Donate

GrowthBusters is a non-profit, public education project. Support this work with a tax-deductible donation and give our kids a good chance to live a great life.

Monthly

Recurring Donation

One-Time

Donation

Choose a Level:

Alternative Amount

Give what you want

Choose Amount:

Snag a Small Family
Window Sticker

By Donating $10

one
Select Options
one
Select Options
one
Select Options
one
Select Options

Sign A Check And

Mail It To

Citizen-Powered Media
2930 Orion Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80906 USA
Our tax I.D. # is 20-5853254
Donate
Get the Film
Media Bias
Newsletter

To sign up to receive our e-mails, submit the following.

E-mail address:

  • ”There will inevitably come a time that the society drastically needs to change the way it interacts with the environment, or it will lose its coherence.”
    – Sander van der Leeuw
  • ”On the one hand, it’s politically impossible to stop growth. On the other hand, it’s biophysically impossible to continue it ad infinitum. So, which impossibility is fundamentally impossible?”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”As I see it, humanity needs to reduce its impact on the Earth urgently and there are three ways to achieve this: we can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population.”
    – Sir David Attenborough
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”
    – Richard Branson
  • ”I have – over the last five years – quite rapidly become a Malthusian. I have been won over by the data, and I have been won over by the logic of the math.”
    – Jeremy Grantham
    investment strategist
  • ”If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs.”
    – Daniel Quinn
    author: Ishmael and The Story of B
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”We can’t frack our way back to economic prosperity; nor can we unplug a coal plant, plug in a solar panel, and go on expanding population and consumption.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way.”
    – Adam Sacks
  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”Long-term sustainability requires a materially smaller economy (the pie) shared more equitably (not equally) by a smaller population.”
    – William Rees
    Co-originator of Ecological Footprint Analysis
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children.”
    – Joe Romm
    physicist
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”We can share the earth and take care of it together, rather than trying to possess it, destroying the beauty of life in the process.”
    – Dalai Lama
  • ”If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but new programs.”
    – Daniel Quinn
    author: Ishmael and The Story of B
  • ”We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”In the short term, we must realize that we have better ways to create jobs and build the economy than holding an everything must go sale on our precious resources.”
    – Dr. David Suzuki
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”The free-market fundamentalists will tell you that more growth, more stuff and 9 billion people going shopping is the best we can do. They’re wrong. We can be more. We can be much more.”
    – Paul Gilding
    author: The Great Disruption
  • ”We’re going to need some kind of radical break with our past behavior if we’re to engineer a viable future.”
    – Mark Buchanan
    Bloomberg columnist
  • ”I have – over the last five years – quite rapidly become a Malthusian. I have been won over by the data, and I have been won over by the logic of the math.”
    – Jeremy Grantham
    investment strategist
  • ”Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
    – E.F. Schumacher
    author: Small is Beautiful
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”In today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”We can’t frack our way back to economic prosperity; nor can we unplug a coal plant, plug in a solar panel, and go on expanding population and consumption.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence.”
    – George Monbiot
    Guardian columnist
  • ”We’ve globalized an utterly untenable economic model of hyperconsumerism. It’s now successfully spreading across the world, and it’s killing us.”
    – Naomi Klein

More Kids, Fewer Kids, or No Kids?

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Are children bad for the health of the planet, and therefore human civilization? Should we stop making them? Or do we need to step it up and make lots more than we’re currently making (does anyone have a good recipe)? Or does the intelligent answer lie somewhere in-between?

The GrowthBusters podcast team doesn’t shy away from tough topics when the fate of human civilization hangs in the balance. In this episode, Ben, Kaitlyn and I discuss recent news headlines about fertility rates and offer their opinions on the views of Matt Lewis (The Daily Beast) and Travis Rieder (Berman Institute of Bioethics). Over 15,000 of the world’s scientists also weigh in. . . .

Continue Reading 2 Comments

GrowthBusters Podcast

Changing the World Starts at Home

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Is reducing child-tax credits to encourage smaller families a good idea? Can a city “win” the Amazon Headquarters Sweepstakes? Do undiscovered joys grace your life when you begin stepping up to trim your footprint on the planet?

The GrowthBusters team tackles these questions in the 6th episode of our GrowthBusters podcast. Tax reform bills on capitol hill today contemplate increasing the child tax credit. On on overpopulated planet, why would we want to create a greater financial incentive to have bigger families? We also consider why hundreds of cities salivate at the prospect of having the new, second Amazon headquarters in their community. The truth is most of the 50,000 jobs will go to NEW residents who move to town chasing the jobs. And the truth is that growth will cost the community much more than it will gain in tax revenue. . . .

Continue Reading 1 Comment

Cities Must Bend Over & Accept Population Growth

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

One of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., Bend, Oregon has doubled in population over the past two decades. Still, it has at least some intelligent thinking about growth. Our newest episode of the GrowthBusters podcast explores urban growth. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or Stitcher so you never miss an episode.

Podcast co-host Kaitlyn Hickmann invited her dad to join us in this discussion of how cities manage population growth. Bend Oregon’s director of engineering and infrastructure planning,Tom Hickmann shares the fast-growing city’s somewhat unique approach to city planning, and discusses Oregon’s requirement that cities accommodate growth. According to Tom, cities get challenged if they have a “pattern and practice of rejecting growth.” . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

Growth Addiction Set Stage for Hurricane Disasters in Houston & Florida – GrowthBusters Podcast

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog, Podcast

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma highlight the fact that cities have prioritized growth over safety, valued concrete over nature, and bought into the myth of prosperity from growth over sustainability. Dave, Kaitlyn and Ben discuss the civic addiction to growth. What would be more appropriate metrics for success than high rates of population growth?

Also: Living with your parents is green. So is patronizing restaurants that source locally, and skipping the plastic bags offered in the produce department.

Links of Interest:

Subscribe to the GrowthBusters podcast on iTunes

Does Population Growth Mean a City is Thriving?

Conversation Earth interviews      (vote for another season of this important radio/podcast series) . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

NEW: GrowthBusters Podcast

Enlighten Yourself – New GrowthBusters Podcast Launched

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog, Podcast

The new GrowthBusters podcast is now active, with three episodes available now for your enjoyment and enlightenment.

Why a GrowthBusters podcast?

Many lively discussions begin on our webinars, on my media bias analysis at www.growthbiasbusted.org, and in response to Facebook posts. And those have continued here in the office (thanks to the presence of our two student interns, Kaitlyn and Ben). So, we decided the time is right to launch an official GrowthBusters podcast.

You can listen to the first episodes right here (just below, in this post), or you can find the GrowthBusters podcast (and subscribe, for free) at iTunes, Stitcher or the Apple Podcasts app. Subscribing means you’ll automatically get new episodes when available. (You’ll also find a couple of old episodes of our Paving Paradise podcast, which I started last summer but abandoned due to lack of time.) . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

GB Logo
GB Logo

Visit Us At:

Share Us On: