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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 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


Vietnam burns sex selection books
Michael Cook | 22 Jul 2009
Another distressing consequence of sex-selective abortion: censorship!

Bulging China eyes empty Russian Far East
Michael Cook | 20 Jul 2009
In English, Siberia is a synonym for frigid desolation. Actually, it’s much the same in Russian as well. And now that Russians are no longer forced to live there, they are emptying the vast spaces of the Russian Far East, which stretches from Lake Baikal to Vladivostok. According to an article by David Blair in the London Telegraph, only 6.7 million people live there – 14% fewer than in the late 1980s. Furthermore, over a third of these live in only nine towns. The countryside is nearly empty. By 2015 there will only be 4.5 million people in the Russian Far East.

Pope insists on "integral human development"
Michael Cook | 20 Jul 2009
Pope Benedict XVI recently released an encyclical, a long letter to the Catholic Church and “all people of good will” about progress and development. Coming as it does in the middle of an economic crisis the media reported it as a critique of the market economy and the benefits of globalisation.

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