Copenhagen: Business-as-Usual or the Vision and Backbone to Act?Posted by Dave Gardner on Dec 15, 2009Climate change is getting a lot of attention this week as the U.N. Climate Change Conference heats to a climax in Copenhagen. Climate disruption due to increasing concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere joins the growing evidence of an unsustainable human footprint on the planet. I’m following the Copenhagen talks with interest, wondering whether we’ll see a rational response or business-as-usual: more evidence we just can’t believe we’re at the eleventh hour. How our society reacts to climate change is a likely indicator of how we’ll respond to early warning signs of peak energy, peak water and peak food. I’ve arranged for us to get video reports from Copenhagen during this last week of the summit. Zoe Cormier, a London-based science reporter and photographer, has graciously agreed to be our eyes and ears in Copenhagen. She has just launched a new environmental news service, AxisOfEco.com, an impressive online news source for original environmental reporting. Zoe’s credits include a regular column on environmental issues for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, and stories published in The Toronto Star, The Ecologist and Plenty magazine. She is the current alternative science blogger for The New Internationalist. She also writes and photographs for Guerilla Science. Zoe impressed me enough that we’ve put a high definition video camera in her pocket to take to Copenhagen. This week we hope to capture the look and feel of the summit, perhaps an interview or two, some footage for my documentary, Hooked on Growth, and – importantly – Zoe’s observations. Check back daily this week for her reports. Meet Zoe: Copenhagen Needs Daylight: Overpopulation & Addiction to Economic GrowthPosted by Dave Gardner on Dec 07, 2009All eyes are on Copenhagen today as the Climate Summit begins its two-week sprint to set the planet on a survival course. Here’s the official Climate Change Conference website, for you to see schedules and get more information. While I encourage world leaders to get very serious about reducing emissions as seriously and quickly as possible, I’d like to share some perspectives that are pretty critical of what’s taking place in Copenhagen. I offer these in the spirit of pushing for a better outcome from the talks. Too Little, Too Late: Clearly many are worried or already disappointed that the bar has been set too low. It appears the best one can hope for is that the world agrees to agree on emission reduction targets that are too little, too late. In fact, the word “reduction” shouldn’t even be included. Leading climate scientist James Hansen pretty clearly articulated this shortcoming in an interview with the UK’s Guardian: Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientist. Ignoring the Most Effective & Least Expensive Solution: I’m glad to see a growing chorus raising the issue of overpopulation. This is the elephant in the room. It’s difficult enough to get serious emissions reduction targets; why completely stall the process by raising a topic so few leaders are comfortable addressing? Perhaps because – unchecked – population growth threatens to erase every gain we make in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The topic is so taboo we have to look outside the U.S. for front page stories. UK’s The Independent offers a succinct summary of the subject in Once taboo, population enters climate debate. Recent reports have finally provided the analysis that points out both the huge negative impact of a growing population and the huge positive impact of reining in that growth. If we can just get over all the emotional baggage hindering rational consideration of the population factor, quick, voluntary reduction of the population growth rate everywhere would be the easiest and cheapest way to achieve climate change goals. We Need an Alternative to Economic Growth: If there’s anything tougher than population to bring into the conversation, it’s economic growth. Other than an enlightened minority, everyone is rooting for economic growth. An insistence on economic growth is the single biggest limitation on every nation’s Copenhagen position. This insistence is resulting in unimpressive promises to increase CO2 emissions more slowly. That is not going to cut it. We seem to be willing to burn down the house to keep warm. Sadly the world is not ready to get unhooked from its growth addiction and irrational belief in perpetual economic growth. The news that recession is helping reduce emissions should cause us to pause and reflect. Check out: Recession takes a bite out of U.S. GHG emissions If you want to dig into this economic growth obsession more deeply, I highly recommend Temporary Recession or the End of Growth by Richard Heinberg. That’s a lot to chew on, so I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from famed environmentalist David Brower: “There is no business to be done on a dead planet.” Dave Gardner is producing the documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, which examines the addictions and myths we must leave behind in order to become a sustainable civilization. Cast a vote for GrowthBustersPosted by Dave Gardner on Nov 19, 2009Our