marisa's blog

An Italian evolutionary meta-theory says planetary health depends on humans and that humans will in the future free themselves from the unbearable weight of the world by stopping reproducing. "Si spegne, signori, si chiude” Review by Marisa Cohen

Sir David Attenborough: “There are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes 56 years ago. It is frightening. . We are seeing the consequences in terms of ecology, atmospheric pollution and in terms of space and food production.” Another great article from Marisa in Italy stalks the wild taboo

It is an historical phenomenon, common to all Western nations, but also to any nation, which is perceived by the outsider as offering more opportunities for survival than its own. The whole world is a common, a place of free exchange for hungry and dispossessed people. Most of us are concerned with our land-base, our nation, our corner, which seemed secure and where we had the illusion of absolute control. We do not see the wood for the trees.

Should the people of Europe, as a consequence of misplaced feelings of guilt over crimes such as Auschwitz and those of the colonial era and ongoing outrages such as the so-called "war on terror", allow their unique histories and cultures be overwhelmed by large and ongoing influxes of people from the Third World, particularly from the Middle East and Africa?

As the economy of the United States, a country with one of the highest rates of population growth, collapses, Vatican propagandist Ettore Tedeschi argues that Europe can only achieve material prosperity by resuming population growth.

Thursday 9th August readers of the Italian papers were awakening to wonderful news: the crisis of the empty cradles is coming to an end, at least in the industrial areas of Lombardia, north/west of Italy.

Lampedusa is a tiny Italian island near Malta. It is located 205km from Porto Empedocle in Sicily, 167km from Tunisia and 167km from Libya. It has only 6,000 permanent inhabitants. With the recent failure of Libya to honour an 2004 agreement the Island's resources are being overwhelmed by clandestine immigrants from Africa en-route to Europe.

The bizarre politics of immigration in Italy, known in Europe for its porous borders.

Population growth advocates insist that human ingenuity is capable of solving all possible challenges posed by resource scarcity no matter how large the world's human population becomes, yet they also apparently believe that human ingenuity is incapable of solving what would seem to be of far easier problem to solve, that is, of providing for a larger proportion of elderly members in societies that have stabilised their populations.

An Italian environmental campaigner describes her difficulties in raising the issues of population growth. The situation in her country has been getting steadily worse under the previous governments which maintained a lax attitude towards the problem of immigration, while at the same time encouraging couples to have more children.