Okay, I get that we are at the end of growth. What should I do with that information?

Yesterday I had a nice conversation on the air with the hosts of  Spread Peace Radio. You can hear our discussion here (the 1/19/13 episode), which was wide-ranging, but did touch on what we can or should be doing to embrace the end of growth.

While it is challenging to get past our addiction to growth, living sustainably doesn’t mean a dismal, uncomfortable existence. In fact, it frees us to enjoy the good things in life!

There wasn’t time to fully explore that subject, so I promised the listeners I’d blog about it today. If you came to the blog after listening to that show, welcome. I hope you’ll subscribe to the blog (right side of this page) and I invite you to participate in the conversation by adding your comments below. This to-do list is not comprehensive, so I hope you’ll add your suggestions here. . . .

Last night I gratefully accepted a Global Media Award for best film or miniseries for my film, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. The Global Media Awards are presented annually by the Population Institute to recognize significant contribution to public discussion and understanding of issues related to population growth. I’m thrilled the film is getting this recognition, alongside such honors as being selected to screen at 11 film festivals so far. (Click on photos below to enlarge.)

We had some fun as I thanked two of the smartest sustainable population advocates/experts I know, Population Institute Chair Bill Ryerson and President Bob Walker, for our award. I presented each with a GrowthBusters movie poster. Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, we had replaced me as the lead growthbuster on the posters with Bill and Bob. . . .

We risk a global collapse of our civilization as we know it. Climate change is just one of our problems. We cannot avert calamity without tackling it and other pressing ecological concerns in concert.

Ehrlich perspective in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

By Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich
For DailyClimate.org

During the 2008 presidential campaign, a press conference was held at the National Press Club with the goal of trying to inject environmental issues into the debates. It failed miserably, but it was also informative because every question asked by a reporter was about global warming. . . .

Film Crew T-Shirt Contest

Help us choose the GrowthBusters Film Crew T-shirt you will soon be wearing!
(click on a photo to enlarge it) 

3 votes

I’d like to send you a Film Crew T-shirt, but you do have to be on the crew to get it. The good news is that when you make a donation (tax-deductible in the U.S.) to the project you are actually joining our team, becoming a GrowthBuster, and – if you donate $100 or more, we’ll thank you by sending a T-shirt.

4 votes

Problem is, we can’t decide which design is the best. Please help us decide, by voting for the one you want to wear. We also welcome your suggestions for other slogans or designs. Post your design or slogan to our facebook page, comment below with your suggestion, or send me an email. We’ll add your design to the ballot. We’ll produce a batch of the design that wins the most votes, and the winning designer will get an extra T-shirt free. . . .

Please help us eliminate pro-growth bias in the news media. A flurry of news reports this morning reinforce the cultural myth that population growth is a sign things are going well. This keeps our culture hooked on growth. Over a lifetime it programs us to seek and celebrate growth.

The U.S. Census released new state population estimates yesterday, and – as usual – the flurry of news headlines and reports is providing disappointing evidence that most journalists have a pro-growth bias. It’s often fairly subtle, but if your radar for this bias is active as you read some of these headlines or stories, you can’t miss it.

 

• U.S. population growth flat (USA Today)
• Kansas population growth lags behind national average (Wichita Business Journal)
• Indiana Population Growth “Sluggish” (Inside Indiana Business)
• Florida ranks 3^rd in population growth (Bradenton Herald)

This is a real problem in our modern culture, because it reinforces the cultural myth that growth is necessary for prosperity. We must give this myth a decent burial to speed our transition to a sustainable world. This will be a world that does not seek impossible and destructive perpetual growth, but rather seeks good and satisfying lives that leave future generations a world worth inheriting. . . .