PUBLICATIONS

Publications

Our publications feature a combination of our own writing and pieces from changemakers who are working in the area of sustainable population advocacy from a justice-oriented framework for people, animals, and the planet.

Choosing a Planet of Life

Choosing a Planet of Life

One of the commonplaces of environmental writing these days is a population forecast of 10 billion (or more) people by century’s end. Indeed, this projection is endlessly repeated, as if it were as inevitable as the calculable trajectory of an asteroid hurtling through space. Besides being a facile meme amenable to replication, this recurrent demographic report signals a widely shared fatalism: The coming growth has too much inertia behind it, and is far too politically sensitive, to question.

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Overshoot and the Incredible Shrinking Planet

Overshoot and the Incredible Shrinking Planet

Let’s start with a thought experiment. Suppose you and your close family and friends, perhaps 150 people in all, were confined to an isolated island – let’s call it Esperanza – characterized by landscapes and soils that were representative of average arable land in the United States and that, henceforth, you would have to be food self-sufficient – you have no access to trade goods.

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“Green Growth” and Population Denial Doom Our Climate Efforts

“Green Growth” and Population Denial Doom Our Climate Efforts

As the warmest year on record draws to a close, delegates from around the world just reached agreement, after 30 years of meeting on climate change, to transition away from fossil fuels. The legally nonbinding consensus to shift to renewable energy technologies came after delegates arrived via private jet in Dubai, the capital of one of the largest oil producing nations…

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Reproductive Autonomy Is Fundamental to Conservation

Reproductive Autonomy Is Fundamental to Conservation

Overconsumption has brought us the climate crisis, the Sixth Great Extinction, expanding desertification, and the depletion of fresh water supplies across the globe. But it is humans, at this point eight billion of us, who are doing that consuming. It should not be controversial that our profound state of ecological overshoot is a product of both our population and our consumption.

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Dismissal of “Population Alarmism” is Rooted in Pronatalist Ideology

Dismissal of “Population Alarmism” is Rooted in Pronatalist Ideology

As the global population fast approaches 8 billion, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Dr Natalia Kanem wants us to avoid what she calls “population alarmism.”

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We Need to Talk about Overpopulation

We Need to Talk about Overpopulation

Nandita, you have become committed to exploring the impacts of pronatalism and have been embedding the issue of human population growth ever more deeply into humane education. What inspired you to devote so much thought and time to this particular issue?

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