Below  is the final update sent to GPSO participants. Any future updates concerning GPSO will appear on this blog.

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March 4, 2009

Dear GPSO participants:

Just a note to mark the completion of the Global Population Speak Out.

First, let me thank you for your willingness and your efforts last month to make a difference concerning a pivotal issue. A wide array of causes compete for our attention and support, but how many will ultimately have a major influence on the course of history? Our numbers will. They already have.

Expectations exceeded

GPSO exceeded initial expectations. We quickly passed the original goal of 50 pledgers, with a final total of 216. Of those, something approaching half have reported in on their efforts. Several pledgers have let me know they’ll report in soon. Others no doubt encountered unavoidable obstacles.

Your efforts ranged from articles to blog posts, comments on news sites and public fora, letters to the editor, websites, a video, talks, media interviews, and more. For anyone looking for inspiration or ways to speak out, the “efforts” page should provide lots of ideas.

Impact?

Whatever impact GPSO has had will surely remain subject to conjecture. Time will tell to what degree we managed to weaken the population taboo and make the subject made easier to broach in public discussion.

Even before GPSO, it was my impression that population issues were appearing a bit more often in the media. In the last year, increased awareness of of environmental problems, the spike in oil prices, reports of food shortages, and of course the current economic downturn all combined, it seems, to nudge population into the news slightly more often. GPSO added to the momentum. The coming months should reveal whether it continues or fades.

Post-GPSO

I hope you’ll do what you can to keep the momentum going. Your efforts have made it a little easier for others to follow your lead. Don’t hesitate to encourage them to do so! Urge friends and associates to speak out on population. And please continue your own efforts, speaking out loudly and often. Only if population matters becomes a regular news item, a familiar part of the public discussion, will humanity have a real chance to negotiate the greatest challenge we face. There is more to it, of course, than population. But we have no chance of success unless we address our numbers.

Another GPSO?

I hope to see GPSO repeated in the future on a larger scale. I will not be involved in the administrative work. Even on the small scale involved this time, it is more than I would want to take on again. But I will soon investigate other possibilities. It may be that GPSO will have a life beyond 2009.

Thanks again to everyone who pledged and followed through with public efforts to speak out. A special thanks as well to those pledgers who went beyond the requested commitment, making multiple efforts and sending suggestions and resources. Your extra energies were appreciated!

Best regards,

John

I have not used PublishaLetter.com and so can’t vouch for it. But it looks interesting. It allows you to submit letters to the editor to multiple newspapers simultaneously. A quick, cursory search doesn’t turn up any bad reviews. So it may be worth a try. By submitting to lots of papers at once it should be possible to increase the chance your letter is printed.

If anyone tries it, let me know how your experience is!

[For the latest media coverage, see the Media page.]

The core of GPSO is the efforts pledgers will make to speak out in February. But the greater the number of people who hear about the project, the greater will be its impact.

Discussions of GPSO around the Web began some months ago. Just today, risk management specialist Bill Sharon posted a solid article on population with mention of GPSO.

Interest from larger publications and media outlets is now increasing. Today brought a welcome mention by Andy Revkin at his widely read Dot Earth blog at the New York Times. The article is about the work of GPSO pledger Jane Roberts’s group 34 Million Friends of UNFPA. Andy says he’ll be writing more on GPSO soon. (Watch for that on the media page.)

See the media page for a link to a Jan. 26 Christian Science Monitor column containing a description of GPSO and quotes from signer/endorser David Paxson.

On February 2, GPSO signer (endorser) Jeff McKee and I will be doing a one hour interview with Kathleen Dunn on Wisconsin Public Radio.

So far, so good. With any luck we just might make a difference!

US president Obama is set to sign an executive order reversing the Mexico City Policy, AKA the Global Gag Rule.

This is a strong, positive step in the direction of attending more seriously to the population issue. (Of course much more is needed.) A reference to it could be a good starting point for pledgers speaking out in February.

In email and around the Web I’ve seen a few objections to GPSO on varying grounds. Most reflect critics’ frustration that GPSO does not emphasize their own ideas about population: GPSO doesn’t focus enough on US population, GPSO doesn’t say enough about past abuses in the name of “population control,” GPSO doesn’t talk enough about women’s issues and reproductive health, GPSO doesn’t fit population into a systems thinking perspective, etc.

I would ask critics to read carefully the welcome page and the GPSO letter to understand clearly what GPSO is and is not.  The short answer to all the concerns above is, “Yes it does.”

Here’s why: GPSO aims only to enable open, honest public discussion of overpopulation. As stated on the site, the idea is to “help weaken the taboo and bring population to a more prominent position in the global discussion,” by asking pledgers “to speak out publicly in some way on the problem of the size and growth of the human population.” That’s all. Nothing more.

As long as pledgers identify the size and growth of the human population as a serious problem they’ve met their pledge and are free to approach the topic from any angle they wish.

They can talk about US population, women’s issues, or the need to avoid repeating  past abuses if we’re to address the problem effectively. They can place population within a systems perspective. Again, the aim is solely to weaken the taboo, making it easier to include population in public discussion. Ideas concerning solutions and an increase in attention to population will undoubtedly be welcome side benefits.

The only real emphasis on this site is that on the population-environment link. It is the nub of the entire population issue, the root of all other population concerns. But pledgers are free, for example, to talk about overpopulation as a social and economic issue.

At any rate, GPSO is not the website. It is all the efforts pledgers will make to speak out in February.

Oh, there’s one more criticism – that GPSO is a part of a conspiracy on the part of the world’s elites to depopulate the planet for reasons having something to do with the “New Wold Order.” Arrgh, why didn’t I get the memo?? But seriously, if this is true then the science of ecology is bogus and part of some conspiracy of the world’s elites. If so, then I’m an unwitting pawn and GPSO is guilty as charged. I hate when that happens!

A seldom discussed, tragic consequence of human population growth is the loss of tribal cultures and peoples. It is the loss, as well, of ways of life which persisted for nearly all of human history until our population exploded in the last fraction of one percent of our time on Earth.

If anyone participating in GPSO wants to to speak out on one of the most underreported consequences of the growth of the human population, this would be a good choice.

An excellent source of information is the site of Survival International.

I’m pleased to follow the prior post here with confirmation that, as a part of GPSO,  The Bridge, a weekly community newspaper of Montpelier Vermont, will host a forum on population in the third week of February. They will then devote their March 19 issue to the same topic.

This is great news. Just as publications sometimes devote extra resources to important issues such as climate change, they need to do so with regard to population. It is, after all, in many ways, the central environmental issue.

Perhaps before long the the largest newspapers will follow The Bridge’s lead.

Here’s the word from George Plumb, President of Vermonters for a Sustainable Population:

In conjunction with the the GPSO the weekly community newspaper of the state capitol of Montpelier, Vermont has proposed doing an eight page supplement on population. I think this will be pretty ground breaking. How many newspapers in the country have devoted a supplement to population? The only problem is Vermonters for a Sustainable Population, of which I am the president, needs to come up with $3,000 to help pay for the xtra costs. Unfortunately we have no major donors cpable of this kind of financial support in our thrity member organization. If anyone knows of a potential source I would really appreciate your ideas.

That would be a first wouldn’t it? So if you know any source to help with funding please let me know and I’ll forward your message to George, or go here to contact George directly.

GPSO is progressing well, now with nearly 100 pledges from 16 countries – and counting. Here are two quick updates:

We’ve added a media page to the site to provide access to our press release and to point to media coverage of the project. We’re just starting to reach out to the media and anticipate some valuable coverage in the near future. The Science piece was a nice start!

We’ve created a Global Population Speak Out group on Facebook. It should help spread the word about GPSO and will provide a place where members can talk about the project, post relevant items, or otherwise get addicted to Facebook. :) If you’re a Facebook member, or if you sign up there (takes about a minute), you can join the group. Lots of people are doing so already, and that should surge when we get the chance to invite pledgers in a day or two.

[Update: Just to clarify, there is no requirement for pledgers to participate on Facebook! It's just an added component to give the project more visibility and allow discussion etc. for those who want it.]

The current issue of Science contains a short piece on GPSO. If you’re registered there, you’ll find it here. It’s in the “Random Samples” section of the October 31 issue, Volume 322, Issue 5902.

From the piece:

At a time when some developed nations are paying citizens to bolster flagging birth-rates (Science, 30 June 2006, p. 1894), a grass-roots group of scientists and environmentalists is calling for a new push to limit human numbers.

Overpopulation is threatening life as we know it on the planet, say members of a movement called Global Population Speak Out (http://gpso.wordpress.com/), which aims to persuade at least 50 “respected voices” to “speak out in some way” about the problem for a month next year.

GPSO is bringing scientific voices worldwide to bear on the population issue. It’s great to have the opportunity to alert a large portion of the scientific community to what we’re doing.