Population came up again while I presented a poster based on a paper I wrote with PAI colleagues Malea Hoepf Young and Karen Hardee entitled, "Condoms and CFLs: Environmental Behavior Change Lessons from Public Health." The Population Action International logo on the left side of the poster alerted people to our work regarding population, although that was not the topic of our poster. Several people stopped and said, "We are so glad you are tackling the population issue because it's so important and no one wants to talk about it."

I had already heard part of the answer to the question - why no one wants to talk about it - in Mr. Ryerson's session the previous day. The simple answer is that no one wants to talk about population because population is still thought of as population control. I also heard some misconceptions along the lines of, "No one wants to talk about population, but it's the most important driver of climate change." So clearly people were thinking about population, were having difficulty conceptualizing the link between population and climate change and needed more information.

Our poster was very well received. The topic, using behavior change theories from public health to promote environmental behavior change, seemed to resonate with the audience and attracted many people ready to hear about this application. The smiling condom image we had prominently displayed was a draw, but once people stopped at the poster they were eager to talk about broader issues of population and climate change. This demonstrates exactly why PAI's population and climate change initiative is so important to the climate change research community - it's not that people don't want to talk about population; it's that they don't know how.