As we approach World Population Day 2014 (July 11), it’s well past time we seriously consider the role of human population level in the sustainability of our civilization.

Over the last century the scale of the human enterprise has mushroomed, eventually surpassing the capacity of the Earth to sustainably support us. Scientists at the Global Footprint Network estimate we crossed that threshold about 40 years ago. Every year we get an update from WWF revealing how far into overshoot we have ventured.

The path we’ve taken closely mirrors a scenario run by a group of scientists at MIT that shows our life-support systems failing this century, under the heavy load of human activity. Evidence of overshoot, while seldom characterized as such, is in the news every day. . . .

Saturday is World Water Day, as declared by the United Nations. As good folks around the world wring their hands over the looming shortage of freshwater for a growing world population, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out the obvious:

If a growing population is creating the problem, then let’s stop growing the population.

Yet, even the UN’s World Water Day rhetoric tap-dances around the subject (it’s actually the biggest bunch of gobbledygook I’ve seen in a long time). I guess curbing population growth as a response to all the water crisis news and forecasts is just too simple, too obvious, to get our attention. It isn’t considered. If you review the volumes of material on the subject – the news stories, studies, the commentaries and the policy prescriptions, you’ll find it has never occurred to anyone to just stop growing the population (and perhaps, even, to let the population shrink). You have to admit, that would make it a LOT easier to ensure adequate water, food and energy for everyone. . . .

One would have to live in a hole to be unaware of the crushing crises we face thanks to the growing scale of the human enterprise on our planet. It’s a subject we desperately need to address. Discussion of the overpopulation part of this equation, however, remains a mere whisper in public discourse. When making the film, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, I was warned not to include the subject.

I was reminded recently of the most maddening of the reasons many steer clear of this subject. I’ll start the discussion with a list of the top five things that keep us from getting busy doing what needs to be done to avoid driving our civilization right off the overshoot cliff: . . .

Tomorrow is Earth Day, the one day of the year we have anywhere close to a critical mass of people actually thinking about maintaining our life-support systems.

Here are a few things you wouldn’t do on a spaceship:

1. Disassemble it in order to create jobs and have a robust economy
2. Pack it with more people than it can sustainably support
3. Consume more food or water than its stores can supply for the duration of the voyage
4. Smoke, fart, urinate or defecate beyond the processing ability of its systems
5. Pay attention to its maintenance just one day a year

We get a complete passenger safety briefing (often by video) before takeoff whenever we fly. This is because mistakes at 30,000 feet can be deadly. Flying through space is even more unforgiving, yet we passengers and crew on Spaceship Earth never get a passenger safety briefing. Until now:
SPACESHIP EARTH PASSENGER SAFETY BRIEFING . . .

This week Huffington Post published a blog by Julie Cole titled 6 Reasons to Have 6 Kids. Im not sure how much attention anyone is paying over there to what their bloggers are doing, but Cole’s piece cannot be defined as “progressive.” Progressive thinking about family size will take into account several factors that go unmentioned in her blog. They are clearly unconsidered by any couple that has conceived 6 children in the modern world. More about that below.

Meanwhile, at xoJane.com, Sarah Brown recently penned a bit of a screed about the way she is treated as a woman who’s chosen to be childfree. How Not to be a Dick to Your Childhood Friends appropriately calls out what I’ll call Victorian attitudes many still have about the role of women in the world as baby-factories. It fails, however, to point out one of the wisest reasons for choosing not to conceive children. . . .