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? . . .

One of the three podcasts I host is called The Overpopulation Podcast, a project of World Population Balance. One episode this year featured a conversation with author Laura Carroll about making the choice to be childfree. One listener emailed this comment:

“Dear Dave, It’s not population as population is leveling off. It’s consumption, consumption, consumption.”

I’m writing about this today because this is a fairly common occurrence. That’s one of the reasons I’m hosting a free webinar this week:

Solving Overshoot: End Overpopulation or Stop Overconsumption?

I suspect most people think they know the answer to that question. I think I do. So I doubt many will attend hoping to actually find out the answer. I think most who attend will be there to make sure someone doesn’t offer the WRONG answer. Interestingly, there are differing opinions on what the correct answer is. . . .

I am not alone. That’s the message I got from the results of our recent Green Living Survey. I didn’t expect to have so much company on a number of fronts. Let’s go through the highlights:

1. How are we currently leaving the Earth each year?

A whopping 92% of respondents understand that we’re currently injuring Earth’s ecosystems, each year leaving the planet a little less capable of supporting our massive global population and economy.

3% feel we leave the planet in better shape each year. I imagine they are CEOs of asphalt or concrete companies.

2. Which is causing the most injury to ecosystems?

There was no right or wrong answer to this question. It will be debated till we’ve run human civilization off a cliff. An impressive 72% chose BOTH overpopulation and over-consumption, avoiding the debate. . . .