documentary project has a great opportunity to recieve $15,000 worth of web/creative services from Free Range Studios, the wonderful folks behind Annie Leonard’s remarkable internet sensation/film, Story of Stuff. Your votes will ultimately choose who wins this grant. Please visit the grant/voting site and consider casting your votes for GrowthBusters. The deadline is December 1, but don’t wait; top vote-getters have higher visibility throughout the voting process. Here’s a walk-through the voting process in case you get stumped: 1. Visit the voting site and register. Thanks so much for your support, Dave Why Joining our e-mail list is crucialPosted by Dave Gardner on Nov 04, 2009A large support network is critical to distributing the film. Every day I hear from people around the world who’ve discovered this film project and want to encourage me. Yet frequently I find they have not joined our e-mail list. Why would they skip such a quick and easy way to support this project? I suspect it’s because I haven’t communicated our distribution strategy very well. While Michael Moore, Al Gore and Morgan Spurlock have made it so documentaries can sometimes get theatrical distribution, for every film like Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, there are a hundred documentaries that never get a theatrical run. While we’re not ruling it out, we simply cannot count on Hooked on Growth being picked up by a Hollywood distributor. So our distribution strategy depends on an army of supporters around the world arranging community screenings and viewing parties. By joining our e-mail list you’re not committing to do anything, but I need to be able to give you the opportunity to help when the film is released. When director Robert Greenwald released Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, the film was seen by 500,000 viewers at 7,000 community screenings in one week. That can only happen if good people like you join our e-mail list. Don’t worry about being deluged with e-mails from us. I’m way too busy making this film to send you too many e-mails. And you can easily unsubscribe at any time. So, maybe you cannot make a tax-deductible donation to help finish the film. Maybe you can’t volunteer some time doing research, updating our website or transcribing interviews. But you can, in about 20 seconds, join our growing, global grass roots support network. While you’re at it, please consider taking another 10 seconds to fan us on Facebook! Thanks! No Impact Man – The year of living less dangerouslyPosted by Dave Gardner on Sep 20, 2009Today I’d like to draw your attention to a modern superhero – No Impact Man. I first learned about this un-caped crusader two years ago when mild-mannered Colin Beavan was in the midst of his year of living less dangerously for the Earth. He and his family were attempting to live for one year with zero net impact on the planet. This was the No Impact Man experiment. Make no mistake, the experiment was extreme. One New York Times story dubbed it, The Year Without Toilet Paper. In the New Yorker Elizabeth Kolbert described the family’s life as climbing the stairs to eat cabbage slaw in the dark. Stephen Colbert had a much tighter grasp on reality when he described it as “like ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ only completely implausible.” I contacted Colin about doing an interview for my Hooked on Growth documentary. I told him this was a perfect example of the extreme sacrifices we’ll all have to make if we don’t get unhooked from our addiction to economic and population growth. It took Colin all of 10 seconds to set me straight. He was not interested in being a part of that story. He would be glad to do an interview about the true story. His story, it turns out, is about how wonderful life turns out to be when you step off the hamster-wheel of the consumptive North American lifestyle. That exchange with No Impact Man was a turning point in my own journey and development of the storyline of my film. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to me that my film about getting unhooked from growth addiction was destined to have a very happy ending. I credit No Impact Man with getting me on the right track. It made sense! Of course if you get the addict into a recovery program his life improves. This would apply to growth addicts just as much as to heroin junkies. Now, if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, then you desperately need to read Colin’s No Impact Man book that just hit the shelves, and see the documentary by the same name. Check here for a screening of the film your area. If you’re in Colorado, I invite you to a special screening September 25 at Denver’s Chez Artiste Theatre, sponsored by GrowthBusters. I’ll introduce the film and lead a Q&A discussion after the 7:00 p.m. show. The No Impact Man film was a Sundance Film Festival selection, and is getting very positive reviews. I also recommend you check out the new non-profit No Impact Project. Here you can join a growing cadre of No Impact merry men and women conducting their own No Impact Experiments - for one week. If Colin can go one year without toilet paper, surely you can survive a week without paper napkins. I thought highly enough of this project I helped put together this welcome video.
World Population Day: let overpopulation topic out of closetPosted by Dave Gardner on Jul 10, 2009July 11 is World Population Day, as declared by the United Nations in 1989 to raise awareness of global population issues. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of awareness out there. Of the 6.77 billion people on the planet, too few have either the courage or the awareness to weigh in or do something about the subject. Overpopulation is the proverbial elephant in the room, and it is a big one. There is widespread agreement among scientists that we are in overshoot. According to Global Footprint Network, 1.3 planet Earths would be required to sustainably meet the needs of our current population at present levels of consumption and waste. If we continue current upward trends in consumption and population, by 2035 we’ll need 2 Earths. This means we are not acting sustainably. We are using up stuff that we, and/or future generations, are going to need. The rate at which we use up stuff is commonly represented in the famous IPAT equation developed by Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. Simplified, it states that human impact = per capita consumption X population. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out from this equation that perpetual increase in either consumption or population would require a like decrease in the other in order to avoid increasing human impact on our ecosystems and resource base. Or maybe it does. Because all too often we do ignore population’s role in the equation. It’s not politically correct to suggest humankind and the world we live in would benefit greatly from stabilizing or even reducing our total population. We will do anything to avoid addressing that subject. We’ll flush our toilets every other day, breathe toxic air, destroy fisheries, and take our chances with nuclear power or “clean” coal. We’ll pour millions of dollars into efforts to restore rivers and streams, protect endangered species, or develop alternative energy sources. But we won’t even spread the word that voluntarily limiting family size would be a prudent and effective way to move toward sustainable equilibrium. That is a shame. It is telling that in his World Population Day message, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon does not call for worldwide education about limiting family size. No, the politically correct thing to do is skirt the issue and call for opportunity, equality and reproductive health for women. Granted, these have proven to be important factors in reducing fertility rates. But I have to wonder, why can’t we also talk about making responsible decisions about family size? London Mayor Boris Johnson captured this dilemma succinctly in Global over-population is the real issue, a commentary on this subject, published in The Daily Telegraph in October of 2007 (before he was elected mayor). A few highlights:
This commentary was so incisive it earned Johnson a Global Media Award last year from The Population Institute.
It’s interesting at the G8 Summit this week, leaders fretted and prattled on about staving off climate change, but lacked the courage and resolve to worry less about economic growth and worry more about whether there will even be an economy in the face of this century’s predicted climate disruption. Did they dare to discuss population growth? Back to Boris Johnson’s 2007 commentary:
In our own communities, local governments routinely issue warnings about the need to build more freeways, expand mass transit, alter land use practices, build more dams and power plants, and no doubt raise taxes, in an effort to accommodate projected population growth. We are always accommodating it. In many, many cases we are actually encouraging and incentivizing it. Never willing to do anything about it. This year, on July 11, World Population Day, let’s resolve to talk about global overpopulation more often. Let’s begin to recognize that our communities, our states, and even our nations, often have policies which incent population growth. Let’s take population growth out of the closet, so all these entities can begin to move toward sustainable population policies that aim for stable, if not declining, populations. Holy Grail of Economic GrowthPosted by Dave Gardner on Jul 10, 2009In a classic scene from the film City Slickers, Jack Palance holds up one gloved finger as he counsels Billy Crystal that the secret of life is just “one thing” that is all-important. “You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.” Eventually Billy Crystal figures out that “one thing,” the key to life. In debate on the Waxman-Markey climate bill recently passed by Congress, GOP critics lined up to denounce the bill as an unaffordable killer of economic growth. Economic growth is the one thing no one is willing to give up in the “greening” of America. In fact, I heard no supporter of the bill state that we need to give up economic growth in order to meet greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets urged by the scientific community. Instead, supporters argued that cap and trade will create jobs and grow a green economy. In a speech in Denver last year, Bill Clinton hinted that giving up economic growth would be a path to reducing carbon emissions. But in the next breath he dismissed it, as if everyone knows that is never