Billion More People Every 11 Years

International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region [120 Wall St., 9th fl, NYC NY 10005-3902] notes the world population is now growing at the rate of a billion more people every eleven years; and the global population will double by 2040, straining the environment. IPPF says its goals are to “control population growth, reduce hunger and improve the standard of living of millions of people….[W]hen women have the choice of delaying motherhood and having smaller families, they do....[Some] 120 million men and women in the world want to limit the size of their families....But they have no access to family planning.”

Yellowstone to Yukon Bioregion

Gardens and Global Warming

Several articles in the May/June issue of Sierra, published by the Sierra Club, discuss community gardens in poor neighborhoods, and roof gardens. In Berkeley, California, a landscape architect, works with local residents to transform weed-and-debris-strewn areas into flourishing gardens. Another article tells how roof gardens [be careful of too much weight on the roof] can help apartment buildings save energy and cool the air if enough buildings participate. Germany is building 20 million square feet of “green roofs” every year, and the practice is spreading across Europe, the article notes.

Animals Aren’t Actors

Energy Crisis Can Be Opportunity: WashPIRG

The threats of electricity blackouts and price spikes have spawned two opposing views of the future, says WashPIRG (Washington Public Interest Research Group; www.washpirg.org ). On one hand the oil, gas and coal industries are pushing to develop more polluting fuels and to weaken pollution standards. But the crisis can be seen as an opportunity to move to a cleaner future, says WashPIRG. We need “a smarter, cleaner energy future, one that relies more on solar power, wind power and energy efficiency.” By improving conservation, Washington could save enough energy to power two cities the size of Seattle, says the Northwest Power Planning Council, quoted by WashPIRG in a news release. But forces are moving in the opposite direction. Already, Tacoma Power and Georgia Pacific have permission to fire up some 80 diesel generators, despite the fact that diesel fuel leads to cancer and heart disease. And the utilities are pushing for approval of 13 natural gas-fired power plants. One of these, the proposed Sumas Energy 2 plant near Bellingham, “would emit as much global warming-causing carbon dioxide as 400,000 cars.” WashPIRG appeals to people to support its agenda in the fight for clean energy.

Tree Farms: No Cure for Global Warming?

(ENS)-Two recent studies raise questions about how much the planting of trees could reduce the effects of global warming.

Policy makers are searching for ways to reduce atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2). One suggested way is to lock up some of the extra gas in growing wood, or in the soil created by microbes from fallen vegetation.

Results from experiments near Duke University, where forest plots grow in the higher atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide expected by the mid- 21st century, suggest that trees and soil may not sop up much of the extra gas over the long term under real world conditions.

Two articles, published in recent issues of the journal Nature, show that while 20-year-old loblolly pine trees began growing up to about 25 percent more wood after becoming exposed to 1.5 times current levels of CO2, that initial growth spurt dropped back to only marginal gains after the first three years.

Researchers found they were able to enhance wood production as much as 74 percent at a nearby experimental site by providing extra nitrogen fertilizer as well as CO2 to trees growing in nutrient-poor soils. But growth did not increase at all without the supplemental nitrogen.

Said co-principal investigator David Ellsworth, assistant professor of plant physiological ecology in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, “While CO2 initially acts as a stimulus to the tree’s physiology, our experiments suggest that short-term increases in growth are not sustainable over the long term in low nutrient environments.”