Who’s coming for dinner? The answer, in case you’re wondering, is “two billion more people.” That’s the population increase predicted for 2050. How are we going to feed those people? One method is to cut down a lot of the world’s remaining forests and plow the world’s remaining grasslands. That’s a bad approach environmentally: it will … Continue reading »
population
“Why were you destroying government property in Afghanistan?”
I first went to Afghanistan in December 1969. I still remember the bitter cold. USAID had begun to invest in family planning and an American gynecologist had been assigned to the US embassy in Kabul to start a program. He was who had invented a new experimental intrauterine device. It looked to me rather like a … Continue reading »
This telegram will arrive tomorrow
The Poverty and Population class I co-teach emphasizes the many unnecessary and unjustified barriers that prevent women having access to the contraceptives they need. Sometimes overcoming these barriers needs courage. In 1974 had the privilege of working with my Thai friend Mechai Viravaidya to launch a community-based distribution of oral contraceptives and condoms. We were … Continue reading »
Oral contraceptives should be in vending machines and cigarettes on prescription
I am continuing my weekly blog built around the large undergraduate class I co-teach on Poverty and Population. The philosophy of the class has been well summarized by the economist Partha Dasgupta in a recent Science article. He pointed out that, “Family planning is not subject to the play of free markets; it is biased … Continue reading »
On the challenge of consensus
I have been teaching and working as an environmental economist for 40 years and I consider climate change and population growth as the most pressing challenges facing humanity. While I am familiar with much of the political rhetoric surrounding these issues, still I found myself wondering why not much has been done to address these … Continue reading »