Michael Cook
 Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia. Currently he is the editor of BioEdge, a newsletter about bioethics, and MercatorNet. |
Is climate change killing children?
Michael Cook | 18 Nov 2009
What is the biggest killer of children in the developing world?
Japan slowly cruising into financial shipwreck
Michael Cook | 16 Nov 2009
Is Japan headed for financial meltdown because of decades of below replacement-level birth rates? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that doom is nigh in a recent column in the London Sunday Telegraph. He quotes a number of economists
A breathless moment in the history of reproductive rights
Michael Cook | 12 Nov 2009
The population control lobby is far from dead. There still are highly influential academics who fervently believe that increasing aid for population control (aka reproductive rights, women’s health, safe and legal abortion) is absolutely necessary. Without it, the world will turn into an over-heated, war-torn slum heaped with festering mountains of garbage. This is the message that comes through loud and clear in a special issue of an influential British journal...
Is youth a danger to democracy?
Michael Cook | 11 Nov 2009
Democracy is a romantic notion; youth are romantic; QED, youth must be democratic. Not so, say some demographers. Richard Cincotta, a consultant in US intelligence and defence, will be explaining his theory about the "youth bulge" in developing countries on PRB Discuss Online tomorrow evening. Could be something to check out.
Europeans too selfish to have children, says Chief Rabbi
Michael Cook | 11 Nov 2009
It’s not very often that you find an eminent public figure who combines shrewd political observation with philosophical depth. But the other evening Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, who entered the House of Lords last week as Lord Sacks of Aldgate, proved that he is such a person. In a speech at Demos, a theological thinktank in London, he examined the deep cultural reasons behind the decline in the British birthrate. The last paragraph is the best.
The Economist swings ‘round on population
Michael Cook | 10 Nov 2009
The message is finally getting through: the population bomb has fizzled out and fertility is falling everywhere in the world. This is the cheerful message delivered in the October 29 issue of The Economist. If the world’s leading news magazine has finally swung around, the day is not far behind when population controllers will be unemployed.
40 years later, was "The Population Bomb" a damp squib?
Michael Cook | 5 Aug 2009
Forty years after the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s influential book The Population Bomb, a new scholarly, peer-reviewed magazine, the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, thinks that it is time to take stock. And in a fascinating series of articles, it contributors demolish Ehrlich’s population pessimism. This is essential reading – and it is freely available. Here are a few highlights.
Snapshot of a gay future
Michael Cook | 4 Aug 2009
Sweden developing nursing home for GLBT community
India debates methods of population control
Michael Cook | 3 Aug 2009
Bizarre suggestion from health minister
