“When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world.” Overpopulation, Family planning and Andy Revkin

I belive that the root of most, if not all, social, environmental, and maybe economic-this could be stretching it- problems is overpopulation. Lack of resources, abuse of what we have, food and water shortages, extreme poverty, violence, lack of health care, global warming I could go on. In my mind these are all directly related to overpopulation, and the ammount of humans on the planet who have basic needs is increasing exponentially.

I think the need for addressing this is immediate, but also incredibly hard to bring up, explain and enforce. How are you supposed to tell people not to have kids?

I think education, and health care are key, particularly for women, which is why I think it is incredible that Obama revoked the Global Gag rule.

The global gag rule was a Regan Era law that, according to Planned Parenthood "dictated that no U.S. family planning assistance funding go to organizations that provided abortion services, offered counseling and referral for abortion care, or advocated legal abortion access in their own countries — even if they did so with their own funds." Bush reinstated the rule in 2001, and now, in his first week in office Obama got rid of it.

So why is that so crucial?

First it opens up the domestic discussion about family planning(and by that I mean education and birth control) and secondly it allows NGO's and other organization's to bring funding, education, birth control, and medicine into countries that don't already have it. Andy Revkin wrote an excellent post about family planning and the UN's population fund.

Educating women, letting them know what their options are and empowering them is crucial to solving the population problem. I think this is true here in the US-where sex education is less than pitiful in a lot of places- and abroad, particularly in developing countries where population expansion is often seen as a measure of success, and women's education, particularly about health, and sexual health issues can be minimal.

This is a step in the right direction.