Love is in the air on Valentine’s Day, so this seems the perfect time to learn what you can do to green up your wedding. With over 2 million weddings per year just in the U.S., greening your wedding can make a real difference. The Center for Biological Diversity’s Sarah Baillie shares low-impact wedding tips from the new Wildlife-Friendly Wedding Guide. Listen for more tips and information. And by all means get the guide if you have a wedding to plan!

Your choice of wedding location can make a big difference. So can menu choices. Did you know a vegetarian menu has 75% less emissions than a meat-based menu? For a vegan menu the reduction is 90%. And have you considered that renting attire for the wedding party vs. buying can substantially cut your wedding’s impact? Attending a wedding has its share of impacts and costs. According to LendEDU, the average wedding attendee spends $1,386 per wedding. . . .

Yes, they are related. Our business-as-usual response to Hurricane Florence last month starts the conversation. (This episode was recorded before Hurricane Michael devastated the Florida panhandle.) Grace and Dave do also share some good news: climate change is getting more attention (of course the recent IPCC report has turned that volume up to 11, and we’ll discuss that in the next episode).

Also in this episode: Does Dave need to shut up already about using condoms? How reliable are various forms of contraception? A challenge to the top environmental NGOs to start telling the truth about the unsustainability of economic growth. And a politician startles the world by quitting because his government isn’t doing enough about the climate. . . .

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.) . . .

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. . . .

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? . . .