(This letter was published in the Chapel Hill News, 10 January 2007.)
Time magazine’s Person of the Year is YOU. That’s right. You and me and every other person on the planet have been chosen as “person of the year” in 2006. We are becoming aware of people power, we are told.
This could mean that almost […]
Author Archives: editor
Population growth overwhelms planet
January 12, 2007 – 9:40 am
Early mornings with leviathan
November 30, 2006 – 10:00 am
(This letter was published in the Chapel Hill News, 22 November 2006.)
Just before dawn, I awakened for no apparent reason, leapt out of bed, opened the back door and wandered down to the water’s edge.
Everyone else was still slumbering in a dream state, I supposed. Darkness overspread Eastwood Lake and the homes surrounding it. There […]
Earthaven follow-up
November 27, 2006 – 11:56 am
Joel Achenbach, the author of the Washington Post article about Earthaven, has written a bit more about reactions to the article at his blog site. He notes that the Earthaven article is part of a series of articles that explore our cultural values.
Last week Achenbach also participated in an online conversation with readers. Many […]
Reactions to Earthaven
November 20, 2006 – 8:07 pm
Yesterday’s Sunday Washington Post newspaper (and web site) features an article about Earthaven, a small, energy conscious, environmentally responsible intentional community in western North Carolina.
I found the article to be surprisingly thoughtful and mostly respectful. Writer Joel Achenbach explores the attitudes and interests of people who are willing to try to live “Another Way“.
It’s […]
Infinite growth cannot be supported
October 23, 2006 – 4:17 pm
(This letter was published in the Chapel Hill News, 22 October 2006.)
Let us take a moment to appreciate our neighbor, Winston L. Kirby, for the Oct. 11 letter to the editor, “Growth mentality seems unalterable.” Thankfully, what seems to be real is occasionally an illusion.
Such is the case with regard to the growth of the […]
Watching the clock
October 17, 2006 – 5:54 pm
This morning the estimated human population of the United States reached 300 million.
We’ve been watching the planetary population clock for years. In some ways 300 million humans is just one more number, one more statistic, one more blip on a screen that has a lot of troubling information to display.
In one way this offers […]
Health of Apex residents, economy, go hand-in-hand
October 6, 2006 – 11:04 am
Last night a fire erupted at a chemical storage facility in central North Carolina. Thousands of people evacuated the bedroom community of Apex as a cloud of extremely dangerous toxic gas spread. Rain dampened the fire and stopped the gas cloud, but now the chemicals will liquefy and drain into groundwater and stormwater […]
Health of economy, Earth go hand-in-hand
September 20, 2006 – 10:46 am
(This letter was published in the Chapel Hill News, 20 September 2006.)
In newspapers worldwide, seven days a week, we find the presentation of the wealth of the world economy by means of an array of economic indicators. We can see that economic globalization is carefully tracked and watched over.
The interlocking national economies of the world […]
How to slow the population clock
September 13, 2006 – 10:48 am
From the Christian Science Monitor, 3 July 2006:
For decades now, demographers and economists have warned that the number of people on earth is growing too fast to be “sustainable.” But for many, this story is somewhat old, perhaps alarmist.
“We have sort of a cornucopia fantasy,” says Russell Hopfenberg, a consulting faculty member at Duke University […]
Summary of the 2006 Chapel Hill Earth Day Population Summit
September 5, 2006 – 4:19 pm
The evening’s speakers included Russell Hopfenberg and Jack Alpert.
Russell (Russ) Hopfenberg, adjunct Duke professor and author of two peer-reviewed papers about human population and food supply, presented a summary and a synthesis of his papers. Carrying capacity is often viewed as a limit to a population. It also “acts like a magnet”, he notes, […]
