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:

  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”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
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”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
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”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
  • ”Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way.”
    – Adam Sacks
  • ”We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children.”
    – Joe Romm
    physicist
  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”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

Got the Urge to ‘Shop, Baby, Shop?’ Stay Home and Watch GrowthBusters on Black Friday

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

This year on Black Friday (the day U.S. retailers and shoppers kick off the holiday shopping season (and the biggest shopping day of the year), we’re offering the world an alternative to mayhem at the mall. We’ll be screening our groundbreaking documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, free on the Internet for audiences around the world. Stay home, have some family time, pop popcorn, and watch a movie that will stimulate a lively discussion (Event times and registration here). Here’s a short promo I think you’ll like (please share with your friends):

Generosity and selflessness are universally considered admirable qualities. I suspect that was the genesis for the gift-giving traditions observed in the celebration of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa at this time of year. So giving a gift is – to borrow a phrase from Martha Stewart – “a good thing.” But when we do our holiday shopping, what gift are we giving to future generations? . . .

Continue Reading 6 Comments

Vote for Best Reality TV

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Okay, I admit it, I watched an entire episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter while researching this topic. It was like a train wreck; I couldn’t look away. Many of us have a weakness for one or another of these shows. But let’s face it, for the most part it’s not reality they offer, but an escape from reality.

Conversation Earth is the new TV series (in development here at Citizen-Powered Media) that I maintain offers the real thing. When we’ve had our fill of faux-reality and we’re ready to come back to Earth, our new series will offer TV you can sink your brain into. We’ve already interviewed:

William Catton, author of Overshoot
Juliet Schor, author of True Wealth
Dennis Meadows, co-author of The Limits of Growth
Sarah Susanka, author of The Not so Big Life
Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb
Jerry Mander, author of The Capitalism Papers: Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System
Stephanie Mills, author of On Gandhi’s Path
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of The End of Nature . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

Al Bartlett Week – Day 5

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Today, on the last day of Al Bartlett Week, I have 3 special clips of Al to share. In the first we get to enjoy Al’s musings about the late Julian Simon. Simon was in many ways Lex Luther to the sustainability Superman of Al Bartlett (and Paul Ehrlich). Al enjoys pointing out Simon’s innumeracy. Al was fond of remarking on the fact that so many of us are “innumerate,” the mathematical equivalent of illiterate. I thought perhaps he’d made up the word, but no, it’s in the dictionary.

Dave Gardner honors Al Bartlett at Colorado premiere of GrowthBusters In the second clip he discusses the First Law of Sustainability. Al wrote a series of Laws Relating to Sustainability. I’ve often wondered why these aren’t shared more widely and posted on bulletin boards everywhere. Maybe now they will be. . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

Al Bartlett Week – Day 4 – World Contraception Day

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Since today is World Contraception Day we’re sharing 3 excellent video clips of the late Al Bartlett about ending population growth. The last two also touch on why we’re finding that so difficult. After viewing these brief clips, check out this excellent commentary by Population Connection’s John Seager.

Al Bartlett Quotes Martin Luther King, Jr.

Al Bartlett – Choices for Ending Population Growth

Al Bartlett – The Silent Lie

To participate in Al Bartlett Week and avoid missing out, subscribe to this blog, join the event page, and/or follow us on Twitter. Add your comments. I look forward to reading and sharing your thoughts throughout the week! . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

Al Bartlett Week – Day 3

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

The late physics professor Al Bartlett knew you cannot have a sustainable world made up of unsustainable communities. So, while he lectured around the world and wrote prolifically about global population and economic growth, he also had a real knack for pointing out the sheer lunacy of the beliefs and policies of local policymakers. Today’s video clips (from my 2005 interview for GrowthBusters) focus on the crazy, suicidal behavior of states and cities hooked on growth. The third clip, Politicians and Population Growth, is particularly amusing.

Creating Jobs Increases # of Unemployed

Population Forecasts are Not Destiny

Politicians and Population Growth . . .

Continue Reading 2 Comments

GB Logo
GB Logo

Visit Us At:

Share Us On: