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

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

E-mail address:

  • ”In today’s full world, resources are not only scarce but have become the limiting factor”
    – 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
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”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
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”This is not about whales anymore. It’s about us.”
    – Thomas Friedman
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”You don’t have a conservation policy unless you have a population policy.”
    – Paul Ehrlich
    author: The Population Bomb
  • ”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
  • ”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 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 can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.”
    – 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
  • ”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 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
  • ”Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet.”
    – Richard Heinberg
  • ”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
  • ”Our economic activity is at war with the planet.”
    – Naomi Klein
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Because of this civilization’s obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable. We simply cannot go on living this way.”
    – Adam Sacks
  • ”At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.”
    – Paul Hawken
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”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
  • ”Population is the multiplier of everything we do wrong.”
    – Dr. Martha M. Campbell
  • ”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

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Rocky Scott of the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. recently told the group, “Jobs are needed for the 200,000 new residents expected in El Paso County in the next 20 years.” That summarizes the plan our leaders have for this town. This, when we are so painfully reminded there isn’t much water around here. We’ll be asked to pay more dearly with each passing year for water rights from increasingly reluctant sellers. And we’ll pay to pump that water over ever-increasing distances.

Why do Rocky and his cohorts want to see this community at 140% of it’s current population? Let’s give them the benefit of

Continue Reading No Comments

Our Choice: Misguided Growth or True Prosperity

Our world is obsessed with growth. Headlines celebrate growth in jobs, GDP, housing starts and consumer spending. Revenue and earnings growth are the Holy Grail for businesses. Entrepreneurs grow their companies. Of course, everyone wants to earn more money. Few would question these goals. But let’s take a critical look at our methods and results.

Easy Revenue Growth

Businesses achieve earnings growth by reducing expense or by growing revenue. The easiest way to grow revenue is to just show up in a growing market. That’s a major mission of chambers of commerce and economic development groups, and

Continue Reading No Comments

Eyes Wide Open

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
– Mahatma Gahdhi

The growth industry circled the wagons on the op/ed pages of The Gazette January 4, 2004, in an effort to quell the rising voices questioning claims our community benefits financially from growth. While we rejoice the dialog is happening and rational voices have the business-as-usual crowd on the ropes, it’s disappointing when pro-growthers or civic leaders still don’t get it or continue to ignore the truth. It’s apparent from recent Gazette editorials and letters from the Housing and Building Association, that we still have not articulated the slow-growth premise in a way that can be universally understood. So here’s another shot: . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

Sales Tax Hikes: We Keep Begging for Them

Dave Gardner
Founder & Chair, SaveTheSprings

I happen to be one who believes we need the defeated countywide sales tax increase. While the election is behind us, 2009 city and county budgets are yet to be balanced, and we face a future that offers the certainty of both death and taxes. In fact, there is already talk of tax increases on the next ballots.

Tax increases seem to be a fact of life. Why is that? Haven’t we just experienced a turbocharged 15-year growth boom? Yet local backlogs and budget crunches didn’t appear suddenly with the economic meltdown. Backlogs have been

Continue Reading No Comments

Response to Cheyenne Edition Publisher

Dear Mr. Walter,

Your “ramblings” in the May 30 Cheyenne Edition about the Springs gaining local residents who feel no one else should be allowed into “our little circle,” call for a response, especially since your comment was in part precipitated — I suspect — by remarks I made in a recent Cheyenne Edition interview.

First, I am not a recent transplant to the Springs. I was born here, but that is actually irrelevant. Whether I was born here or not, I have a right – in fact a duty – to care about the quality, integrity and viability of this community. This community could use more people like me, who are willing to inform themselves, willing to get involved, and if necessary forego a Lexus in the garage in exchange for clean air, nicer people, less traffic congestion, and adequate water for the . . .

Continue Reading No Comments

GB Logo
GB Logo

Visit Us At:

Share Us On: