Here’s installment #3 in our series of questions unanswered during the GrowthBusters webinar, Solving Overshoot: End Overpopulation or Stop Overconsumption. I’m including responses later provided by our panelists, Paul Ehrlich and Madeleine Somerville. Find more information about the panelists, the first 3 questions and links to all these follow-ups here.

8. Terry Spahr asked (in relation to Paul Ehrlich’s remarks about the U.S. uniting on a single mission for WWII: “That was Pearl Harbor. there is no social impetus to go on a consumer war time footing. how do you galvanize a population to go to a wartime footing on reducing consumption?” . . .

I’m continuing today to share leftover questions from the GrowthBusters webinar, Solving Overshoot: End Overpopulation or Stop Overconsumption. I’m including responses later provided by our panelists, Paul Ehrlich and Madeleine Somerville. Find more information about the panelists, plus the first 3 questions and answers here.

4. Karen Pitts asked Paul Ehrlich: “Paul Ehrlich, how much money do we need each year to meet the worldwide unmet need for contraception? How much are we spending?”

Paul Ehrlich:  Haven’t time to look up, but it would be a trivial bit of the U.S. arms budget.

5. Brian Sanderson asked: “Wouldn’t you also consider poverty as an indicator of overpopulation/overshoot?    Aggressive warfare, also…   Mass migrations, also…” . . .

Guest Post by Dr. Karen I. Shragg

I write this as a devastated overpopulation activist, social justice activist, and women’s rights activist. I write it as a free-thinking atheist who is not burdened by ancient doctrine. BUT I do not write this from a perspective of shock. I am not surprised by the rise to power of our president elect.  I think it is all pretty predictable in an overpopulated world. A world, by the way, that seems clueless that it is exactly that, overpopulated, overshot, over-baked and way past well done when it comes to using up our planet’s limited and irreplaceable resources.

We may not know intellectually that the US is actually and provably at least 150 million people over its limit to provide resources like water, long term, to our citizens, but I believe we know it in our subconscious. Because so many green groups refuse to tell the carrying capacity story, we are uninformed. We know deep inside that we cannot continue to make promises of prosperity to growing millions when that very prosperity is based on dwindling natural capital. We know that prosperity isn’t just being limited just because people at the top are greedy. It is because there isn’t enough to go around forever and ever. . . .

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. . . .

Ten years ago I described for a freelance journalist my fledgling documentary project, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. Her advice? "Just don't get into population. That's deadly." Recent events, however, indicate that it's becoming "okay" to address the subject.