going to happen. He still took a lot of grief from pundits using that quote out of context. It is un-American to be against economic growth! This begs a very important question, one which I see discussed very little if at all, certainly not in the mainstream media: Can we create jobs and grow the global economy and at the same time significantly reduce our impacts on the very ecosystems that provide both the resources for that economy and life-support for humankind? If we just power an ever-growing economy with windmills and solar panels, if we just drive hybrid cars, if we recycle, if we change our light bulbs, can a finite planet support an infinitely expanding economy? Here’s just one small example of the conundrum (courtesy of Jack Hart, former managing editor of The Oregonian): A March 29 headline read, “Portland lessens its ‘carbon footprint.” But Portland did no such thing. Portlanders may have indeed reduced their per-capita driving by 5% over five years, as the story reported, but the metro area’s population grew by 8% over the same period. The number of vehicles registered in Multnomah County has increased 45% since 1990. You do the math. When it comes to global warming, we’re ignoring one simple truth: The Earth doesn’t care about per-capita greenhouse-gas production. It’s the total amount of CO2 in the air that matters. Back to the question, can a finite planet support an infinitely expanding economy? To me, the answer seems obvious, but I suspect billions of people are too busy on the treadmill powering that economy to stop and really ponder this question. That “one thing,” the Holy Grail of economic growth, is easy to buy when it is shoved down your throat in every headline, every newscast, and every presidential address. Behind the scenes that question is being debated. There are some very credible and thoughtful people digging into this subject. For today, let me suggest this required reading – a paper for the Sustainable Development Commission by University of Maryland’s Herman Daly. Daly was a senior economist at the World Bank and is considered the father of steady-state economics. If Daly is the father of steady-state economics, the late Julian Simon, if not the father, certainly one of the most prolific high priests of the church of everlasting economic growth. You can get a small taste of his philosophy here. Now, I suggest you read this upbeat analysis of investing in emerging markets. This was undoubtedly written from the perspective that it contains good news for investors looking for growth opportunities. But if you read about the billions in China who will enter the consuming middle class, or about the billions in urban infrastructure expenditures anticipated the world over, but read it with your sustainability hat on – the one where you want to rein in carbon emissions and leave your grandchildren a planet as abundant and healthy as you inherited – it takes on a completely different tone. Just as I doubt the Chinese can follow in U.S. consuming footsteps without an increasing ecological footprint – even if done with a green tint, I have serious doubts about our ability to create over a million new jobs in the U.S. every year and reduce our total carbon footprint. I doubt we can increase the number of housing starts every year without depleting over time our wildlife habitat, agricultural land, fresh water resources, and forests and other resources. And I am quite certain we cannot indefinitely increase retail spending and consumption and forever materially improve our lives without devastating our life support systems. I believe we need to aim for a stable, one-world economy that focuses more on meeting everyone’s basic needs and less on ever-increasing economic throughput. Maybe the “one thing,” the secret to life, is not something measured by GDP.
“There is no business to be done on a dead planet.” Bon voyage to a super-volunteerPosted by Dave Gardner on Jun 26, 2009Today we sadly bid a fond farewell to Ursula Sommer, our incredible volunteer assistant editor for the past two months. Ursula is a recent Colorado College graduate who became excited about my documentary, Hooked on Growth (in production). She wanted to work on this film. In this era of tight finances, we were unable to raise the funds to pay Ursula for even a summer internship. But because she believes in the cause, she donated her time. She even had to acquire a better bike to navigate the hills that dot her five-mile commute every day.  Assistant editor Ursula Sommer sips coffee and logs an interview Ursula has been a joy to have around and a tremendous help in the edit suite, helping us catch up on getting all our interviews logged and onto our hard drives so they can be transcribed and edited. This weekend Ursula is off to New York City, where she will begin work on the for-profit side of the film and television business. She’s been a joy to have around the office. We wish her well and hope this is not goodbye, but just “see you later!” Now, thanks to Ursula, I have more interviews than volunteer transcribers, so if you’ve been looking for a way to get involved in the project, this is a good excuse to contact me. Join transcribers in London, Sydney, Seattle and D.C. working to make Hooked on Growth a reality! ABC NEWS SNUBS POPULATION SOLUTIONPosted by Dave Gardner on May 29, 2009Earth 