thousand seven hundred dollars a year for a family of four with the current given that you know half the world's population is actually living on two dollars a year with the current world's population we'd need for planet earth's to provide the raw materials for everybody to have just poverty level the us standard of living is the prospect of adding a few billion people more pretty stupid and should we be doing something to stabilize human population. well i think definitely the questions about managing population growth come into play here at the same time we really do need to examine how we're going to manage even our existing population levels as we have a ballooning middle class in especially countries like china and india because that's something that you really can't go back on this is a population that for the most part the middle class of twenty thirty has already been born and the question is how are we going to manage this how are we going to manage natural resources and how are we going to make sort of macroeconomic policy decisions which will we'll work out by the time twenty thirty rolls around because

that's something that we are definitely facing down and something that is going to occur if the current trajectories are accurate those are really important questions you like what does the u.n. suggest needs to be done and what in your opinion needs to be done. well the u.n. in their report and the commission of theirs the road it tried to identify a number of what they call a new political economy which they hope to see implemented or at least sketched out at their upcoming rio plus twenty conference which is occurring in june now their hope is that a discussion about for instance with natural resource management the types of things they're asking for are reducing subsidies on fossil fuels and in the case of emissions getting those so at least natural resources are priced within within the global economy as opposed to the situation right now where very often there's very little value or no value put on natural resources such as clean air or water the

types of things identified in terms of policy approaches that could be implemented to deal with this would be things such as. carbon trading perhaps caps perhaps taxation on pollutants of these the types of things that i think you'll see discussed at the at the june meeting do you think his report is going to influence people who are still reluctant to fund renewal energy research or for that matter those people who are fighting against birth control and the battle we're seeing right now in the political arena. i do i think that this is the type of discussion in the way it's being presented right now in the context of a global economic crisis where and the report really does try to frame it in these terms that now is the time to take sort of a holistic view a holistic approach let's look down the road to twenty thirty and talk about one of the really solid economic policy decisions that we can make now which frankly are necessity if we're going to be able to sustain the growth levels we would like to see for the world's population by two thousand and thirty thank you very much for being with us tonight very well thanks for having me this is

a very serious problem in fact it was a serious problem fourteen years ago when i wrote a book on it titled the last hours of ancient sunlight the fate of the world and what we can do before it's too late a book which inspired leo dicaprio as movie the eleventh hour turning mankind's darkest hour into its finest there's there's some serious stuff here you know from the time at the time of christ you know our zero year in in us numbers or in western numbers there were about a quarter billion people on the planet the current sunlight in the cube over here is current sunlight was basically providing everything right people's food their transportation their housing their clothing it all came from current sunlight those sun would fall the grass. cattle would eat the grass oxen would eat the grass horses would eat the grass we would transport ourselves with them we would use their their skin or their grass for for housing for clothing and obviously for food

by the time the magna carta was signed twelve fifteen about a half a billion people were were on the earth living on the earth or on the your view in one thousand more or less this is when we started using coal then then the numbers really start picking up at eighteen hundred and the year eight hundred we were up to one and at that point we had about a half a billion people by eight hundred we had a billion people that was our first one billion so all of human history this is ten thousand b.c. actually humans started hundred sixty five thousand years ago as the oldest fossils of one hundred sixty five thousand years right up to a thousand years ago all that time hundred sixty five thousand years to produce the first one billion people in the united states in one thousand nine hundred and then our second billion took only one hundred thirty years nine hundred thirty for about nine hundred thirty we were full bore into the industrial revolution we were able to convert energy oil coal into into food basically instead of plowing a field with a horse you had one hundred horses and you cover your tractor the third billion

people didn't take one hundred thirty years the third billion people only took thirty years here the john kennedy stood up and took the oath of office the population of the entire planet was only three billion people less than half of what it is right now in one nine hundred sixty the fourth billion only took fourteen years nine hundred seventy four the fifth billion only five years one thousand nine hundred seven the six billion only it's only eleven years twelve years one thousand nine hundred nine and the seventh billion we hit in two thousand and eleven. the fact of the matter is right now because there are so many of us on the planet we have outnumbered termites as the largest single species biomass on earth is more human flesh than any other species we consume half of the freshwater on the planet and half of the net photosynthetic productivity that is all the output of all the plants capturing all the sunlight on earth richard leakey wrote

a book called the sixth extinction he says we are producing the sixth great extinction because we're consuming so much water and so much of this photosynthetic output that all the other species that have to compete with us are being wiped out by us that we're at an extinction level that similar to when the dinosaurs vanished we are we are facing as a consequence of using this ancient sunlight this oil and coal and gas where you are warming our globe we're producing enormous amounts of pollution we need to frankly cut back on fossil fuels and cut our population so cutting back on fossil fuels great let's go to renewables how do we cut our population there are people who suggest that the room with a way to cut population is to make birth control more available to everybody but it turns out that in a lot of countries where birth control is widely available you still have ten eleven people children for a mother per family so it's not totally that i mean that's important but it's not totally that there are other people who say it's all it's economics you know what a country gets wealthy families get smaller but again there are families in the

middle there are countries in the middle east where the average income is forty fifty thousand dollars a person as they spread the wealth around and again they've got twelve kids what's the deal it turns out that the number one thing that will cut population that will stabilize it in one single generation that will stabilize population right across the board is when women are educated empowered so we've got a serious problem here and this is one of the one of the number one solutions we're living in a spherical world as it were we are the only species we're the only animal. whose waste is not something else is food think about that for a minute everything else on earth every other living thing on earth that's waste is food for somebody else and it was the case for us until the industrial revolution and now we're producing waste whether it's radioactive waste toxic waste metal whatever it maybe we are now producing ways that other things can't use that the

earth can't recycle so it's like we're living in a sphere and we're producing waste in a line and eventually that line starts to push against the edges of the sphere and pop up what we're looking at here is the fate of the world or at least the fate of humanity so you know we've got to do something about this we got to do something quick. crazy alert talk about being married to a cause a woman in seattle recently married an abandoned warehouse that she was attempting to save from demolition babylonia i vas told reporters when asked about her reasons for taking the plunge gentrification is happening it's a serious issue that affects poor people and especially people of color and this is just the beginning of the fight the supreme court should officiate at their wedding after all if corporations are people why not abandon warehouses to the ceremony

went smoothly with the attorney minister asking a vase if she would love and cherish and protect this warehouse to which i replied with a line from the famous cat power song sea of love is even added her own verses verses to the ceremonies saying do you remember when we met i cleaned your rooms and washed your floors build community opened some doors you changed my life i'll never forget the day we met i'll cherish your community spirit until the day i die the ceremony ended with a large banner reading i do being draped from the building and the wedding attendees singing lean on me. unfortunately they had honeymoon had to be cut short because the building the husband was demolished on friday it's unclear if ricky man on dog santorum was the guy driving the wrecking ball. after the break everyone knows the foreclosure crisis has crippled the american economy and damaged the

lives of many of the one group of americans it's made achieving the american dream just that a dream. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here in the us. i think the bombing is eatable point well. whenever the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you're going to your freedoms.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't know i'm tom hardy welcome to the big picture.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the foreclosure crisis has devastated the lives and well being of many americans but it's one particular group theory hard to watch and just when you thought the gingrich campaign couldn't face any more bombshells see how newt may be facing some new hurdles the series is way through and the mainstream media has had a long lasting love affair with politicians who spew lies and misinformation really break it off and start standing up for the truth.

as the rest of the news there's still no relief in sight for struggling american homeowners especially after we learned this week that mortgage giant freddie mac. which was in. charge of keeping americans in their homes was actually making money betting on people getting kicked out of their homes since the george bush meltdown in two thousand and seven nine million homes in america have been lost to foreclosure and as of right now out of the four million are in danger of foreclosure but even more troubling than these disturbingly high foreclosure numbers is what's behind them and how this foreclosure crisis is disproportionately affecting minority homeowners joining me from new york to speak to this issue is jenelle ross business reporter with the huffington post jenelle welcome. thank thanks for joining us you know as as a from the statistics i've read as many as half of african-americans who qualified for normal fixed rate mortgages were not even told that they qualified but instead

were sold exploding mortgages adjustable rate mortgages things like that can you speak to how much of this crime was because companies were behaving in a racist way versus how much of it was possible because white homeowners are more likely to have done so before have relatives who have whereas black home owners more often were new to the process and easier to take advantage of basically white privilege. right i think there's no doubt that there was probably some combination of both of those things going on perhaps not always consciously in the minds of the there people who were selling mortgages or. looking for them you know people who were shopping for a mortgage to buy a home there's no question that during the boom there was a really large expansion in the number of first time home buyers of every race this was particularly true for minorities i mean if you yourself haven't had the experience of purchasing

a home and perhaps don't know anyone else who has or don't have any sort of close family members or friends that you would feel comfortable talking in some detail about your finances with you're going to walk into that process with a little less information and you're also likely to come to the table with a little less of a down payment given the large number of people who actually receive some sort of assistance from family or friends with their down payment i mean even if it's. smart ways to go about saving that money i think there is also though unquestionably and i think there's clear evidence given that the justice department is just last month entered into the largest residential mortgage discriminating discrimination settlement with countrywide which is now a division of bank of america and this settlement according to the justice department was reached because there was clear evidence that countrywide and gauged in a pattern of not only failing to tell people that they could have qualified for

a better mortgage or offering them a mortgage terms that would be more suitable for someone with say quality credit score or someone with a substantial down payment but people were also often misled about the terms of their mortgages or led to believe that some of the more difficult to manage as. aspects of say of an adjustable rate mortgage could be easily and automatically avoided through refinancing accept without making it clear that there is always the chance that conditions can change and you may not be able to refinance so i think without a doubt some people came to the table with less knowledge then perhaps other buyers or some minority buyers may have come to the table with less knowledge but there also was a clear effort to sell as many mortgages that as possible at the highest interest

rate with the highest sort of. or the largest sort of exploding options and balloon payments because these were the mortgages that made these companies as well as the individuals who were sitting across the table from perspective homebuyers these are the mortgages that made them the most money whether everyone in those rooms consciously thought this is a black person so i'm going to do something nefarious in the course of processing this mortgage obviously i can't say. there were clear incentives built into the process for mortgage brokers to be less than honest if they chose to be and there's and there's some evidence that in some cases they were specifically targeting minority. that is true that certainly there's plenty of evidence that minority communities where many homeowners had substantial equity in their homes were targeted for pitches just as assessment pitches for refinancing

options and you know of course or second mortgages which is you know a less cheerful way of putting that people were you know being approached to church at school outside of community centers they were everywhere there were ads on radio stations specifically where advertisers knew that the audiences were largely minority there were ads and spanish there were ads in a you name it every language really aggressively targeting certain communities in addition to that without a doubt i've talked to people personally who told me stories about people coming to their door who had clearly done quite a bit of research so they were able to make pitches like you know i know that you have you know thirty thousand dollars in credit card bills and another you know twenty two thousand dollars in medical debt that you need to pay off you're sitting on seventy five thousand dollars right here in your house why don't you let me help you get that out same as such is such

a seductive offer it's it's extraordinary genelle ross thanks so much for being with a smile i really appreciate your your your writing and your perspective on this thank you. thank you it's time struggling homeowners in particularly minority homeowners get the help they need. unfortunately that help will be coming from republican presidential candidates in particular newt gingrich things aren't going so well for newt gingrich as he's about to get blown out by mitt romney in florida believe it or not things could actually get worse like his campaign could be investigated for election fraud you might remember newt failed to get his name on the virginia primary ballot when it was discovered that a campaign staffer forward to more than one thousand five hundred names on a ballot petition new dismissed the forgery calling it a simple mistake. to make. sure you. return eleven. to. fifteen.

but whether it was a mistake or not faking signatures on a ballot petition is a clear example of election fraud the same sort of fraud that republicans claimed acorn had been committing back in two thousand and nine even though acorn wasn't doing it never did it and when they caught somebody doing it they reported it and turn him over to authorities but now authorities in virginia want to know more about exactly what happened in new campaign and they're launching an investigation for more on this i'm joined by brad friedman founder and editor of the brad blog brad welcome. thank you good evening great to have you back with us what have you discovered about a potential investigation into gingrich. well it's not potential it's an actual investigation into gingrich i have confirmed that with both the virginia state board of elections and the virginia attorney general who is actually doing the

investigation it was referred by the board of election to the state a.g. ken cuccinelli that is underway and i should also add add a caution there you said that one guy. submitted fifteen hundred fraudulent signatures in fact that's what newt gingrich has said we don't know if in fact it was only one guy newt called it oh just a mistake but he has not to my knowledge turned over the name of that one guy that's a whole lot of forgeries for one guy don't you think yeah i mean it could be one guy who runs a company that goes out and get signatures and is paid by the signature and he's got ten guys sitting in a room faking them or something like that and or fifty go or it could be the campaign itself we really don't know because he has not been forthcoming about this now remember newt gingrich has joined with the republicans over the years to decry

