President - George Plumb
Email Address: gplumb'@'pshift.com
George Plumb has a long history of environmental activism and now retired he devotes more than half his time to environmental issues. He is a founder or cofounder of several environmental related organizations including the Vt. Trails and Greenways Council, the Vt. Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition and the Vt. Earth Institute. He also serves on the board of the New England Coalition for a Sustainable Population. He first became aware of population growth as a major concern when he saw the area where he lived on Susie Wilson Rd. in Essex Jct. go from a nice, rural area to total suburban sprawl and realized that population growth was the driving force. He is now seeing the same thing happen in his once very rural town of Washington.
Vice President- Thom McKenna
Mark Powell lives in Worcester with his wife and son, and has been researching and writing about population growth, and in particular the politics of U.S. population growth, for over a decade. In his spare time, Mark conducts field research on turtles under the auspices of a permit from the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. Mark recently resigned as Chairman of the Worcester School Board so he could devote more time to writing, and is currently seeking a publisher for his book, The Last Days of Turtle Island: How Political Forces are Engineering a Massive Expansion in the U.S. Population.
Advisory Board Members
Arthur H. Westing
Arthur is a forest ecologist (Yale, MF, 1954; PhD, 1959). He
has been a Research Forester with the United States Forest
Service, has taught forestry, ecology, and conservation at
various colleges and universities, was Dean of Natural Science
at Hampshire College, has twice been a Research Fellow (Bullard,
Guggenheim) at Harvard, and has been a Senior Researcher at
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the
Peace Research Institute Oslo. For eight years he directed
the United Nations Environment Programme project on 'Peace,
Security, & the Environment'. He has been awarded
an honorary doctorate (DSc, Windham, 1973) and a medal from
the New York Academy of Sciences (1983); and he is one of the
500 individuals worldwide to have been appointed to the United
Nations 'Global 500 Roll of Honour' (1990). He has been
a Consultant in Environmental Security since 1990, variously
to the World Bank, UNEP, UNIDIR, and UNESCO, to the International
Committee of the Red Cross, to the International Organization
for Migration, the Government of Eritrea, and to several other
national and international agencies.
Westing moved to Vermont in 1965, and has been on the faculties of Middlebury and Windham Colleges. He has served on the Governor's Environmental Control Advisory Committee, has been a Contributing Editor of the Vermont Freeman, and on the statewide Boards of the Vermont Wild Land Foundation, Vermont Academy of Arts & Sciences, and Vermont Coverts. Locally he has served on the Boards of the Windham Regional Commission, Windham World Affairs Council, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Woodland Owners' Association, and Windmill Hill Pinnacle Association.
According to Westing, "We share the biosphere with all
the other living things on earth and it becomes an inescapable
obligation to keep our numbers at a level that assures their
continued survival and well-being."
Cecelia Angelone
Cecelia is an undergraduate Environmental Studies major at
the University of Vermont. Her interest in population issues
was sparked when Jane Roberts, co-founder of 34 Million Friends,
spoke at UVM about her work with the UNFPA. Cecelia's particular
areas of interest are women's empowerment and family planning.
She believes that, “population is vitally linked to
all other environmental issues, and that population concerns
must be taken into account when attempting to solve any ecological
problem.” When not studying at UVM, Cecelia spends time
with her family in rural East Amwell, New Jersey.
Molly Lyons
After reading about VSP in Seven Days, Molly Lyons experienced
a "population epiphany" and was inspired to act,
confident in the direction of her energies. Molly is originally
from Chicago but fell in love with Vermont after a weekend
trip almost four years ago. Until the birth of her first child,
she taught Special Education in the Chicago Public Schools
and spent time working with Deaf teens with behavior and mental
disorders. She has also been active in many political campaigns,
stuffing envelopes as early as six years of age. "I find
inspiration for social change in my children and the beauty
and balance of nature, which I hope to pass on and enjoy well
into maturity. Becoming a mother to two boys helped me realize
that biting your finger nails and watching from the side lines
is not the way to ensure a safe and healthy future for the
coming generations."
Population Media Center's founder and President, William Ryerson
has a 36-year history of working in the field of reproductive
health, including 20 years of experience adapting the Sabido
methodology for behavior change communications to various cultural
settings worldwide. The Population Media Center is a highly
successful international organization with offices in several
foreign countries. It uses the media, particularly soap operas,
to help educate people about family planning and thereby
reduce fertility rates. He served as Director of the Population
Institute's Youth and Student Division, Development Director
of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, Associate
Director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and
Executive Vice President of Population Communications International
before founding Population Media Center in 1998. Mr. Ryerson
is listed in several editions of Who's Who in the World,
Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the East. In 2006,
he was awarded the Nafis Sadik Prize for Courage from the
Rotarian Action Group on Population and Development. Bill
states, “I think population growth is one of the great
root causes of poverty, unemployment, political instability,
environmental destruction, energy shortages, species extinction,
and other problems plaguing humankind.” Bill sends out
daily commentaries that he receives from others about current
population issues that are very informative. To receive these
just email Bill atryerson’@’populationmedia.org
and ask to be included.
Marianne Ward is a life-long resident of Burlington. She
raised three sons while working part-time in healthcare and
attending college. She received a BA in Health Psychology
from Trinity College in Burlington. Her many years in
healthcare include: educator, clinical social work, public
health, minority health, hospice, and domestic violence. Most
recently, she implemented a chronic disease self-management
program for the Vermont Department of Health. She expresses
deep concern for the people in Third World countries suffering
from de-humanizing poverty stemming from over-population. She
has long followed the projects of Population Media Center in
Shelburne. She is interested in organizing a Chittenden
County group to work on population issues in Vermont. If
you are interested, please email her at mjw@burlingtontelecom.net
George Webb is Professor Emeritus in Physiology at UVM and is currently doing medical research in Singapore about 6 months of each year. He became a member of the Sierra Club in 1969. He was active on the Exec. Comm. of the Vermont Sierra Club in the 70’s, 80’s, & 90’s. He formed the Vermont Sierra Club Population Committee in 1992 and served as its Chair through 1999. He realized that without population reduction and stabilization, all other environmental causes will be lost causes. During his lifetime of 73 years, George says, “I have witnessed the effects of a doubling of the U.S. population and a tripling of the world population. These effects have all been bad--both for wildlife and for human life. During my 40 years in Vermont I have noticed major environmental degradation resulting from too many people. I believe we need to tackle population growth on all fronts: global, US, and Vermont. What can’t go on forever must come to an end.”
Lisa Sammet
Lisa Sammet is the Library Director at the Jeudevine
Memorial Library in Hardwick. After growing up in Massachusetts
and armed with her Masters in Library Science she worked as a
librarian in Spokane,Wa. Concerned about the world, she
joined the Peace Corps and taught in Ivory Coast, back in the
states she got a degree in agriculture and returned
to Senegal to work as an Agricultural Extension Agent again
with the Peace Corps. Returning to the states she hiked the
entire Appalachian Trail and rode her bicycle 13,000 miles
from Massachusetts to Mexico up to Canada and back with her
former husband. They built a small passive solar cabin with
solar electricity while Lisa worked as the Library Director
at Sterling College in Craftsbury, VT. They sold the house
but Lisa bought another passive solar house where she also
runs a concert series once a month, The Music Box concerts.
She works with HEART (the Hardwick Energy Action Resource Team)
and is on the Craftsbury Town Energy Committee.
"Overpopulation has been a concern
for me since high school. The effects of overpopulation
are increasing the problems of global warming and resource depletion.
It is a world wide problem that we are witnessing in Vermont.
Sustainability can never be reached without reducing the human
population".