2100 is an ABC News (U.S.) special that will air the evening of June 2. At the show’s little-tended website one finds hope for a remarkably candid (especially for the U.S.) look at the sustainability predicament we find ourselves in. From the program description: What could our world look like over the next one hundred years if we don’t act now to save our troubled planet? The world’s brightest minds agree that the “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results. This is heady stuff, since climate change makes a few headlines, resource depletion fewer, and population growth is almost universally ignored as a multiplier in the equation that represents human impact on our planet. I was hopeful last December when I discovered this program and its invitation for the public to submit videos offering solutions. With the deadline less than two weeks away, I shifted into high gear, wrote a script, put out the casting call, assembled a great team of over 30 volunteers, and created this “public service announcement” about aiming for stable or declining population as one of the solutions to the problems this special will examine. I’m sorry to report that ABC News has refused to post this Population Solution video on the Earth 2100 website or include any part of it in the special. The producers have offered an array of excuses which don’t hold water. I’m left to conclude the population taboo is at work here. I guess, as is too often the case, while the producers may see population growth as contributing to the problem (a step in the right direction), they cannot wrap their heads around the idea we ought to actively, vocally, and responsibly do what we can to reduce the growth rate to zero as soon as we can. There is still much work to be done. We must have more conversations, open more eyes, and enlighten more minds. Population’s role in our predicament and it’s role in the solutions must not remain taboo. My documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, will examine this taboo. Talking about it will help to chip away at it. When it comes to overpopulation, hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, and speak-no-evil will not serve us well. I can’t finish this film soon enough! If you’d like to express your disappointment to the producers of Earth 2100, here are the e-mail addresses I have: Sarah.E.Namias.-ND@abc.com and Joanna.L.Weiner.-ND@abc.com. You can also submit feedback to ABC News here. Be sure to take a look. Maybe they’ll surprise us. The trailer includes sound bites from Paul Ehrlich, Richard Heinberg, David Pimentel, Lester Brown and James Howard Kunstler, among others. Earth 2100 airs June 2, 9 to 11 p.m. EDT and PDT. Bring on the baby boom – Are you kidding me?Posted by Dave Gardner on May 09, 2009This opinion piece in USA Today really gave me pause. Author Laura Vanderkam celebrates the fact that U.S. fertility rate rose 22% from 1976 to 2007. And she suggests increasing it even further is a worthy goal. I’m not kidding. Here is her rationale:
Aside from being pregnant, Ms. Vanderkam has no credentials to make her an economic or demographic expert, a shortcoming she clearly displays with this glaring absence of mathematical ability and lack of big-picture, long-term thinking. Judging by the on-line comments to her column, many readers recognized her plan for the unsustainable Ponzi scheme it is. But I feel compelled to underscore just how utterly ridiculous is the notion that we can “grow manageably” as she puts it, and solve the problems of the growing U.S. deficit. So, let’s do a little simple math. Let’s say the women of America don’t swallow Vanderkam’s hogwash and we don’t further increase fertility rate. Let’s say we just stay at the current annual U.S. population growth rate of roughly 1%. Certainly Ms. Vanderkam would consider that “manageable.” At that rate, we double our population every 70 years. That means in 2079 U.S. population will be over 612 million. And in 2149 it will be 1.2 billion – equal to today’s China population. In 2219 it will be nearly 2.5 billion. How manageable is that? Today, at 306 million we can’t keep everyone employed, California doesn’t have enough water to supply agriculture, and USA Today is too busy to find a columnist who understands overshoot. Let me assure you, the costs of trying to meet the needs of even 600 million people in the U.S. will dwarf the current financial crisis. Her solution is no solution at all. Let me be clear, I’m happy for Ms. Vanderkam and her pregnancy. Everyone has a right to make a family. In fact, I want very badly for her children to have happy, healthy lives; that’s why I want prospective parents everywhere to simply understand the consequences of having large families, so they can make informed, responsible, compassionate decisions about family size. Producing Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, I of all people am well aware of the proliferation of mindless ignorance of the fact we are in overshoot (our planet’s population is beyond a sustainable level). Yet when a prominent national publication like USA Today gives ink to this kind of drivel, I shudder. And I call it like it is. Forgive me. I know it’s impolite. But when growth-boosting baby-terrorists like Vanderkam are on the loose, it is no time for diplomacy. newer entries · older entries |