acorn claiming that what they were doing when they were doing the same thing was voter fraud when in fact acorn wasn't doing it it was a handful of their workers and in all of those cases acorn was the one who checked those signatures who found the fraud who reported it to authorities as fraud and turned in those workers who were defrauding them they busted their lives on the grid has done none of those things exactly how prevalent is this kind of election fraud like what gingrich committed versus the voter fraud there republicans are use is using as an excuse to strip away the rights of now five million people to vote with voter i.d. laws and things. well you know we don't know the full extent of the fraud out there really in virginia not just in gingrich's campaign but in some of these other campaigns as well because you recall only mitt romney and ron paul actually succeeded in getting ten thousand valid signatures in order to get onto the primary

ballot out there in virginia but but that sort of thing campaigns gaming the system insiders you know rigging the system throwing folks off the voter rolls making it harder for people to vote. messing with the results of the elections from the inside with a few keystrokes or stuffing the ballot box that is the great concern that's election fraud what the republicans pretend to give a damn about is voter fraud specifically in person voter fraud in person impersonate at the polling place which is incredibly rare it almost never happens and yet you see these republicans in state after state implementing these photo id restrictions in order to keep this voter fraud from happening at the polls the fact is it doesn't happen at the polls republicans know that that's why they're implementing these measures to keep people from voting specifically minorities

elderly students you know people who tend to vote democratic it's really quite extraordinary brad in in the last thirty seconds here what's the state of our election system in the united states. well it ain't getting any better we had a great start to the primary frankly up in up in iowa where they had paper ballots hand counted in front of all the people it's kind of gone downhill there ever since so with each and every primary where it's harder and harder for the people to oversee their own votes and to that end now you just see networks calling these races based on exit polls not based on actual vote counting those same exit polls that they used to tell us you remember this tom back in two thousand and four back in two thousand and eight at the new hampshire primary they would tell us those exit polls are unreliable don't use them count the votes instead but now you see the networks well news you know is going to old clothes eight o'clock eight zero

eight eight eight o'clock in two seconds they're on saying who the winner is and they're doing it based on exit polls not even bothering to count the votes anymore who knew of them brad thanks so much for being with us and for the great reporting you're doing overbred blog. thanks tom appreciate it so while republicans crack down on the right of voters across america by hyping up fear of individual voter fraud which happens less frequently than people being hit by lightning one of their top republican presidential candidates is apparently involved with a campaign that's committing a lection fraud you know you just can't make this stuff up. coming up after the break conservatives are constantly feeding mainstream media lies and misinformation and the media just swallows it was it about time they started practicing some real journalism.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now. i think iraq is feeding on well. whenever the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

here take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments rants and observations about anything we talk about here on the big picture or during my radio show our comments are night comes from nate on the tom hartman facebook page nate has some ideas about presidential candidates and special interest groups he says tom you are still supporting barack obama were of the largest recipients of these corporations special interest another special interests what do you stop toady in the democratic establishment and give you had a candidate truly free to lead and get behind a candidate that does not have a super pac does not take a penny of pac money and limits all contributions to one hundred dollars per person buddy roemer is not bought out by these special interests he should be invited on to your show every week to promote his campaign. well i actually had buddy roemer on this show last month and while it's great the buddy has sworn off pac donations and deep pocketed donors partly because he's not getting that money anyway it's still ultimately comes down to ideas about governance and buddy and i don't agree

all that much these kinds of things including health care which we debated on my show in december. even like our current system i think that we should have a national health insurer all that really works good it works good for the other three have a good let me give an example like the post office tom you're crazy for what for you could use a one to sixty cent embrace and to let it all away across you won't choice and competition in our society that works best right now we don't have to show you want or profit motive and you want the profit motive could mean for profit or nonprofit that's up to the person perhaps that's up to you from going to the world they say ask to be nonprofit clearly are for profit health insurance system is broken and i don't thing buddy has the right ideas to fix it but is more than welcome to come on the show anytime and talk more about it any other issues that he wants that's it for your take my take tonight if you like your comments and questions heard on the segment the big picture.