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

World Population Day (and we’re still avoiding the subject)

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Today fifteen on-camera performers and a volunteer crew of 10 will be joining me in a big Hollywood production. We’re shooting a video visualizing what our world might look like in a future where continued overpopulation and over-consumption have led to worldwide resource scarcity and social conflict.

It will be a scary picture. Will this kind of shock therapy work? Will audiences view this science fiction scenario and immediately change their own lives, get over the taboo on discussing responsible family-size decisions, and step up efforts to change a system hooked on growth?

The truth is we don’t know. Some sustainability advocates advise that instead of pointing out the dangers of where we’re headed, we should focus on painting an optimistic picture of where we want to go. They’re dead certain doom and gloom won’t sell an idea. And they may be right. Yet, there is no evidence it’s any more effective to follow the advice of that old song: “eliminate the negative, and accentuate the positive.” . . .

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Everything You Wanted to Know About GrowthBusters

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

Want a detailed explanation of my film, Hooked on Growth – why I’m making it, why we need it, what I hope to accomplish, how the film will be seen? Then drop in for a few beers with Steve! I’m the guest on the popular podcast, Two Beers With Steve. You can hear my episode here.

TwoBeersGraphic

Steve Patterson tells me Two Beers With Steve started as a podcast about what they are doing to us, but it has evolved into a podcast about what we can do for ourselves and our communities. According to Steve, “we started looking for ways to become not so dependent on a flawed system. We cover topics about economic and financial chaos all the way to what method we should use in our gardens.” Patterson has some smart followers, covers great topics, and features some prominent guests (including Crash Course’s Chris Martenson, James Howard Kuenstler, and quickly-becoming-infamous GrowthBuster Dave Gardner). . . .

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GrowthBusters Network Pitches In For West Coast Shoot

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco, on the final day of a ten-day West Coast filming trip. In my 30 years traveling the globe directing films for airlines, energy and chemical companies, software firms and public television, I always had a decent expense account. So this is the first time I’ve couch-surfed rather than stay at hotels, the first time I’ve dined in the car or a grocery store instead of Outback Steakhouse. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and water have gotten us by.

Necessity was behind the decision to tap the GrowthBusters support network for accomodations. Since we’ve so far raised only a modest percentage of our production budget for the film, Hooked on Growth, I have to be creative to capture the material we need while spending as little as possible. . . .

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Miracle Cure for World’s Environmental Problems

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog

I found a great cause that can feed the hungry, reduce poverty, cut CO2 emissions, provide clean water for all, help us survive after peak oil, reduce sprawl, preserve wildlands, eliminate traffic congestion, restore collapsing fisheries and save endangered species. How could there possibly be one solution to all these challenges?

EarthDayTableTreeSmall

Without a doubt, there is, and it is getting unhooked from Growth Addiction. We put together a unique display for our local community’s Earth Day fair this year. It certainly brought many a curious onlooker to our booth. GrowthBusters volunteers Jason Cross and Bill Jack created this unusual tree. Each leaf trumpeted just one of the many, many environmental causes addressed by our project. . . .

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Too Big to Succeed! Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth

Written by Dave Gardner on . Posted in Blog


eaarth-200

“The future ain’t what it used to be.” Yogi Berra

Who knew Yogi Berra would be so prescient? I just finished Bill McKibben’s newest book, Eaarth: Making A Life On A Tough New Planet, and I am giving it three thumbs up. The book chillingly catalogs how the human enterprise has remade the face of the planet – and in the process created what could be a terrifying future. But it also offers hope. And part of that hope is really not even debatable: the end of growth.

After reading his Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future a few years ago, I caught up with McKibben in Boulder, Colorado to interview him for my documentary, Hooked on Growth. It was an outstanding conversation (see a clip below). In both book and interview he had some brilliant observations and recommendations for humankind to move in a more sustainable direction. . . .

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