Island Press Field Notes

The government of Vietnam will decide on December 22 whether to penalize parents who have more than two children, reinitiating a coercive population policy it abandoned in 2003. "We are considering an adjustment to our policy appropriate to the circumstances of the country," Truong Thi Mai, chair of Vietnam's Parliamentary Committee of Social Affairs, confirmed on Saturday. "The Parliament Standing Committee will decide the week after next."

A reporter recently called me, asking what changes in environmental policy I hoped to see in an Obama Administration. I immediately thought of the specific issues that have troubled me over the past eight years: unregulated oil and gas exploration in the West, too few species protected under the Endangered Species Act, too many snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, the reckless quest to drill, baby, drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, etc., etc. And then it struck me that there was something far more fundamental that President Obama needs to do.

My favorite quote from the recent campaign was the statement in Obama's acceptance speech at the convention in Denver. Speaking about the United States, he said, "We are better than these last eight years."