This essay was published today in the Daly News from Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Economic news last Friday was quite positive. Annualized U.S. GDP growth was less than one percent in the first half of 2011.

However, I would hazard a guess that, oh, some 99.9 percent of the world considered this bad news. It was characterized in the New York Times as a “snail’s pace.” Journalists and commentators around the world are predictably typing out words like weak, anemic, malaise, gloomy, bleak, doldrums and stagnation.

So why would I celebrate? Do I get perverse, morbid pleasure at seeing my fellow humans unemployed, upside down in their mortgages, or dining at soup kitchens? I do not. The fallout of the recession is real, it’s painful, and it’s sad. But steady or declining GDP is not bad news. Nor is the drop in consumer spending reported Tuesday. . . .

Check out this sneak preview from the upcoming GrowthBusters documentary.

I called the Vatican to have a little chat with Pope Benedict XVI regarding the Catholic Church’s official position on contraception. Even though the vast majority of Catholics use contraception, the Catholic Church continues to wield political power that prevents access to family planning around the world. We’ll be delving into this sensitive topic in the film – premiering late October.

Kickstarter Update: 13 days left to raise $20,000 in finishing funds for the film. Have you been sitting on the sidelines hoping everyone else will do their part?

We need to overcome that bystander effect and start a landslide of support. If 1500 people each pledge $10 this week we’ll make our goal. That’s it. $10 here and $10 there. Are there not 1500 people out there who want to give our growth-obsessed culture a wake-up call? . . .

Pardon my French, but demographic poverty, my butt!

My local daily newspaper, The Gazette, has been on a crusade lately to warn of impending doom from declining population. The latest installment was in a July 15 editorial titled We Have Far Worse Than a Debt Crisis: This is a Dawning of Demographic Poverty. I find the term, Demographic Poverty, as used, quite ridiculous, short-sighted and selfish.

It’s important that growthbusters everywhere challenge this kind of backward thinking in their communities. I did my part, submitting a letter to the editor. It’s been a week since I submitted it, but it has not found its way to the opinion pages. So I share it here: . . .

July 11 is World Population Day, meaning only that today the news media, and perhaps a bigger share of the public, are giving overpopulation the attention it should get every day. Why it doesn’t normally get this attention is one of the subjects explored in my upcoming documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. It is too complex for a quick blog read.

This insightful cartoon by Tim Newcomb cuts to the chase. It is quite clear the scale of the human enterprise has outgrown the planet. Nearly every crisis or challenge we face today is caused or aggravated by population growth. Yet for every crisis and challenge, stabilizing or reducing population is rarely mentioned even as one of the possible solutions. Too few are comfortable bringing it up. Unfortunately, those who do raise the issue all too often follow that up with a statement that population growth is out of our control. Or that demographic inertia means it’s inevitable growth will continue for some time. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We get what we expect. And it seems we don’t expect much of the human race. We could, voluntarily, bring population growth to a halt tomorrow, if we were all well-informed and believe in the intergenerational golden rule. . . .

Please help us choose the best slogan for these packages of GrowthBusters Condoms.

(Click on the picture to see full-size and to vote.)

Here at GrowthBusters one of our guiding principles is borrowed from the advertising industry. William Kroll, onetime chair of ad agency giant Young & Rubicam, once said,

“Only the unusual in communication can be unusually effective.”

While this drives most of my work on the GrowthBusters documentary, it is extraordinarily apparent in our current escapade. I invite you to join in the fun. Full details of the plan will be revealed shortly.

Please cast your vote here. And if you have a better slogan to suggest, do so in a comment to this post. I’d like to get a broad sample of opinions, so please share this on facebook, Twitter, and email. Invite your friends to participate! . . .