Come out and listen to Bob SING and talk about More at Busboys & Poets on Monday, June 30 at 6 p.m.
More info is here.

The Washington Post Book World reviewed More this past Sunday calling it “Useful and Illuminating…”
Read the review here.

Keeping a book short is no easy task, especially on a set of topics as complex and controversial as population and the reproductive intentions of women. Now that I’m discussing my latest book, More, widely, and the publication is gaining some reviews (such as this one in the Washington Post), I’m developing a list of topics I hope to develop further if I ever write the sequel. The title could be More More, or maybe even Longer More.

Many points that some readers feel I’ve missed are actually in the book, though perhaps not highlighted or explored in

Continue reading

Some people think policies aimed at slowing population growth are foisted on the developing world by heavy-handed industrialized countries. Actually, most population policies are home grown, and sometimes none the better for this. I have a hunch there’s not much gender diversity in the circles that develop them. And those who write about them often fall into the same trap.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak recently endorsed a new $80 million campaign that reportedly focuses on the slogan “Two children per family—a chance for a better life.” Mubarak took office in 1981 in a country with about 45 million people

Continue reading

Talking to reporters and others about my new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women, I’m sometimes asked where consumption fits into the population picture. A review in the intriguingly named magazine Bitch, for example, criticized the book for “failing to adequately distinguish between the individuals who are overpopulating the world and the individuals who are responsible for the type of overconsumption that causes environmental deterioration.”

Well, the book actually doesn’t identify any individuals who are “overpopulating the world.” I explain on the book’s second page why I don’t like the word overpopulation. And for

Continue reading

Bob talked about women’s reproductive rights and their connection to the environment on May 30th on NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday.
Listen to the interview here or learn more at the Science Friday site.

“Oops, I’m pregnant.”

Even in today’s age of safe and effective modern contraception, women in every society get pregnant when that wasn’t the plan. It’s a simple point I explore in More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want. In the wealthy and health-obsessed United States, for example, 49 percent of conceptions result in “oops” pregnancies. The figure for the world as a whole is estimated at around 38 percent. I suspect that women in many countries under-report unintended pregnancies and that the real proportion is even higher.

Interestingly, the estimated number of annual unintended pregnancies worldwide is almost the same as

Continue reading

ISTANBUL-The workshop I’ve been attending in this ancient city drew 31 people-ranging from a member of the British parliament to a Dutch women’s rights advocate to a Hungarian environmentalist-to talk about whether it makes sense to bring population into the global debate on climate change.

Tough question, given that most of the responsibility for human-induced global warming stems from the past behavior of wealthier nations, most of whose populations are now growing relatively slowly or not at all. Workshop participants thus worried that taking on population would risk giving a pass to the disproportionately high carbon consumption these nations enjoy.

Continue reading

Last Saturday evening my wife and I took our terminally ill cat to an animal hospital, where a veterinarian put him peacefully to sleep as he sat on my lap. I wasn’t really a cat lover when we adopted him seven years ago, but this unusually affectionate and communicative kitty cat converted me. I’m surprised how much I’m grieving for the loss of him.

Years before Toby came into my life I wrote a story for newspapers about domestic felines as deadly hunters of migratory songbirds. Several bird species, such as the Cerulean Warbler, are becoming vulnerable to extinction as

Continue reading

In my last blog post, I promised to wrestle with the time-honored Malthus Question: Does population growth outrun food supply? The old question is coming back as soaring food prices spark discontent, bread lines, and even riots around the world. I’ll try to answer this question decisively in the next 400 words.

Just kidding. Shelves heave under the weight of books that have grappled with the ideas of Thomas Robert Malthus since he first wrote in 1798. So maybe the answer will take more than one post.

Continue reading

One of the dozens of countries around the world where hunger is back in the news is the Philippines, where soaring rice prices and long-standing reliance on imported food are raising an old question many people thought was buried for good: Does population growth eventually run into the limits of food production?

In More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, I suggest this question will never be put to rest-not, at least, until populations stop growing.

Continue reading