The challenges of peak population. Sometime in the latter half of this century, human population will peak. Having swelled to a bit over nine billion people, our numbers will begin to drop as people age and women worldwide pass through the urban transition, gain control over their own life-choices and have fewer children. After that, population will proceed to decline by the middle of the 22nd century to a number somewhere between 8.5 billion and 5.6 billion (depending it seems largely on whose assumptions about longevity growth you find most credible). — World Changing

Climate change refugee pleas for Australian asylum. An immigrant from a tiny Pacific Ocean nation is appealing to the Australian Government to assist in evacuations because she says her homeland is sinking under rising sea levels. Currently bedridden with pneumonia, Kiribati Australia Association member Wanita Limpus told the Climate Emergency Week rally yesterday outside Queensland’s Parliament House how climate change was destroying her home nation. Her statement came as an Australian scientist who led the United Nations’ investigation of climate joined 15 of his colleagues in urging Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to cut carbon emissions by 25 per cent. — The Canberra Times

The Pope goes green. The first of a planned 2,400 solar panels have been installed on top of the papal audience hall at Vatican City. Workers on Monday began putting photovoltaic cells on the roof of Paul VI Hall to convert sunlight into electricity. Pope Benedict XVI has made conserving the Earth’s resources an important concern of his papacy. — MSNBC

2 cups of coffee = 18 trees.
20 Million: That’s how many families (about 60-80 million people) depend on coffee for their income. After oil, coffee is the second largest traded commodity in the world.
100: That’s how many coffee beans it takes to make one cup of coffee on average.
4,000: One coffee tree yields about 4,000 beans per year on average.
18: If you drink 2 cups of coffee a day, you will need 18 coffee trees devoted just to you. And it takes 5 years before a tree is fully mature and productive.
— Treehugger