Too few environmentalists and sustainability advocates are willing to eschew political correctness and put “smart growth” into the unsustainable dung heap in which it belongs, right next to “dumb growth.” Too few scientists have been willing to take respected journals and magazines to task for engaging in a conspiracy of “silent lies,” leaving overpopulation unmentioned in discussions of various crises. You could never accuse notable physicist Al Bartlett of beating around the bush or tap-dancing around the clear truths about the unsustainability of growth.

Two years ago today, the celebrated professor passed away, at the age of 90, succumbing to a second battle with cancer. I was lucky enough to visit Al’s bedside a month earlier. He was in good spirits, with a lot of his mental spunk intact. . . .

Two months ago today, South Park producer/animation director Eric Stough –addressing the 2014 graduating class at University of Colorado – offered some life-saving advice (at 13:48 in this video):

“In less than two hours you’ll walk through those gates with your hard earned diploma and it’s time to think about work, getting a job, climbing the corporate ladder, looking forward to raises, maybe buying a house with a partner and having a baby or two, and for Earth’s sake keep it to two.”

– Eric Stough, Producer/Animation Director of South Park

My stepdaughter Katie was in the crowd watching her boyfriend Connor graduate. She texted me about Stough’s advice. She knew I’d be excited. Yes, I have a one-track mind, focused on the sustainability of (what must become) an elegant human civilization. Yes, I make films and speak frequently about the overpopulated state of our planet. And, yes, it’s news when someone famous backs me up on this. In all fairness, a few of the rich and famous have spoken up about overpopulation – Jane Fonda, Richard Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Ted Turner, Australian millionaire Dick Smith, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein, Cameron Diaz, Bill Gates, the Dalai Lama. But that’s too few. . . .

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: . . .