Kids growing up today watch ‘Gossip Girl' and all these shows where every teenager is having sex every day — and now we don't teach sex education in school," notes Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood.

Even though 100 million women take the pill every day, the terror of mentioning birth control is so great that the humongous new health care reform act has managed to avoid bringing it up at all.

“If the administration would announce tomorrow that all birth control would be free for every woman in America, I think the health care plan would gain 30 points in popularity overnight," said Richards.

Its approval 50 years ago by the FDA didn't mean it was available to all women, but it was a huge step forward.

In June 1960, women were finally able to walk out of a medical office with a prescription in hand, at least in the states where it was legal and with women who could afford it. A prescription that might as well have been a ticket to the future, and to a life that held so much more opportunity than it had just a day before.

Within a decade, one in four married women under 45 had used The Pill — thanks in part to a Supreme Court case fought by Planned Parenthood to guarantee access for married women in all 50 states. By the 1980s, that number was up to nearly 80 million women worldwide, and today it is 100 million women. Still, countless women lack access to affordable birth control, including The Pill.

Chances are, if you're a woman reading this, you have used the Pill and probably have a story about how, with the pill, everything changed for you.

Planned Parenthood and others have been pushing the effort to force all insurers to cover The Pill for years. Now, we are also pressing the current administration to include contraception along with other preventive health care at no cost under the new health care reform law. You and I know just how critical it is that every woman everywhere has access to quality, affordable reproductive health care, including The Pill. We need to make sure federal officials know it, too.

If you have a story about how The Pill changes lives or how we fought for access to The Pill to share those stories, help stand with those women who still don't have access by sharing it. There are those who still don't understand how transformative that little pill can be for the health, happiness, and opportunities of millions of women. By sharing your story, you'll help make sure that contraception is covered at no cost under health care reform.

Follow the headline link to share your story.   Karen Gaia says: I first started using the pill in 1963, after my first child was born a couple of years before I had planned to have children. I had just turned 20 and was a married college student. At my postnatal check, my doctor asked me if I wanted to get pregnant again right away. Of course I said 'No', and he recommended the pill. I was amazed 30 years later, to find on a visit to a family planning project in Bangladesh, that the same method was used for young women shortly after the birth of their first child. Female health care workers were prepared to administer several methods of birth control when birth spacing is desired. Although the pill failed me twice, and also an IUD, I am extremely grateful since I would have had 6-7 (or maybe 13, like my grandmother) children, instead of just four. Fortunately birth control has improved a lot since then and so far I only have two grandchildren.

"We submitted an application for a three-year funding renewal to CIDA . . . in June, 2009," said Paul Bell of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in London. “It is unusual not to have heard anything about the proposal at this stage, 11 months after it was submitted."

Up until now, Canada has supplied a significant part of Planned Parenthood's $120 million annual budget.

Another maternal health agency, Marie Stopes International, has already fallen under the abortion ban - and received only funding on the agency avoiding any connection with abortion.

“The decision is a real missed opportunity to make an impact on the 13 per cent of maternal deaths caused by unsafe abortions globally," said the group's CEO Dana Hovig in a statement. “You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health and (that) includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband are also upset about Canada's abortion stance. The Canadian government won't fund abortion, but Harper says it will put money into programs for safe pregnancy and childbirth, as well as family planning.

However, Harper has not backed a plan to ask world leaders to endorse a more than $30 billion global fund estimated to save the lives of up to 12 million women, children and newborns, nor has Canada supported the pre-summit Women Deliver conference in Washington, which will be attended by senior officials and politicians from around the world, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Yet despite the fluctuations, demand for oil in some countries, such as China and India, has increased because of the rapid growth in the transportation sector and consumer demand. Yet world oil supplies have to come to an end.

Forecasting the future is difficult, some new supply source may be discovered is one example. Demand may increase and wars consume yet more. Alternate energy sources may also be discovered.

Accurate prediction of oil production is affected by fluctuating ecological, economical, social, and political factors.

The Kuwait study was done to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy.

The original Hubbert peak theory says that for any given area, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell shaped curve.

Early in the curve (pre-peak), the production rate increases because of the discovery rate. Late in the curve (post-peak), production declines because of resource depletion. Hubbert's Peak was reached in the continental US in the early 1970s, and peaked at 10.2 million barrels a day. Since then, it has been in a gradual decline.

The Kuwait approach overcomes the limitations and restrictions of the original Hubbert model with more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves. The world production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 million barrels/day. OPEC has a remaining reserve of 909 barrels, which is about 78% of the world reserves.

OPEC production is expected to peak in 2026 at a rate of 53 million barrels/day. On the basis of 2005 world crude oil production and current recovery techniques, the world oil reserves are being depleted at an annual rate of 2.1%.

Other models predict peak oil production to occur anywhere from today to 2030. The exact date will not be known until it happens. A new lifestyle for all of us will have to happen sooner or later.  rw

Couples who were both only children, which includes most of the city's newly-weds, are allowed two children. Couples are allowed to have two if both partners have PhDs, or are disabled, or come from a rural area, or in some cases if their first child is a girl. There are exceptions for when a widow or widower, or a divorcee, marries someone childless.

Family planning authorities are going on the offensive to encourage more procreation.

However the One Child Policy policy remains in place in most parts of the country. The main focus of the One Child Policy has been on the countryside, where farmers traditionally liked to have large families, especially ones with lots of sons.

Middle-class Chinese in the cities have fewer children by choice.

In 2004, Shanghai got rid of a rule that required a gap of at least four years between the births of first and second children.

Shanghai has about three million people aged 60 or older, 21.6% of the population. We advocate eligible couples to have two kids because it can help reduce the proportion of ageing people and alleviate a workforce shortage in the future.

The spectre of an ageing population hangs heavy over Shanghai, where the proportion of working adults poses a major burden in the future. By 2050, China will have more than 438 million people over 60, with more than 100 million of them 80 and above.

China will have 1.6 working-age adults to support every person aged 60 and above. Government forecasters expect China's population to peak at around 1.5 billion in 2032.  rw

This is according to 'Saving Mothers 2005-2007', an analysis of all maternal deaths nationally, which was quietly released via the health department's website, 'maternal deaths' are "deaths of women while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes".

Most deaths occurred in KwaZulu-Natal, which has the highest HIV/AIDS rate. Over 350 deaths were reported in this province in 2006, the highest recorded rate of any province since 1998. Only around 60% of the women who died had been tested for HIV, almost eight out of ten were HIV positive.

Aside from AIDS-related infections, hypertension (15.7%), obstetric haemorrhage (12.4%), pregnancy-related sepsis (9%) and pre-existing maternal disease (6%) were the other main killers that could have been avoided. The report points to the need for better management of "complications of hypertension, obstetric haemorrhage, pregnancy related sepsis and non-pregnancy related infections".

These factors were responsible for four out of five of avoidable deaths. Health care providers either failed to diagnose the problem or failed to follow standard protocols in treating it.

There was a 14% decrease in women dying of complications of hypertension in health institutions. Women under 20 were at greater risk of dying from hypertension while those 35 years and older were at greater risk of dying of haemorrhaging, ectopic pregnancies, embolism, acute collapse and pre-existing medical disease. Deaths due to non-pregnancy related infections peak at 25-29 years and is mirrored in deaths due to complications of abortion and pregnancy following a viable pregnancy.

The report recommends:

Improving health care provider knowledge and skills in providing emergency care, and adequate screening and treatment of the major causes of maternal death; improving the quality and coverage of contraceptive and termination of pregnancy services; better management of staffing and transport and availability of blood for transfusion; community involvement regarding reproductive health.  rw

The religious decree imperils efforts to salvage legislation that would make it illegal for those under the age of 17 to marry.

The practice is widespread in Yemen and has been hard to discourage in part because of the country's poverty - bride-prices in the hundreds of dollars are difficult for poor families to pass up.

More than a quarter of Yemen's females marry before age 15. Tribal custom plays a role, including the belief that a young bride can be shaped into an obedient wife, bear more children and be kept away from temptation.

A 2009 law set the minimum age for marriage at 17, but it was repealed and sent back to parliament for review after some lawmakers called it un-Islamic.

The group behind the declaration includes Yemen's most influential cleric, Sheik Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, whom the United States has branded a spiritual mentor of bin Laden.

Government officials are reluctant to challenge conservative tribal and religious figures whose support they need to hold power in the nation.

The religious leaders organized a protest by a group of women who carried signs that read "Yes to the Islamic rights of women."

The issue vaulted into the headlines three years ago when an 8-year-old girl went by herself to a courtroom and demanded a judge dissolve her marriage to a man in his 30s. She won a divorce, and legislators began looking at ways to curb the practice.

In September, a 12-year-old Yemeni child-bride died after struggling for three days in labor. "The government has two options: to give girls in Yemen a chance at life or to condemn them to a death sentence," said the chairwoman of Sisters Arab Forum in Yemen.

Yemen once set 15 as the minimum age for marriage, but parliament annulled that law in the 1990s, saying parents should decide when a daughter marries.  rw