A new report was released on Monday by the UN’s high level panel on global sustainability. Unsurprising its conclusion is that the world’s current economic , environmental and demographic trajectory is wildly unsustainable.  According to the UN estimates, as reported by Reuters:

“[a]s the world's population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially.

Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water…at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply.”

The threat is that if we do not implement sweeping changes, then we risk “condemning up to 3 billion people into… click here to read whole article and make comments

After last year’s horrific natural disasters, Japan’s government moved away from continuing the child subsidy programme that was introduced in 2009 to try and encourage the Japanese people to have more babies (we blogged about that here).  Now, it is unsurprising that a year later the Earthquake is still having economic repercussions, but its effects are again being linked to the wider demographic problem that is threatening to sink Japan. 

According to The Telegraph:

“Official data to be released overnight is expected to show the country ran a deficit of about $24bn (£15.4bn) in 2011, and has been running a structural shortfall of $3bn a month since the tsunami shut down most of Japan's nuclear industry.”

This is largely because Japan relied on nuclear power for 29% of its electricity before the Fukushima disaster, and had plans to… click here to read whole article and make comments

In the midst of continuing gloom throughout the Eurozone, there is more bad news from one of the most recent additions to the EU, Bulgaria.  According to the Sofia News Agency, the demographic and economic slump that is gripping the country may affect the retirement prospects of many working age Bulgarians.  We reported last year on the publication of the most recent Bulgarian census showed that the country’s population had declined by 7% over the past decade.  A more detailed breakdown of the demographic figures by the United Nations shows that the average annual rate of population change is -0.6%, that the crude death rate (deaths per 1,000 population) is 15 and is higher than the crude birth rate of 10 per 1,000 population and finally that the total fertility rate is well below replacement level at 1.5… click here to read whole article and make comments

Today I’d like to briefly follow up Katie Hinderer’s Tiger Print blog post on yesterday’s march for life in Washington DC.  It seems as if the march was another success with hundreds of thousands of marchers marking the 39^th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision.  To give you some idea of the size of this event, have a look at this time lapse video from last year's march:

For more photos of this year's march, see here.

What amazes me is the absolute lack of coverage about this annual event in the media that most people watch. If it wasn't for my practice of visiting blogs, I would have had no idea about this march from either the TV or print media here in New Zealand.  It seems… click here to read whole article and make comments

Happy Chinese New Year! A couple of days ago millions of people celebrated the start of the spring season and the new year both in Asia and in expat communities throughout the world.  The new year is an auspicious one – the Dragon is considered the luckiest sign in the Chinese zodiac and represents wealth and power.  According to the AFP:

“The dragon is the most favourable and revered sign in the 12-year Chinese zodiac - a symbol of royalty, fortune and power that is also used in other cultures that see in the Lunar New Year, such as in Vietnam.”

It is no surprise therefore that many couples wish to have their babies born this year so that their children may benefit from some of the Dragon’s lucky properties.

“…hospitals across China and in Chinese communities are… click here to read whole article and make comments

There is further recognition by major media outlets that perhaps global overpopulation is not the only demographic story in town.  Reuters has just published an article on how Japan’s demographic winter and economic malaise are linked and how that country’s example may provide a roadmap for the future of other Western economies. 

Over the past 20 years, Japan’s economic situation has looked like this:

“An asset price bubble pops, hitting bank balance sheets and tax revenues. As growth weakens and the economy flirts with deflation, the real burden of servicing debt increases.

Companies race to pay off debt, further dragging down growth. Government spending takes up the slack. Monetary policy is akin to pushing on a piece of string, so even zero interest rates have scant impact. Population decline compounds the vicious circle.”

Hardly a rosy picture, and… click here to read whole article and make comments

Due to expense, there was controversy in New Zealand mid last year when an Auckland school required the purchase of some sort of digital tablet such as an iPad by every new student.  However, India may have developed new technology which overcomes the problem of expense and allows hundreds of millions of Indians in remote rural areas to connect to the internet.  It may also soon make Indians the biggest single internet user population in the world. 

The new device is similar in function to the Apple iPad – but the major difference is that it can be made and sold for under £35.  Professor Prem Kalra, who is a team leader at the Rajasthan Indian Institute of Technology, has commented:

"We expect that within five or 10 years everyone will have one – and every year there will… click here to read whole article and make comments

Brazil, Russia, India and China. The BRIC countries. The emerging economic powers who have become more influential in the world over the last decade or so as they begin to displace the United States hegemony.  They are countries with large populations, low labour costs and large quantities of natural resources.  In the last ten years, these four nations have contributed almost half of the world’s economic growth.  They are nations on the rise.  However, as reported by the Economic Times, according to Goldman Sachs, demographics are about to strike a telling blow against their (and consequentially, the world’s) expansion. 

It is a very familiar story - the labour pool is ageing and shrinking as people in Brazil, Russia, India and China are having fewer children.  According to UN projections, in eight years the number of people aged 65 years old and over… click here to read whole article and make comments

Past Eugenics and sterilisation programs in the United States are coming back to bite them, with North Carolina currently the first State to address compensation for victims.

According to the North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation, at one time 31 states in the United States had government-run eugenics programs. In North Carolina alone, close to 8,000 men, women, and children, largely poor, black, disabled or uneducated, were forcibly sterilized from 1929 to 1974.  The programs were aimed at creating a better society by eliminating those considered undesirable. 

Newsday reports:

It's a question that has not been answered before and doesn't have an easy solution: How do you repay people for taking away their ability to have children?...Many states ended their eugenics programs because of associations with Nazi Germany's program aimed at racial purity, but North Carolina in fact… click here to read whole article and make comments

I came across this book review the other day that I thought looked very interesting in the Washington Post. The author, Walter Laqueur, a German-born American historian, has written extensively on modern European history and has now turned his attention to the current European situation in his latest book: After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent. In it, he envisages the imminent decline of Europe into a type of cultural theme park, “a kind of sophisticated Disneyland for well-to-do visitors from China and India.” “The decline of Europe, once the center of the world,” he writes, “can be interpreted above all as a decline of will and dynamism.”

So how has this come about? How did a once world-conquering continent fall from global pre-eminence? After all, as William Drozdi writes… click here to read whole article and make comments