I have a confession to make: I am obsessed with minimizing my impact on the planet. Am I the only one? I want to know (take this survey).

Don’t be too impressed; I am far from living as lightly as some. My (wife’s) house is too big, I almost never take the bus, I eat an occasional burger or steak, and I do fly on commercial airliners from time to time.

My obsession is simply this: In everything I do, throughout each and every day, I think about my impact. I evaluate every decision, every action, and – whenever possible – I choose behaviors that have the least impact. This generally means less waste going to the landfill and less energy consumed. The thing that makes me unusual is that I go through the thought process a dozen times a day. Maybe more. . . .

For the rest of the year, humanity will be trashing the planet. That’s right, today is Earth Overshoot Day. Scientists at Global Footprint Network calculate that as of today, we’ve burned through the natural resources it would take a year for the Earth to replenish. For the next 4 months and 22 days, we’ll be chipping away at the long-term resilience of our life-supporting ecosystems.

If you suspect paranormal activity in your neighborhood, call the Ghostbusters. But what if the kind of activity disturbing your peace is growth mania? Who can you call?

World Population Day (today, July 11, 2016) seems a fitting date to launch our new podcast, Paving Paradise: Tales from the Front Lines of GrowthBusting. On a somewhat regular basis I intend to share news, information and commentary to help you stomp out growth addiction in your community.

You can play today’s episode right here:

Today’s episode features some revealing observations from Eben Fodor, the community planning consultant who penned the excellent book, Better, Not Bigger. You probably always suspected the game is rigged in your own community – real estate developers pull all the strings. This comes up as I unpack the insanity of economic developers recruiting new businesses (and the population growth that follows) in places like Arizona and Nevada, as the water level in Lake Mead drops to levels not seen in over 30 years. . . .

Today is World Environment Day. The United Nations established the day and informs us it’s the most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. It strikes me as odd the theme for this year’s World Environment Day is the illegal trade in wildlife. Themes like this are woefully inadequate in the face of today’s pressing crises, amounting to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Yes, our world’s biodiversity is critical, but illegal trade is a tiny fraction of even that problem. The real problem is the juggernaut of never-ending expansion in the scale of the human footprint. We are laying siege, not just to wildlife, but to the entirety of our “environment.” . . .