Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich reflects on more than 50 years of effort to educate the public about the unsustainability of endless economic and population growth.

Coronavirus has brought the economies of the world to a grinding halt. There is a small, but rising chorus of hopeful speculation that the increasingly apparent deficiencies of our growth-obsessed economic system make it ripe for this crisis to shock it onto a more sustainable path.

8 Years Later, Community Screenings Still Strike a Nerve

The documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth is guaranteed to provoke conversations. Over eight years after it originally premiered, it’s still being screened. Is it still relevant? What kind of conversations does it spark? After he first watched, famed Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich wrote, “This could be the most important film ever made.”

You may want to screen the film in your community around Earth Day this year.

It sparked such a spirited discussion as part of an Earth Day screening attended by filmmaker Dave Gardner in 2019, that he invited one of the audience members to join him in the studio to discuss his response. This conversation was recorded nearly a year ago; it just kept being pushed aside as more time-sensitive topics and guests arose. Finally, we’re sharing it now. Erika had not yet joined the podcast when we recorded this. . . .

Today’s episode of the GrowthBusters podcast welcomes the New Year with the Telegraph’s 11 Green New Year’s Resolutions That Put the Planet First. But do they really?

Since 1972, study after study, and report after report, has warned we are in overshoot – the sum total of human activity is too much for the Earth’s ecosystems to bear. Welcome to Overshoot explores overshoot’s causes, effects, and possible solutions, as well as some of the barriers to solving the problem. The best scientific estimates tell us human civilization is in overshoot. Were you aware of this? Do you know what overshoot is? This year (2019), Earth Overshoot Day falls on July 29.