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  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children.”
    – Joe Romm
    physicist
  • ”We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”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
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”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
  • ”In today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – 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
  • ”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
  • ”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’ve globalized an utterly untenable economic model of hyperconsumerism. It’s now successfully spreading across the world, and it’s killing us.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb

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) . . .

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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.) . . .

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Is the Public Ready to Consider Carbon Footprint in Family-Size Decisions?

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

This question is finally on the table here at GrowthBusters, as I’ve observed mainstream media finally giving ink and airtime to the heavy environmental impact of each additional child brought into the world. Why is that?

One reason is that scientists have now documented choosing to conceive just one fewer child will reduce your carbon footprint a LOT more than any other “green” action. You’ll find that study VERY interesting. It’s bottom line: “until the emissions associated with desired services are reduced to zero, population will continue to be a multiplier of emissions.” Multiplier is the key word here.

That ought to be a “duh” statement, but – until recently – overpopulation was rarely mentioned, and DOING something to ease human population back to a wise and sustainable level was never mentioned in the scientific reports or news coverage of climate change. But that is finally changing. . . .

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Mother and baby: If you love children, don't have any more

If You Love Kids – Don’t Have Any More

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

July 11 is World Population Day. We recently passed 7.6 billion humans alive on the planet, while scientists’ best estimates place sustainable world population at about 2 billion. This is an important occasion to have a conversation about our procreative choices.

Isn’t it time for the recommendation to go out far and wide that young couples should choose to have no children, or at most one child, until world population coasts back down to a sustainable level? The connection between family size decisions, climate change and carbon footprint has been getting more and more press, so we at GrowthBusters wondered if the time had finally come.

Is the public ready to acknowledge we have a moral responsibility to have fewer children? . . .

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Great Transition webinar

Webinar June 14: Great Transition Initiative

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Learn about an exciting paradigm-shifting initiative at the next free GrowthBusters webinar.

Please join me for an engaging conversation about how we can catalyze the needed paradigm shift to a life-sustaining society. You’re invited to join this GrowthBusters webinar at no cost.

I’ve invited Andrew Gaines of the Great Transition Initiative to tell us more about the project. It’s gearing up to help catalyze the system change we need in order for human civilization to stick around on planet Earth awhile longer.

Date and Time: Wednesday, June 14 at 9pm EDT. Register Here

Registrants receive a link to view a replay in case they cannot attend live. The webinar will last one hour and 15 minutes.

On the webinar we’ll pick Andrew’s brain and explore how he thinks we can align to solve the major bottlenecks challenging our transition to a sustainable society. How can we go past ‘preaching to the converted’ and bring a critical mass of the general public into considering the consequences of big picture trends such as ever-growing global economy and population, global warming, and peak everything? . . .

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