IN THE MEDIA
Media Coverage
Our team works hard to stay active in our media advocacy efforts to shift the mainstream cultural narrative to inspire behavioral and system change towards substantially downscaling human impact to enable natural ecosystems, nonhuman animals, and humanity to flourish together.
Media inquiries for our executive director Nandita Bajaj can be sent to media@populationbalance.org.
Too Much? Too Little? Too Late?
In a panel discussion spanning the worlds of math, physics and chemistry, investigative journalist Christopher Ketcham chats with Dr. Bill Rees, Prof. Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, Rex Weyler, Co-founder of Greenpeace International, and Nandita Bajaj, Executive Director of Population Balance to discuss where humanity is heading in an overcrowded, over-consuming world.
End the Insanity: For Nuclear Disarmament and Global Demilitarization
No one believed Katrina would happen before Katrina happened. No one believed Fukushima would happen before Fukushima happened. Virtually no one believes a nuclear war will happen before it happens. But a nuclear war happening is not a disaster: it is a holocaust. Nuclear war must be averted, and most countries have already taken steps to opt out of nuclear madness.
Technology Won't Save Us From Global Warming, but This Just Might
After the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer on record, with record high temperatures around the world, Pope Francis recently exhorted the developed world to act faster on climate change. An overhaul of wealthy lifestyles is in order, he said, and technological fixes are not the answer.
The Rise of Pronatalism
There’s an insidious new tactic emerging for selling right-wing ideology to wider audiences, evident in last month’s Budapest Demographic Summit for “family-friendly thinkers and decision-makers,” the upcoming pro-birth Natal conference in Austin, Texas, and the recent film “Birthgap.”
"It's not science" – Organisations with links to Musk accused of "pro-growth" skew
Questions have been raised concerning Our World in Data (OWID) and its pro-economic and population growth bias after it emerged the organisation has taken donations from tech billionaire Musk since at least 2021.
Feminism is the greatest threat to mankind
Women without children, whether by choice or circumstance, face enormous stigma in most cultures, which often includes domestic abuse, divorce, and social ostracisation. There is also a lack of reckoning with the great unraveling of our ecological and social crises, which will likely bring unimaginably dire consequences for humanity and other species over the next several decades.
Reproductive rights are under threat
Coercive pronatalism – pressures to compel women to have more children – inspired by nationalism, xenophobia, militarism or market fundamentalism is at an all-time high, and is a threat to reproductive rights everywhere. On a planet facing numerous ecological and social catastrophes, bemoaning a decline in national fertility rates is a reprehensible distraction.
A Minnesota nonprofit's solutions to human overpopulation
The world’s population is set to grow to 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. A nonprofit based in Saint Paul shares its solutions to combat human overpopulation and overconsumption.
Saying Out Loud What Others Won't Even Whisper About Climate Change
U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry raised eyebrows recently when he said continued high birth rates in some parts of the world and a global population of 10 billion would be unsustainable. The problem with his remarks isn't their accuracy.
Population Denialism is Reminiscent of Climate Denialism
A new study estimates that global heating will push billions of people outside the comfortable range of temperature and weather in which we have evolved. While coverage of the study notes that rapid emissions cuts could greatly reduce the number of people forced to live amid unprecedented extremes, it fails to mention the obvious: that reducing our population would have the same effect.
‘Isn’t Journalism about Finding New Stories?’: The Climate News the Media Ignores
“It is difficult to compete for air time in a landscape so dominated by well-funded neoliberal institutions,” Bajaj explained, saying the organization produces op-eds, letters and press releases to counter “pro-growth propaganda”, which editors refuse to publish.
Population Growth is Not Good for People or the Planet
India’s population has just reached 1.4 billion people, surpassing China as the world’s most populous nation four years earlier than projected. Spurring this growth is a traditional patriarchal culture in which women’s identity is constrained by the social expectation they bear children.
Coercive Pro-Birth Policies Have Devastating Impacts on People and the Planet | Opinion
In the end, alarmism about population decline is a distraction from the real crisis demanding attention: the human enterprise in overshoot, overwhelming the natural systems that enable life on Earth. Norms need to shift so that having fewer or no children is understood as a legitimate, positive choice and lower fertility is recognized as a path to a positive future.
The new push for more babies: How tech elites think it will save the planet
“Globally, we’re still adding about 80 million people every year to the planet. That growth stems from pronatalism, which is all of the cultural and institutional pressure that promotes or even coerces childbearing. Climate change, biodiversity loss, growing scarcities of freshwater are all bigger problems than “the bizarre claim that we’re not producing enough babies,” Bajaj said.
Quirks and Quarks with Bob McDonald
In this 17-minute segment, executive director Nandita Bajaj, along with Dr. Céline Delacroix and PB Advisor Dr. William Rees, was asked to comment on what the 8 billion milestone actually means in terms of social, reproductive, and ecological justice.
Dismissal of “Population Alarmism” is Rooted in Pronatalist Ideology
Pronatalism is a globally pervasive form of reproductive coercion, that reduces people to reproductive vessels for external agendas. In addition to being a source of reproductive injustice, it fuels population growth and has propelled the global population toward the 8 billion milestone. It’s time to confront the pernicious influence of pronatalism on population growth, human rights, and the planet.
I Am Not a Slave to the Biological Clock
And why we would do well to recognize that perhaps the “biological imperative” is simply a powerful creative impulse, and we are glossing over this more complex reality when we attribute that impulse, with little examination, to wanting a child.
Abortion Bans Are a Natural Outgrowth of Coercive Pronatalism
Coercive pronatalism may take the form of restrictions on contraception, or propagandist myths around contraceptive use, or loan forgiveness and other financial incentives in exchange for having large families. If these inducements don’t convince women to have children, then abortion bans are instituted to force them into it against their will.
The Baby Bust is Good for the Planet
Pronatalism and baby-bust alarmism ignore the gains in women’s empowerment and reproductive autonomy that lead to lower fertility rates. Pronatalism commodifies women, babies, and immigrants as economic inputs that benefit only the corporations that rely on a never-ending supply of workers and consumers for their products.
Pope Francis’s criticism of childless couples hurts parents and nonparents alike
“The fact that after fighting for personal and reproductive liberation for centuries, women in some countries are finally able to break free from their prescribed biological and gender roles and authentically exercise their right to have no or fewer children is something to be celebrated,” Bajaj said. “It’s a hallmark of a liberated society. It’s neither a loss of humanity nor selfish.”