| Stephen Hawking gets some PR help from God By invoking the deity, the eminent scientist has discovered the formula for creating a popular success from abstruse scienceHold onto your mitres, folks: Stephen Hawking is back in the news, with the revelation that science has proved the universe can do without God (or something like that). This theologico-physical bombshell has landed him on the Times's front page (I'd link to it, but, you know ...), a slot on both the News at 10 and Channel 4 and – according to the Daily Mail – has already provoked a retaliatory jihad from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Could it be that he's got a book out?Ah yes. That'll be The Grand Design, a "controversial new theory on the origins of the universe, from the world's most famous living scientist", out next week. The publicity department at Bantam must be breaking out the champagne, and with a surge in pre-orders on Amazon since the media storm broke, their colleagues in sales won't be far behind. But what is it about the Lucasian professor of mathematics that makes him such a publishing phenomenon?It's not just his undoubted brilliance, his rolling prose style, or his compelling back story – though the contrast between his wheelchair-bound physical existence and an intellectual life which ranges across the universe lends something of an emotional charge to pronouncements about far-flung corners of the cosmos. No, in Hawking's case, it's the G-word.Cast you mind back to Hawking's bestselling A Brief History of Time - his Old Testament, if you will. This whistlestop tour of relativity, Big Bang theory and black holes went on to sell more than 9m copies – though how many of those copies made the transition from being bought to being read is another question. With only one equation, lots of excellent diagrams and the pleasingly brain-scrambling concept of "imaginary time", it was undoubtedly well put together. But the reason why Hawking ended up in a totally different galaxy, sales-wise, from colleagues such as Frank Close or Paul Davies who published similar books at around the same time, was his willingness to talk about God. He famously closed the book with the ringing declaration that "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of reason – for then we should know the mind of God."Now he's at it again, suggesting that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing ... It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." I don't want to quibble with Professor Hawking's interpretation of M-theory, but if he's right then it can hardly be described as a theory of everything. You may not need God to create a universe, but a little religion goes a long way in creating a bestseller.PublishingScience and natureStephen HawkingRichard Leaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Soil erosion fuels Mitchell River sediment woes Researchers say increasing rates of soil erosion have greatly increased the amount of sediment in the Mitchell River on Cape York in far north Queensland. abc.net.au |
Society unveils new climate guide The UK's national academy of science, the Royal Society, launches a new guide to the science of climate change. bbc.co.uk |
Private protection How firms can be persuaded to help save at-risk environments bbc.co.uk |
Where are the women in the 'population control' debate? Stabilisation of the global population to allow for truly sustainable development cannot be done by ignoring or impoverishing women. Guest post by '@naomimc'.Charles Coven wrote recently in the Sunday Times of the green dividend to the child benefit cut. Put simply, less benefits will result in fewer children and therefore less consumption and while this is not the aim of the cuts it is unintentionally "greening" the benefits system. While there has been much written about the disproportionate impact on women of benefits cuts, particularly child benefit, the 'population control' debate is remarkably devoid of women. You know, the ones that are having the babies.The green movement is often, wrongfully, accused of misanthropy. "They care more about trees than people", screech the professional oppositionists. But the obsession with population control by a minority of greens opens them up to very legitimate accusations of authoritarianism, 'classism' (i.e. it's the poor we want to stop having babies) and gender-blindness. It is a paradigm dominated by elite men which spectacularly misses the point and ignores the evidence that actually protecting sexual and reproductive rights and empowering women to control their own fertility results in lower birth rates and importantly, lower death rates.No one who works in maternal and reproductive health talks of 'population control'. For historical and contemporary reasons it is associated with eugenics, China's one-child policy, forced sterilisation and forced abortion. These morally abhorrent examples might be dismissed as extremes but they are simply the results of a way of thinking about reproduction which is coercive and rejects individual rights as fundamental to public policy.Respecting, protecting and fulfilling women's sexual and reproductive rights, such as the right to sexual health education, access to contraception and safe and legal abortion, as well as gender equality which enables women to refuse sex and insist on contraception, is what drives down birth rates. An approach that is focused on reducing maternal mortality and morbidity seeks to enable women to decide on the number and spacing of their pregnancies and when they can do that – lo and behold – they have fewer of them.This is a long-established approach in international public health policy. The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 was a significant milestone in population and development and produced a Programme of Action that had reproductive rights at its core. It didn't all start in 1994 but built on the international population conferences dating back to the 1970s.The Programme of Action addresses issues relating to population, the environment and consumption patterns but states categorically that: "...advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women, and the elimination of all kinds of violence against women, and ensuring women's ability to control their own fertility, are cornerstones of population and development-related programmes."So why are population control advocates so silent on women's rights?Charles Coven cites the Big Men of the environmental movement including Sir David Attenborough, Jonathon Porritt, James Lovelock and The Prince of Wales, as proponents of population decline in the UK. He doesn't mention those who work in international healthcare such Dr Gill Greer, head of International Planned Parenthood International, who in a speech to the UN General Assembly earlier this year said:"When the poorest and most marginalised people are able to access comprehensive family planning services, the impact on their families' lives is even more noticeable. The health benefits are also compelling, particularly in high fertility countries, where investment in family planning can reduce hunger and prevent nearly a third of all maternal and ten percent of child deaths. When children's deaths decrease their parents are likely to choose to have fewer children –if they have the means to do so. Furthermore, meeting the unmet need for voluntary family planning will help to enable many of the world's poorest people and communities to be more resilient as climate change further erodes scarce resources."Nor is there mention of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia who launched Africa's Women's Health Commission, which calls for healthcare to be based on equity and human rights.Climate change is undeniably the biggest threat we have to deal with as a global population. Indeed, the impacts of climate change are, and will continue to be, most greatly felt by the world's poor, the majority of whom are women. But the urgency of the situation must not result in authoritarian solutions or debates. Regardless of the moral argument, we lack an evidence base that shows that economic penalties or the marginalisation of women's rights will restrict population growth, in fact quite the opposite. Population control is the wrong framing of this debate and only serves to further disenfranchise women, socially and economically. Cutting child benefit may or may not reduce the numbers of births in the UK, but it will impact on women's economic status. Give women greater control over their fertility and on a population level they will choose to have fewer pregnancies. By refusing to analyse the impacts of population control measures on the poor and on women, those environmentalists who advocate population control and financial penalties for those with children, open themselves up to accusations of a callous disregard for the lives of women. Our end goal is the same – a stabilisation of the global population to allow for truly sustainable development. This cannot be done by ignoring or impoverishing women.This is a guest post by @naomimc, who can be found on Twitter here. Martin Robbinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |