Every year International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8, and today marks the 99^th observance, but Nicholas Kristof wrote a column last week in the New York Times that reminds me how far we still have to go.  He wrote about a 10-year old girl from Yemen named Nujood, who asked for a divorce from her 30-year old husband, a controversial decision in a “society where it’s the men who give the orders, and the women who follow them.” Her inspiring story, which was published in a book entitled I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, encouraged other young girls to do the same and speak out against child marriage.  But Nujood’s story is also a reminder that, despite the progress that has been made since the first International Women’s Day, women around the world continue to struggle against oppression.

The first International Women’s Day was launched in 1911, and was proposed by a woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) so that women all over the world could push for their demands.  The first International Women’s Day was very successful, with over one million men and women attending rallies campaigning to end discrimination and to give women the right to work, vote, and be elected to public office.

In 1975, IWD was given official recognition by the United Nations and is considered a national holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

There are many different themes depending on the country or group, the United Nations theme for 2010 is: Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all.  As part of this year’s observance, the UN is presently hosting a conference on the 15^th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which was adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.  You can read more about this in our last blog entry, “Beijing +15 Moving Beyond Rhetoric.”

Please share your International Women’s Day stories with us.  Tell us what are you doing to help women around the world.

Posted by Emily Pontarelli, Program Associate

This week and next the United Nations is holding a fifteen year review of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It is an opportunity to look at what has been accomplished since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and what still needs to be done in achieving gender equality and realizing women’s rights.

The Platform for Action that came out of Beijing reinforced the importance of women’s rights and empowerment that were established a year earlier at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The Platform for Action called the international community to action in 12 key areas: poverty, education and training, health, violence against women, armed conflict, economy, power and decision-making, institutional mechanisms, human rights, media, environment and girls.

One of the highlights from the Beijing Conference was the rousing speech given by then First Lady Hillary Clinton. In her 1994 speech Clinton stressed that, “if there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.”

She concluded saying that:

“As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes – the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Let this conference be our – and the world’s – call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you. That is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see for our children and grandchildren.”

Secretary Clinton, over the years, has made it clear that women’s empowerment is a goal near and dear to her heart, and next Friday when she delivers her remarks at the United Nations she will have an opportunity to reaffirm that commitment.  But the realization of gender equality and women’s rights will require that the U.S. increase its spending on maternal health in general, and family planning and reproductive health in particular.  In the current budget climate, will the administration be able to deliver on its commitments, or will those commitments fall victim  to budget cuts?

Let’s hope that the Administration’s political will is translated into real dollars and real programs, so that the goals set forth in Beijing 15 years ago are, at last, fully realized.

Alejandro Chicheri, WFP

Posted by Jennie Wetter, Program Manager

To borrow from a popular advertising slogan: This is big. A new study by Robert Fogel featured in this month’s Foreign Policy magazine suggests that China’s economy is on track to grow at a far faster rate than generally assumed.  Fogel writes:

In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000. China’s per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan. In other words, the average Chinese megacity dweller will be living twice as well as the average Frenchman when China goes from a poor country in 2000 to a superrich country in2040. Although it will not have overtaken the United States in per capita wealth, according to my forecasts, China’s share of global GDP — 40 percent — will dwarf that of the United States (14 percent) and the European Union (5 percent) 30 years from now.

Fogel assumes that China’s economy will continue to grow at double-digit rates because of advances in education, development of China’s rural areas, and rising consumer demand.  Fogel’s prediction cannot be easily dismissed.  He is, after all, the Director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and winner of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. 

But extrapolations of economic growth rates are notoriously unreliable. A few decades ago, when Japan’s economic growth performance was the envy of the world, many feared that Japan’s gross domestic product would soon surpass America’s.  Didn’t happen.  Japan’s torrid growth rate cooled after its housing bubble burst in the early 1990s, and it hasn’t fully recovered yet.

But even if Fogel’s projection is only half-right, it’s still very, very BIG.  A recent study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace projects that China’s economy will be 20 percent larger than the U.S. by 2050.  Fogel, on the other hand, is predicting that China’s economy will be nearly 3 times larger than the U.S. by 2040.  And by implication Fogel is suggesting that the global economy will be 6-7 times larger in 2040 than it was in 2000.

The obvious question is this: “What planet is Fogel living on?”  It’s certainly not Earth.  Earth does not have resources to support that kind of economic growth.  It certainly doesn’t have the energy, even if the global economy becomes far less energy-intensive. It certainly doesn’t have the water, even if the global economy becomes far less water-intensive. And it arguably doesn’t have the kind of mineral resources needed to fuel that kind of economic growth either. 

And then there’s the little matter of climate change.  Economic growth of the kind forecast by Fogel almost certainly entails a massive increase in deforestation and carbon emissions.  Fogel’s analysis, however, assumes that resource scarcity, climate, and environmental concerns will not impose any constraints on economic growth now or at any time in the next half century.  And because of that he also assumes that population growth is, therefore, good for the global economy.  He’s worried that falling fertility rates in Europe will impede economic growth, but he conveniently overlooks the fact that China’s economic miracle has coincided with a dramatic reduction in its fertility.

He acknowledges that China’s population growth rate, like Europe’s is slowing, but he insists that China will grow despite “its own demographic nightmares.”  He flatly dismisses concerns about fuel scarcity, water shortages, and environmental pollution in China. He says, “Although the critics have a point, these concerns are no secret to China’s leaders; in recent years, Beijing has proven quite adept in tackling problems it has set out to address.”

Quite adept?  Have Chinese leaders solved the problem of fuel scarcity?  Have they eliminated or even ameliorated the water shortages that plague China?  Has environmental pollution in China improved?  I don’t think so.  And what about climate change?  If an ever expanding global economy continues to increase carbon emissions and predictions about rising sea levels are realized, Shanghai and many other part of coastal China will be under water.  Are Chinese leader tackling that little problem as well?

My comments are not directed at China.  No one should begrudge China its rising share of the global economy. But to suggest, as Fogel does, that the Chinese economy and the larger global economy can continue galloping along without any environmental or resource constraints is sheer folly.  If there are practical limits to growth, and there are many reasons to believe that there are such limits, the headlong pursuit of economic growth (and population growth) without regard to those limits means that the world economy will at some point hit a wall. 

Fogel’s analysis makes it clear that he does not see such a wall.  And neither do most world leaders. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.  Call it Fogel’s Folly.

On February 6^th the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation occurred with very little fanfare, perhaps because most people have never heard of the problem.  But female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) affects the lives of 3 million girls annually in Africa alone. According to the World Health Organization there is no health benefit to FGM/C and it is harmful to girls and women in various ways both immediate: severe pain, shock, bleeding, tetanus; and long term: cysts, recurring bladder infections, infertility, increased risk of complications in childbirth, need for later surgeries. They define FGM/C as any procedure that intentionally alters or injures female genital organs for non-medical reasons. FGM/C is mostly performed on girls between infancy and age 15 and is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

FGM/C is one manifestation of the inequality of the status of girls and women around the world. This feeds into the complications of talking about FGM/C on an international stage.  Not only does it involve girls and women making it less likely the issue will be addressed, but it also carries the sexuality taboo and the concern that FGM/C is a cultural practice and outsiders should not impose their cultural values on another culture. All of these issues have made it difficult to form an international movement to address the issue.  Still, world leaders have condemned the practice in international treaties and consensus documents such as: Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (which the U.S. is one of only seven countries not to ratify), the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development.

While some progress around this issue has been made, the U.N. goal of eliminating it by 2015 seems impossible given how widespread the practice is. However, last month it was encouraging to see FGM/C talked about in a panel discussion sponsored by YouTube at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. YouTube ran a competition called Davos Debates that asked viewers to vote on various cause-oriented videos to determine which human rights cause should be discussed at Davos this year, and a video on the issue of FGM/C won. You can see a full length video about the issue and the panel discussion here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtMCk5b9fAE.

The U.N. goal of eliminating FGM/C by 2015 may seem out of reach, but if the world comes together and decides that these girls matter, anything is possible. One of the first steps that the U.S. needs to take is to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which was previously addressed on this blog: Time for the U.S. to Ratify CEDAW. It is important that people talk about female genital mutilation and cutting and see it not just as a women’s issue, but as a human rights issue because women’s rights are human rights.

Posted by Jennie Wetter, Program Manager

According to a new Guttmacher Institute report, teen pregnancy rates and abortions have increased for the first time in over a decade. Data for 2006 shows a 3% increase in teen pregnancy from 2005, with 71.5 pregnancies for every 1,000 women under 20 years old. The abortion rate in 2006 increased by 1%.  Guttmacher notes that the increase coincided with the Bush Administration’s increased reliance on abstinence only education programs.

The Washington Post writes:

“The report comes as Congress might consider restoring federal funding to sex-education programs that focus on abstinence. The Obama administration eliminated more than $150 million in funds for such groups, but the Senate’s health-care reform legislation would reinstate $50 million.”

The Guttmacher report was released just days after Lifetime television aired their latest movie, “The Pregnancy Pact,” which is loosely based on the 17 teenage girls from Gloucester, Massachusetts who became pregnant in 2008.  The movie offered some compelling insights. In one scene a parent (a strong advocator for family values) announces that the school needs to raise an extra $13,000 for one extra spot at the student daycare center.  A reporter following the story at the time raises her hand in the meeting, and questions the logic of spending the $13,000 versus handing out condoms that cost $1.  Lifetime does a good job in discussing the issue and even offers discussion guides, which parents and teens can download off of its website in order to continue the conversation.

It is clear that members of our government need to take a stronger stance in advocating for comprehensive sex education and access to contraceptives in schools, a topic that Lifetime was not afraid to address.

Posted by Emily Pontarelli, Program Associate

Zubeida Mustafa, a Pakistani journalist who recently retired from Dawn, her nation’s most widely circulated English language daily newspaper, wrote a column last month on Pakistan’s declining population growth rate.  A two-time winner of the Population Institute’s Global Media Award, she reveals that an increase in unsafe abortions, not contraceptives, is behind much of the decline.

The question that has intrigued demographers is how Pakistan’s population growth rate has been falling when contraceptive prevalence has not increased proportionally. The NCMNH and Guttmacher fact sheet answers this question succinctly. ‘The disconnect between low contraceptive use and a relatively small average family size suggests that women are relying on abortion as a method of controlling their fertility.’ Unsurprisingly, the more backward a province the lower its contraceptive use and the higher the abortion rate.

She reports that the problem in Pakistan, as in many developing countries, is not just the unavailability of contraceptives or family planning services, it’s also the low status of women.

As is generally the case in issues related to reproductive health, the problem is rooted in the poor status of women in our society. This time one cannot even blame the law, the prevailing myths notwithstanding. The abortion law as amended in 1990 to better conform to Islamic teachings is quite liberal. In fact, no one has been known to have been prosecuted under this law.

The problem lies in the policy that denies many women easy access to contraceptive cover. Strangely, men have been absolved of all responsibility in family planning matters. As a result the onus of finding a solution rests on women, and their stories are heart rending. At the NCMNH meeting Dr Saadiah Pal presented a number of case studies of women who opted for abortion, some of them dying in the process. But could they be blamed? One who was pregnant for the 12th time was the sole breadwinner of the family and her husband was a drug addict. Another had eight children and was a beggar. And the stories went on.

But as Mustafa points out, the problem is not just cultural, it’s also a failure of political will.  In a country where there are still large pockets of extreme poverty and high rates of maternal death, the government and donor nations are simply not doing enough to enable women to avoid unwanted or unintended pregnancies.

These are the stories the population welfare department should be listening to. The gynecologists and obstetricians are familiar with them as they have to bear the brunt of abortions that go wrong. They know what is needed and this was reiterated at the meeting mentioned above. Their recommendation to show the way forward was, ‘Prevent unintended pregnancy to reduce abortions. Ensure availability of quality family planning services. Increase health and population budget to six per cent of GDP.’

These words sum up in a nutshell what is missing in our population programme that is not making any headway. There is a total absence of political will especially at the highest level and an utter failure to comprehend how basic a slowdown of population growth rate is to the success of our economic development.

Sadly, Pakistan’s untold story is also the untold story of many other developing nations, including neighboring Afghanistan, where women on average still bear six children and maternal and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world.  Last week, Secretary Clinton gave a major address at the State Department in which she vowed to make the health and wellbeing of women, including access to family planning, a major focus point of U.S. foreign policy and foreign assistance.  Pakistan and Afghanistan would be good places to start.

"A woman listens to a midwife talk about contraceptives while giving her advice on the prevention of unwanted births at a clinic in Pakistan. Since abortion is severely stigmatised in our society women are reluctant to talk about this issue. Most of them do not seek professional help." – Photo by AP.

Posted by Robert J. Walker, Executive Vice President

Is 2010 the year that America’s support for international family planning assistance takes a giant leap forward?  Maybe.

Last Friday, I attended the State Department’s observance of the 15^th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that was held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994.  All of the speakers at the event, including Secretary Clinton and Rajiv Shah, the new Director of USAID, fully embraced the ICPD agenda, Millennium Development Goal 5 on maternal health, the need for family planning, and the critical importance of empowering and educating women.

The only question left unanswered was whether the commitments would translate next month into a major increase in the Administration’s budget request for international family planning and reproductive health.

Last year, the International Family Planning Coalition asked $1 billion for international family planning assistance, a funding level that President Obama had supported when he served in the U.S. Senate. Last year, five former directors of the Population and Reproductive Health Program at USAID called for an even higher level of assistance:  $1.2 billion. The Obama Administration, however, proposed only $593.4 million for FY2010, a 9 percent increase above the prior year.  In the end, Congress bumped up the funding level to $648 million for FY2010, twice the increase recommended by the Administration.

