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  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”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
  • ”Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way.”
    – Adam Sacks
  • ”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
  • ”We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”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
  • ”There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.”
    – Mahatma Ghandhi
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
    – Kenneth Boulding
    economist
  • ”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
  • ”We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children.”
    – Joe Romm
    physicist
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.”
    – Paul Samuelson
    economist
  • ”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
  • ”Who’s gonna stand up and save the Earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?”
    – Neil Young
  • ”In today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – Herman Daly
    former World Bank senior economist
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – 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
  • ”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
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    – Edward Abbey
  • ”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
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”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’ve globalized an utterly untenable economic model of hyperconsumerism. It’s now successfully spreading across the world, and it’s killing us.”
    – 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

Going Green in World’s Greenest City

Vancouver’s young generation embraces higher density

News item: “Micro suites” planned for Vancouver-area development

Woman in a box Janet and Bob (pictured) of Vancouver, BC — a jurisdiction heralded around the world as “the model city” by planners and politicians from afar who drop in for two-day visit of wining , dining and smoozing — represent the new generation of Canadians with a “green” vision. The same vision as their “green” Mayor Gregor Robertson. It is the vision of a sustainable future where citizens willingly choose to live more simply so that more and more billions of people can simply live.

That means living “smaller” (and smaller and smaller and smaller). For many, like Janet and Bob who used to live as man and wife, it means living apart in separate cardboard 36 cubic foot boxes in order to save the planet and sustain Vancouver’s reputation as a “welcoming” city by making room for the unending parade of humanity wishing to make it their home. . . .

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A Day to Take Note of Our Irrational Behavior

Today is a day like any other. The morning paper is on the front step. Traffic is backed up. Another ozone alert. Homebuilders are optimistic new home starts are on the rise. Too few jobs were created last month. Consumers didn’t spend as much as manufacturers and retailers hoped. A global slowdown is making tough times for mining companies. And U.S. presidential candidates promise they have the roadmap for a return to robust economic growth.

Turn on the radio on your way to work today, and – as routine as all the above sound – they will be discussed to the exclusion of the fact that today is Earth Overshoot Day. That’s a shame, because Overshoot Day has more relevance to your quality of life, and the lives of your children, than any of items occupying the pundits and newscasters. . . .

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Return of the Population Bombers

Canadaian Ecosocialist Ian Angus is determined to undermine efforts to achieve sustainable population levels. He’s convinced we can only choose one remedy for our society’s unsustainable ills.

Ian Angus I disagree strongly with this view, and I take great exception to several of his misassumptions and generalizations about sustainable population advocacy. So it is tempting NOT to bring attention to what he writes. However, I think we can all learn something from his mistakes. I trust you to see through the fallacies in his arguments, but just in case the clueless happen across this, I’ll shine a little light here on them.

Angus’ mission in life is to rid the world of capitalism. He is certain we cannot achieve climate stability unless we replace capitalism with socialism. He may very well be right. Where he errs, however, is in his view that – regardless of which system we organize by – the sheer quantity of people on the planet has little to do with our sustainability or carbon footprint. Of this he is so certain, that he co-wrote a book, Too Many People?, to convince us. . . .

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World Population Day – 6 Obstacles to Sustainable Population

No Vacancy The world is overpopulated.
Overpopulation is everywhere.
It is a major cause of most of the crises we face.
We can fix it…humanely, voluntarily, and starting today.

Six things stand in our way.

This week a few human rights and too few environmental organizations will observe World Population Day. In 1989, as world population passed the 5 billion mark, the United Nations declared July 11 World Population Day. In the 23 years since, we’ve added another 2 billion.

The UN’s latest mid-range scenario has us passing through 10 billion before this century ends. We’ve been adding a billion to the planet about every 12 years, but the UN expects fertility rates to decline such that it will take nearly 80 years to add the next 3 billion. This scenario also has us hitting peak population just after 2100. Some feel this means population growth is no longer a concern. . . .

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World Population Day 2012

On July 11 a few people and organizations observe World Population Day. I write “few” because the subjects of population growth and overpopulation are too often ignored or even avoided. Even those organizations which do make note of the day generally tapdance around the issue. They talk about “population dynamics” rather than “population growth.” They avoid the word “overpopulation.” “Birth control” becomes “family planning.” “Making responsible decisions about family size” is not mentioned. Instead we talk about “reproductive health,” “reproductive rights,” “equality or education for women,” etc. Even the United Nations, which started World Population Day in 1989, beats around the bush in its annual World Population Day statements. . . .

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