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World Population passes 7 Billion on Oct. 30, 2011!

Can our planet sustain 9 billion in 20 years? Are we in Utah setting a good example for the developing world?

From the Salt Lake Tribune by Nicholas D. Kristof:

What if there were a solution to many of the global problems that confront us, from climate change to poverty to civil wars? There is, but it is starved of resources. It’s called family planning, and it has been a victim of America’s religious wars.

Partly for that reason, the world’s population just raced past the 7 billion mark this week, at least according to the fuzzy calculations of U.N. demographers.

What’s the impact of overpopulation? One is that youth bulges in rapidly growing countries like Afghanistan and Yemen make them more prone to conflict and terrorism. Booming populations also contribute to global poverty and make it impossible to protect virgin forests or fend off climate change. Some studies have suggested that a simple way to reduce carbon emissions in the year 2100 is to curb population growth today.

Moreover, we’ve seen that family planning works. Women in India average 2.6 children, down from six in 1950. As recently as 1965, Mexican women averaged more than seven children, but that has now dropped to 2.2...Click here to read more

Also, read below about GPI news & Earth Overshoot Day.

Utah media coverage of the Utah Genuine Progress Indicator:

Salt Lake City station KCPW aired a GPI interview on both January 20th & 21st, 2011.

Please click here to read the transcript/article.

University of Utah features a short article on GPI 'Quality of Life' in it's

Feb. 2011 College of Social & Behavioral Science Newsletter.

Be sure to go to the bottom menu option to the left as our new GPI study has released on January 19th, 2011 and summaries/full report are available for download. Please also visit our blog for interesting commentary and discussion on GPI and other topics.

Earth Overshoot Day 35 Days Earlier in 2010!

Humanity Now Demanding 1.6+ Earths. When was it in 2011? How many months each year are we "deficit spending" the earth's resources?

The Global Footprint Network has released data that reveals a widening gap between human demand on ecological services and what nature is able to produce. It would now take more than one and a half Earths to generate all the resources humanity consumes and absorb all our CO2 and other emissions, according to the latest Ecological Footprint and biocapacity calculations. These figures are based upon accurate source data.

The data show that humanity’s demand on the biosphere for providing natural resources and absorbing carbon dioxide emissions is greater than 50 percent of what nature can provide. This ecological overshoot means it now takes approximately 19 months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in one year. The urgent threats we are facing today - most notably climate change, but also biodiversity loss, shrinking forests, declining fisheries and freshwater stress - are symptoms of this trend.

Earth Overshoot Day 2009 was September 25th. In 2010 it was August 21st!

Please join us and fellow partners in using the day as an important opportunity to build media and public awareness of overshoot, its relevancy to climate change and the importance of calling our business and government leaders to action.

You may download all of Earth Overshoot Day media outreach materials at www.footprintnetwork.org/earthovershootday/media. There is a rich array of materials including graphics showing how various nations compare.

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