In her speech, however, Secretary Clinton made clear the value of family planning and reproductive health.  She said,

…we are convinced of the value of investing in women and girls, and we understand there is a direct line between a woman’s reproductive health and her ability to lead a productive, fulfilling life. And therefore, we believe investing in the potential of women and girls is the smartest investment we can make. It is connected to every problem on anyone’s mind around the world today. So we are rededicating ourselves to the global efforts to improve reproductive health for women and girls. Under the leadership of this Administration, we are committed to meeting the Cairo goals.

Secretary Clinton and the other members of her team are to be commended for their leadership on family planning and women’s rights.  Let’s hope that their conviction and commitment are fully reflected in the Administration’s upcoming budget.

U.S. Department of State

Posted by Robert J. Walker, Executive Vice President

The news this week that the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of attempting to detonate an explosive on an international flight into Detroit may have had ties to an al Qaeda group operating out of Yemen is generating concern about the growing internationalization of terrorism.   Experts worry that al Qaeda is expanding its operations to Yemen, Somalia and other failing states in the region.

The link between failing states and terrorism is well understood. Less understood is the connection between population growth and failing states.

Most failing nations have high population growth rates. Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace publish an annual ranking of failed states. All of the top ten countries in the 2009 Failed States Index have total fertility rates (the average number of children born by a woman over her lifetime) substantially higher than the global average (2.6). Six of them had TFRs of 5.0 or higher.  The Population Reference Bureau estimates Somalia’s TFR at 6.7, Afghanistan’s at 5.7, and Pakistan’s at 4.0.

Nations with high fertility rates tend to have a large percentage of young people. Demographers call this a “youth bulge.” Security analysts warn that large numbers of unemployed young men in developing countries can destabilize a poor, developing country.  A few years ago, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the Director of the CIA at the time, gave a speech at Kansas State University, in which he focused on this concern:

Today, there are 6.7 billion people sharing the planet. By mid-century—by mid-century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion. That’s a 40 to 45 percent increase—striking enough—but most of that growth is almost certain to occur in countries least able to sustain it, and that will create a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism—not just in those areas, but beyond them as well.

There are many poor, fragile states where governance is actually difficult today, where populations will grow rapidly: Afghanistan, Liberia, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That group—the population is expected to triple by mid-century. The number of people in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Yemen is likely to more than double. Furthermore—just beyond the raw numbers—all those countries will therefore have, as a result of this, a large concentration of young people. If their basic freedoms and basic needs—food, housing, education, employment—are not met, they could be easily attracted to violence, civil unrest, and extremism.

Yemen, which is grabbing the headlines this week, has a TFR of 5.5.  With a current population estimated at about 23 million people, its population could easily exceed 50 million by 2050.  But will Yemen, which is already one of the poorest and most arid countries in the world, be able to sustain itself?

The Arab Human Development Report 2009, released this year by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), gives a grim assessment of the challenges facing Yemen and other states in the Middle East. Independently authored by Arab scholars, the report concludes that human insecurity in the region:

….is heightened by swift climatic changes, which threaten the livelihoods, income and access to food and water of millions of Arabs in future. It is reflected in the economic vulnerability of one-fifth of the people in some Arab states, and more than half in others, whose lives are impoverished and cut short by hunger and want. Human insecurity is palpable and present in the alienation of the region’s rising cohort of unemployed youth and in the predicaments of its subordinated women, and dispossessed refugees.

The government of Yemen, which is currently fighting a major insurgency in the north, faces perhaps the gravest challenge in the region.  Yemen in recent years has suffered from severe drought; water shortages are acute.  A 2005 report on Yemen’s water problem found that:

Groundwater resources are vital for Yemen’s agriculture. For their recharge they depend mainly on spate running water and rainfall. Runoffs and springs in catchment’s areas are the main sources of groundwater recharges. In Yemen, the estimated groundwater is around 1000MCM, which makes the total renewable water resource sum 2.5 MCM, while the total demand is estimated to be 3,400MCM with 900MCM deficit, which is covered from deep aquifers.

Ground water aquifers decline 1-7 meters annually with very rare recharge. This raises the cost of pumping and causes a deterioration of ground water quality including sea (salt) water intrusion in the coastal plain areas. Some basins have become very dry and some cultivation has been uprooted due to the depletion of the ground water which is highest, up to 6m per year, in the north side of the country (Sa’adh basin). The drillings then went deeper up to 800 m depth.

A World Bank report released earlier this year projects that Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, could run out of water within 15 years.  Conservation measures could postpone the day of reckoning, particularly as about 40 percent of available water is consumed by the cultivation of qat, a narcotic stimulant.  But with climate change, a rapidly growing population and high rates of unemployment, Yemen is a humanitarian disaster in the making.  And Yemen’s problem could quickly become a major problem for neighboring Saudi Arabia and the fight against terror.

Yemen, however, is just one of many failing states in the world whose resources are being outstripped by population growth.  In virtually all these states, the status of women is low and the rate of domestic violence is high.  Unless more attention is given to educating girls, elevating the status of women, and giving them the information and ability to prevent unwanted and unintended pregnancies, these states will remain on an unsustainable and dangerous trajectory.

Posted by Robert J. Walker, Executive Vice President

For more information on population and failing states, see our fact sheets page.

Today is the 30^th Anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW is an international human rights treaty that focuses exclusively on women’s rights and gender equality. The convention sets a global definition for discrimination against women and outlines a plan to end that discrimination. Those states that ratify the convention are required to take, “all appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men.”

According to United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) the convention requires:

“Not just overturning discriminatory laws, but also introducing new gender-sensitive laws and policies, changing the attitudes, practices and procedures with Governments, ensuring that private organizations and individual citizens do not discriminate against women, and changing harmful cultural stereotypes. The Convention therefore takes the conditions of women’s actual lives, rather than the wording of laws, as the true measure of whether equality has been achieved.”

By taking that approach, CEDAW has the potential to have a significant impact on the daily lives of women. The convention also singles out access to family planning and decisions on the number and spacing of children as areas that countries are required to pay attention to. Unfortunately, the language requiring access to family planning has led to reluctance in the U.S. Senate to approve CEDAW.

While both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have both expressed their support for U.S. ratification of CEDAW, it requires approval by 2/3 of the Senate and has often run into resistance from the anti-abortion movement. This means that while the convention has been reported out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with bi-partisan favorable support, it has never been taken up by the full Senate.

The failure of the United States to ratify CEDAW is a glaring blemish on our record of advocacy for human rights around the world and a disservice to the women of the world. The United States is one of only seven countries who have not ratified the convention along with Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Palau, Nauru, and Tonga. Is this the kind of company the United States wants to keep? It is time for the U.S. Senate to think of women around the world and step up to ratify CEDAW.

Afghan Girls Participate in Accelerated Learning Class Ben Barber/USAID

Posted by Jennie Wetter, Program Manager

In his “Dot Earth” blog, the New York Times’s Andrew Revkin reports today from Copenhagen on the absence of any mention of population in the draft agreements that are being discussed at the climate conference.  He notes:

If you scan the most recent  drafts of the climate agreement that delegates here are trying to complete, you’ll have a hard time finding the word population. I’m quite sure it’s not there. (Please let me know if you find it.) This is politically unsurprising, given how discussions of population growth inflame those  fearing control measures, those with religious  concerns about contraception and sometimes those  seeing underpopulation where others see a problem.

Later in his post, he describes the simple math of climate change and population:

Overall, it’s clear that in a world heading toward +/- 9 billion people seeking decent lives, both numbers and habits matter enormously. In my  recent chat with Ed Miliband, the lead British climate official here, I mentioned my piece from awhile ago examining how even a  best-case scenario for emissions of carbon dioxide in a world with that many people leads to an enormous buildup of the gas. In that post, I’d picked 10 tons per person per year — Europe’s current emissions level — as the middle ground. Suppose the United States saw emissions drop to 10 and developing countries, with emissions typically 1 to 5 tons a year, rose to that level. You’d have 90 billion tons a year of carbon dioxide produced (emissions are now well over 30 billion tons a year).

With Mr. Miliband, I mused on a world achieving Europe’s planned 2020 target of 6 tons per person per year (which is also where China’s emissions are projected to be around then). At 9 billion people, that’s 54 billion tons a year.

As Revkin and others have made clear, population is far from the only element in the climate change equation–we have to reduce the monstrously over-sized carbon footprint of people living in the U.S. and other developed nations.  But if population is omitted altogether from the climate change equation, it’s going to be very difficult–if not impossible–to balance our climate change aspirations with our desires for a more prosperous and just world.

Educating and empowering women in the world  and helping them avoid unwanted and unintended pregnancies is, whether or not world leaders choose to mention the “P” word in Copenhagen, a good strategy for helping to achieve what seems increasingly impossible:  a climate change agenda that actually works.

Posted by Robert J. Walker, Executive Vice President